The basis of women's oppression was sex. After being assigned female at birth, most will spend the rest of their lives socialized as girls, eventually as women. A woman is confined by her sex while a man is liberated through his. In Simone de Beauvoir's “The Second Sex,” she argues that women's submission is socially conditioned and not something innate to the female sex. Instigated by men who throughout history have positioned themselves as neutral observers of the world around them, women have been relegated to the role of “Other.” Their position as “Other” leaves women in a kind of bizarre space where their experiences are defined by and in relation to men. This brings us to Naomi Weisstein's book “Kinder, Küche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female,” in which she describes how the nature of women has been defined in psychology through socially constructed ideas of what a woman should be. Both of these works highlight the way in which “woman” has been defined and the prejudices inherent in this definition that make her experience a by-product of that of man. De Beauvoir writes: “…speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are endowed with a uterus like the others” (Schneir, 6). Being a woman is not the only requirement for being a woman. “Woman” is socially defined; there are certain behaviors and actions relegated to the role of woman that we are encouraged to learn and perform to some extent. Femininity is the defining characteristic of a woman. What a man is not, a woman is. Being masculine means being energetic and brash, moving without fear of consequences. Femininity is posited as the lack of these traits; submissive, always acting… middle of paper… they are and what they should do” (Schneir 224). Before we can begin to understand the true nature of women, we must take into account the roles imposed on them and for what purpose. What other benefit is there to portraying women as neurotic than to make them dependent on someone else? Depriving women of their autonomy means first of all forcing them to fill the same roles created by men. Both de Beauvoir and Weisstein assert that “woman” has been, and continues to be, defined by man. De Beauvoir states it through sex, that being a woman is the first blow followed by the imposition of the role of a woman, appropriately framed as the antithesis of man. Weisstein takes this constructed image of women and criticizes psychology's attempt to postulate the true nature of women, as opposed to attempts to simply confirm what has always been suspected by men..