Transcript The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir

The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
Instructor: Liu Ying
刘英
Your Topic Goes Here
One is not
born,
but rather
becomes,
a woman.
The Second Sex
Woman as the second sex
★The second sex derived from the
first sex
★Women in the position of the “other”
★What does it mean to be an “other”?
★I and the other
★We and the other
★
Themes
Immanence vs. Transcendence
★ Nature vs. Nurture
★ Production vs. Reproduction
★
Motifs
The Eternal Feminine
• This myth takes many forms—the sanctity of
the mother, the purity of the virgin, the
fecundity of the earth and of the womb—but in
all cases serves to deny women‘s individuality
and trap them inside unrealizable ideals.
• De Beauvoir points out that just as there is no
such thing as the “eternal masculine,” there is no
such thing as “eternal feminine.” Or, to put it
differently: there is no essence, only experience.
All beings, de Beauvoir insists, have the right to
define their own existences rather than labor
under some vague notion of “femininity.”
★
★ The
Other
• De Beauvoir uses the term Other throughout
The Second Sex to diagnose the female's
secondary position in society as well as within
her own patterns of thought.
• For a being to define itself, it must also define
something in opposition to itself. “At the
moment when man asserts himself as subject
and free being, the idea of the Other arises,” She
completes him, but she herself is incomplete.
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex (French: Le
Deuxième Sexe, June 1949) is one
of the best known works of the
French existentialist Simone de
Beauvoir.
she is considered the mother of
post-1968 feminism. There has also
been a growing awareness of her as
a major French thinker and
existentialist philosopher.
Essentialism about sexual difference
S. de Beauvoir and J.P. Sartre
• Women´s essence = women
have certain attributes, all
women and everywhere and at
all times
• This is biological essentialism
• According to it women have
biological basis that makes
them cognitively and morally
different from men (less
rational and less morally
accountable)
• Essentialism about sexual
difference is therefore a very
much criticized doctrine
The final conclusion
Men and women should work together
and respect each other as equal.