De Beauvoir: Women are "natural" conspiracy theorists

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir muses on woman's dependence and disempowerment, and how such powerlessness breeds resentment and confusion. Obliged to "regard the male universe"--the universe of power in which she does not share, because "she would feel in danger without a roof over her head," but because she is "passive [and] out of the game" she believes "the good should be realized, and if it is not, there must be some wrongdoing for which those to blame must be punished" (109). This leaves her open to what, in de Beauvoir's view are clearly unsophisticated positions: “[W]oman thinks that ‘it is all the Jews’ fault,’ or the Freemasons’ or the Bolsheviks’, or the government’s; she is always against someone or something. They do not always know just where the evil principle may lie, but what they expect of a ‘good government’ is to sweep it out as they sweep dust out of the house” (109).

De Beauvoir, deliberately provoking male stereotypes of women, argues that women are denied access to a privileged male realm, and so are prone to imagine this male realm in terms of their immediate experience: the black and white world of prewar housekeeping. The material circumstances of woman's position have, of course, changed, and yet the paradigms here likely persist. Moreover, the general structure of her formulation--that those denied power are apt to imagine it in polarized forms--is useful for conceptualizing one facet of my argument in regards to disempowered men and conspiracy theory.