Beauvoir's understanding of the process of "becoming a woman' is related to the ambiguities, abilities, and disabilities of embodiment. Merleau-Pony "s notion of an ambivilant consciousness is applied to the question of woman's complicity in her own oppression. Beauvoir "s fictional accounts of women lacking in sexual desire are connected to her views of female eroticism in Le deuxième sexe and to Merleau-Ponty's notion of intimate perception.