Simone de Beauvior was Sartre's life-long love, intellectually and sexually, but she would never marry him and they both had multiple lovers (of both sexes). They are, however, as you saw in my photograph, buried together in Paris. Her influence on his philosophical work (and vice versa) should not be underestimated, even though she is not always acknowledged as such (e.g., Stevenson's chapter).
Her most influential work was called The Second Sex (Le Deuxieme Sexe for Karlie). In it she writes (a great deal) about women as defined as non-men: as the second sex. The less important sex. She kicks off what is called the second wave in feminism (I misstated in class: the first wave revolved around suffrage--the right to vote; the second wave focuses more on equality in work and life). More about de Beauvoir at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/ and at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/
In The Second Sex she observes 'I am a woman' but that a man doesn't even have to remark upon his sex--it is just assumed. We default to think that a speaker/writer is male, and we must attention to sex only when it is a female (note: we could say similar things about defaulting to white, to Christian, to heterosexual, to able-bodied, etc.). She says that women are "defined and differentiated in relation to man and not he in relation to her; she is the inessential confronting the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute--she is the Other." Women define themselves and are defined by men as non-men, as Other, and that much female identity is tied-up with not-male or from the point-of-view of the male, and especially the male gaze. This is still a significant tenet of feminism: that women are defined by men, but they should have their own independent, stand-alone identity. (Note that I'm not saying that women can't be in meaningful relationships with men, just that women do not exist solely for the pleasure of and service to men).
Obviously there is an enormous trove of topics to discuss here. I'm happy to support the discussion in whatever way you'd like to take it. But you might start by thinking about what de Beauvoir meant by the "Second Sex" and whether her criticism still holds water in today's society (some 60 years after it was originally published).
This is so interesting! Simone's view of women as "the second sex" seems to still ring true in the United States today, even though women are beginning to match men's roles in the US. However, it seems that in our culture, women will always have this underlying stereotype to overcome, rooted deep in our nation and European history.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do not think that this idea of women being the second sex necessarily applies to everyone. What about the Native Americans, whose women were in charge of the crops and fields, which was the entire economy, in addition to caring for the children. The women, not men, were heirs, and had a quite dominant role. Do you think that women in this culture had to distinguish their successful-selves as non-men? Do you think that this idea of the female race being "the second sex" is a majorly European idea that sticks with us in America?
What de Beauvoir meant by the second sex was that in society, women are considered inferior to men. In my Criminal Justice 101 class we just talked about women in the police force. Although the number of women police officers has been slowly increasing, their are rarely any females that reach a high rank . So this shows that this is still somewhat the case in our society. Another thing that makes it seem like it is still true is that many times when men and women have the same job, the man will still get paid more.
ReplyDeleteIn her writing, Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that women are the "second sex." The connotation behind the descriptive word "second" is negative, implying that women are inferior to men. In decades past, traditional families hosted a working male and a woman who existed as homemakers and virtual servants to men--cooking his food, cleaning his house, making his bed, arranging his personal engagements, and even raising his children. In retrospect, it almost seems as if women were indeed inferior, as de Beauvoir described. Men defined households, and men defined the women with whom they were associated. Women were not taken as seriously, and if any attention was directed unto them, great efforts would have preceded.
ReplyDeleteSixty years later, our society has moved away from the social stratification that in the past suppressed women. Business statistics show that women are making strides in the professional workforce. Some women are CEOs and executives to whom men report--a concept completely foreign six decades ago. Women have transitioned from the servile homemaker, non-defined entity to quite successful and influential gender representatives.
Despite women's advances, men are carrying out their long reputation of defining their gender, as well. Women, however, receive greater attention because of the dramatic shift in stereotypical roles. It is clear why in de Beauvoir's society, women were defined as the "non-men."
De Beauvoir's "Second Sex" is very interesting because it is still somewhat true today in the United States. de Beauvoir was basically stating that men are more powerful than woman, but the woman were doing just as much as the men or even more work. Today's society and woman in the workforce has changed drastically over the years. We don't see as many stay at home mom's who clean the house and fix dinner for the whole family. Woman are allowed to do just as much as men are allowed, but sometimes it still seems like men are more powerful than woman. We are seeing more and more woman take jobs that in the past were only entitled to men, but we still see more men getting the jobs than woman. Why is this? Men and Woman get the same opportunities by being able to attend college. We may never see a woman as a president, but as our society continues to grow, the chances for woman will also grow.
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