QUestions on Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex **DO NOT COPY**

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French writer, intellectual, feminist, and existentialist philosopher. France extended women the right to vote in 1944. De Beauvoir published The Second Sex in 1949—it was an instant hit and became a classic of feminist literature in the 1960s. 

It includes a critical analysis of the “eternal feminine,” which is both the ideal of the “true woman,” from a psychological perspective (manifest in a set of womanly virtues such as modesty, gracefulness, delicacy, and compliancy), and the essence of the concept of “woman,” from a philosophical perspective. Per the philosophical perspective, the “eternal feminine” is a gender essentialist notion. It expresses the belief that men and women have different core, unalterable, natural “essences.”

(1)   What is different about the oppression of women, compared with other oppressed groups?

Women have no sense of group consciousness. They use the term “women” instead of “we.” They (we) cannot relate to one another because our oppressors are not one cohesive group, but white men, brown men, and black men. They have no solidarity, nor do they have a common goal. They are more attached to other groups than they are to each other.

There was also never an event that separated the genders like they separated the races and religions.

(2)   Why does the subordination of women appear natural?

Because men and women need each other for survival, and the woman is considered a vessel for children. For 9 months, she solely relies upon the man for shelter, food, and safety. It also appears natural because it has been so for so long. Since before the Romans women have been subjugated. As soon as men’s rights began to be encroached upon, men took legal action to prevent the liberation of women.

Women also have a natural and biological strength disadvantage, and men feel themselves emboldened by this difference. (p.11)

(3)   Why is woman the Other? What does de Beauvoir mean by that?

Because men need an opposite and before there was conflict between groups, there was conflict between the sexes. “it is easier to accuse one sex than excuse the other” -Montaigne (p.9, ¶ 2) Men use female and feminine not as opposites to male and masculine, but as negatives to those neutral terms as stated before. To men, male is the natural state of things, the positive state; while female is the negative and nothing more. (p.3) To men, women are inessential. (p. 5)

(4)   What is the difference between “female,” “woman,” and “feminine”?

To a man, feminine means “frivolous, infantile, irresponsible the submissive woman.” (p.11 ¶ 1) A “woman is a womb” to many, but a woman is also one who is feminine (p.1 ¶ 2).  Not all womb-ed persons are women, as they are not feminine, or they are a challenge to men. Female is the characterization of one who is subservient sexually and physically to men. Women and females cannot exist outside of men, for there is nothing a woman can withhold that a man cannot get without her.

To Simone, feminine means the essence of being a woman, both inward and outward presenting. To many feminists, the term “woman” is used to demean and subjugate those who are sexed as female. To Simone, the word “woman” denotes a certain difference, as no man feels the need to declare himself as such in the way that women do. Female is the category into which people with uteruses and those who identify as such fall.

(5)   Describe the “vicious circle” by which oppressors justify oppression. What are the parallels between Jim Crow (racial segregation in the U.S.) and women’s subordination?

To the oppressor, a group is oppressed not because one believes they are inferior, but because they are. He believes that because the group cannot raise themselves from the ranks of the oppressed, then he must be correct in his earlier assumption. (p.11) Men who do recognize this unfair characterization are reluctant to correct it as they also recognize that they are the beneficiaries of the system. However, they are blind to the benefits that inclusion of women in society would bring. (p.12)

The best women are offered is “‘equality in difference,” a term very similar to the separate but equal of African Americans in the post-emancipation eras (p.10 ¶ 3). Both groups- women and backs- are “kept in their place” by the rules of society. They are given roles by society as submissive or infantile, and they are told that this is the way that God has created them, therefore if they stray from it, they are not defying man, but God.