“ the woman exhausts herself in arrogant scenes and in the end gathers up the crumbs the male is willing to throw her. But what can a woman—for whom the man is both the only means and the only reason for living—do without masculine help? She has no choice but to endure all humiliations; a slave cannot understand the meaning of “human dignity”; for him it is enough if he manages to survive. ”
 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949). copy citation