Download 1 Sirène Harb Fisk 223, Simone de Beauvoir

Sirène Harb
Fisk 223, [email protected]
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
The Second Sex (1949)
“A person is not born a woman, but becomes one”
I. Biography and Contexts
II. Major Influences
A. Existentialism
● Choice, meaning, and existence
● Preoccupation with death, anxiety, and fear
● Expression of the questioning aspect of human consciousness
● Focus on freedom and responsibility
B. Friedrich Nietzsche’s revaluation of values
● Challenging inherited or socially established notions
C. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s master-slave confrontation
● A model for the encounter between self and other
III. The Second Sex
A. Sex and gender
● Gender: “An aspect of identity gradually acquired”
● Sex: “The invariant, anatomically distinct, and factic aspects of the female body”
“The distinction between sex and gender has been crucial to the long-standing feminist effort to debunk
the claim that anatomy is destiny” (Butler 35).
B. The problem: The inferior, dependent status of women
“[H]umanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as
an autonomous being…. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with
reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is
the Absolute ― she is the Other” (Page 3).
C. The construction of womanhood (namely by men):
● is characterized by essentialism
●projects woman as other and dependent on man
● identifies inferiority and imperfection as characteristics of womanhood
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“Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate
position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth. The religions invented by men reflect
this wish for domination . . . . Since ancient times satirists and moralists have delighted in showing up the
weaknesses of women” (Page 6)
“Everywhere, at all times, the males have displayed their satisfaction in feeling that they are the lords of
creation. ‘Blessed be God ... that He did not make me a woman,’ say the Jews in their morning prayers,
while their wives pray on a note of resignation: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who created me according to His
will.’ The first among the blessings for which Plato thanked the gods was that he had been created free,
not enslaved; the second, a man, not a woman. But the males could not enjoy this privilege fully unless
they believed it to be founded on the absolute and the eternal; they sought to make the fact of their
supremacy into a right” (Page 6)
D. Consequences of this projection of womanhood
● Women in the prison of immanence
● Attempts to put man in this prison or to escape from it
E. Women’s failure to rebel and its reasons
● Absence of a sense of collectivity and solidarity
● The context of the couple
“The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit which can
stand face to face with the correlative unit. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and
they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat…. The bond that unites her
[woman] to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. . . . The couple is a fundamental unity with its
two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be
found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to
one another” (Page 5).
● Power/Privilege “by association”
● Satisfaction with the status quo
“To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal ― this would be for women to renounce all
the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste. Man-the-sovereign will
provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake the moral justification of her
existence; thus she can evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in which
ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. Indeed, along with the ethical urge of each individual
to affirm his subjective existence, there is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing” (Page
6).
Conclusion:
“[W]oman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she
feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well
pleased with her role as the Other” (Page 6).
F. Change and transformation of the women’s situation
● Economic situation and its importance
“We must not believe, certainly, that a change in woman's economic condition alone is enough to
transform her, though this factor has been and remains the basic factor in her evolution; but until it has
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brought about the moral, social, cultural, and other consequences that it promises and requires, the new
woman cannot appear” (Page 16)
● Equal opportunities and responsibilities for little girls
“If the little girl were brought up from the first with the same demands and rewards, the same severity and
the same freedom, as her brothers, taking part in the same studies, the same games, promised the same
future, surrounded with women and men who seemed to her undoubted equals, the meanings of the
castration complex and of the Oedipus complex would be profoundly modified.” (Page 16)
● A different model of the couple
“Assuming on the same basis as the father the material and moral responsibility of the couple, the mother
would enjoy the same lasting prestige; the child would perceive around her an androgynous world and not
a masculine world” (Page 16).
● Freedom and responsibility-- Existentialist Ethics and transcendence
“In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that
happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics.
Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of
transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out toward other liberties….
Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into
the "en-soi" ― the brutish life of subjection to given conditions ― and of liberty into constraint and
contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him,
it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to
justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in
freely chosen projects.” (Pages 9-10)
● Sexual education and coeducational schooling
“I have already pointed out how much easier the transformation of puberty would be if she looked
beyond it, like the boys, toward a free adult future: menstruation horrifies her only because it is an abrupt
descent into femininity. She would also take her young eroticism in much more tranquil fashion if she did
not feel a frightened disgust for her destiny as a whole; coherent sexual information would do much to
help her over this crisis. And thanks to coeducational schooling, the august mystery of Man would have
no occasion to enter her mind: it would be eliminated by everyday familiarity and open rivalry” (Page
16).
IV. Impact of Beauvoir’s Thought
A. Philosopher Nancy Bauer: “The power of The Second Sex as the founding document of the second
wave of feminism, then, issues in substantial part from Beauvoir’s inaugurating call for a reordering of …
priorities—as though we cannot think coherently about what a ‘man’ is, cannot make out a coherent sexneutral sense of the term, until we address the question of what it means to be, to be called, a woman”
(50).
B. Science historian Donna Haraway: “despite important differences, all the modern feminist meanings of
gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that “one is not born a woman”’ (131).
C. Psychoanalytic writer Elisabeth Roudinesco emphasizes the importance of the link Beauvoir makes
between sexuality and political emancipation for the development of feminist thought in France (511–
512).
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D. Philosopher and historian Geneviève Fraisse credits Beauvoir with introducing the question of sexual
difference on the philosophical map by presenting the question of womanhood as related to an ultimate
form of ‘Otherness’ (Rodgers 24).
E. Philosopher Toril Moi recognizes the originality of Beauvoir’s understanding of the body as a
situation, as a “fundamental part of lived experience” (67, 197). However, as Moi states, the importance
of this contribution to feminist thought has been overlooked.
V. In Beauvoir’s Words
A. Beauvoir on The Second Sex
B. Racism and Sexism
C. Discrimination in schools
D. Predominance of the masculine perspective
VI. Feminisms
A. First Wave Feminism (Late 19th and early 20th Century):
● Equal access and equal opportunities for women-- “equity feminism”
● Lack of distinction between sex and gender
● Notion of “universal womanhood”
I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great
mosaic at the end. — Alice Paul (1885–1977)
Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de
best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best
place! And ain’t I a woman! Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted and gathered into
barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seem ‘em
mos’ all sold into slavery, and when I cried out my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a
woman? — Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–
1902)
B. Second Wave Feminism (1960s-1990s):
● Radical voices calling for women’s empowerment
● During the 1980s to 1990s, call for addressing omissions and erasures, namely initiated by women of
color and “third-world” women
● Distinction between sex and gender
There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to
everybody. — Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000)
A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. — Gloria Steinem (1934–)
Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We’re not inherently anything but human. — Robin
Morgan (1941–)
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.— Alice Walker (1944–)
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Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you. — Sheila Rowbotham (1943–)
We’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons . . . but few have the courage to raise our sons
more like our daughters. — Gloria Steinem (1934–)
Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn’t undermine the fact that they built
the churches and maintain the pulpits. — Maya Angelou (1928–)
C. Third Wave Feminism (1990s-Present):
● Calls for a transnational framework
● Challenges the notion of identity politics
● Calls for embracing ambiguity, diversity, and multiplicity in theory and politics
For girls to pick up guitars and scream their heads off in a totally oppressive, fucked up, male dominated
culture is to seize power . . . we recognize this as a political act.
— Tobi Vail, Bikini Kill
I am not a pretty girl, that’s not what I do. — Ani DiFranco, musician
I live by my own standards. I am my own judge and jury. I refuse to look/do/say whatever it is I’m
supposed to. I may burn bridges, but I don’t want to go back there anyway.
— Bilyana Vujick, DIY Feminism
Yr a big grrrl now; you’ve got NO REASON NOT TO FIGHT!!! — Bikini Kill
Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art
sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female. — Guerrilla Girls
It’s possible to have a push-up bra and a brain at the same time. — Pinkfloor
The above quotes illustrating the three waves of feminism are from “Three Waves of Feminisms: From
Suffragettes to Grrls” in Gender Communication Theories and Analyses: From Silence to Performance by
Charlotte Krolokke and Anne Scott Sorensen.
Selected works by Simone De Beauvoir:
The Ethics of Ambiguity, She Came to Stay, The Mandarin (Goncourt Prize, 1954), A Very Easy Death,
Old Age (known as The Coming of Age in the American edition), Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The
Prime of Life, The Force of Circumstance, All Said and Done, America Day by Day, The Long March.
Also worthy of note are Beauvoir’s prefaces to Gisèle Halimi’s Djamila Boupacha: The Story of the
Torture of a Young Algerian Girl Which Shocked Liberal French Opinion, Claude Lanzmann’s filmscript
Shoah, and Jean-François Steiner’s Treblinka. Beauvoir also published letters, book reviews, and essays
such as “Must We Burn Sade?” and “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome.”
Selected Bibliography:
Andrew, Barbara S. “Beauvoir’s Place in Philosophical Thought.” The Cambridge Companion to Simone
De Beauvoir. Ed. Claudia Card. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 2003. 24-44.
Bauer, Nancy. Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy and Feminism, New York: Columbia UP, 2001.
Butler, Judith. "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex" Yale French Studies. Simone de
Beauvoir: Witness to a Century. 72 (1986): 35-49.
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Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association
Books, 1991.
Rodgers, Catherine. Le Deuxième Sexe de Simone de Beauvoir, un héritage admiré et contesté. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1998.
Roudinesco, Elisabeth. La Bataille de cent ans: histoire de la psychanalyse en France, 2: 1925–1985,
Paris: Seuil, 1986. (Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. Jacques Lacan & Co.: A History of Psychoanalysis in
France 1925–1985. London: Free Association Books, 1990.)
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