 The situation of women is comparable to the condition of the Hegelian Other in that men, like the Hegelian Master, identify themselves as the Subject, the absolute human type, and, measuring women by this standard of the human, identify them as inferior. Women’s so-called inadequacies are then used as justification for seeing them as the Other and for treating them accordingly. Unlike the Hegelian Other, however, women are unable to identify the origin of their otherness. They cannot call on the bond of a shared history to reestablish their lost status as Subjects. Further, dispersed among the world of men, they identify themselves in terms of the differences of their oppressors (e.g., as white or black women, as working-class or middle-class women, as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu women) rather than with each other. They lack the solidarity and resources of the Hegelian Other for organizing themselves into a “we” that demands recognition. Finally, their conflict with men is ambiguous. According to Beauvoir, women and men exist in a “primordial Mitsein” (SS: 2010, 9, cf. 1949, 22): there is a unique bond between this Subject and its Other. In contesting their status as inessential, women must discover their “we” and take account of the Mitsein. Beauvoir uses the category of the Inessential Other to designate the unique situation of women as the ambiguous Other of men. Unlike the Other of the master-slave dialectic, women are not positioned to rebel. As Inessential Others, women’s routes to subjectivity and recognition cannot follow the Hegelian script (SS: 2010, 6–9, cf. 1949, 18–22 ).