Simone DeBeauvoir

The Second Sex
Simone De Beauvoir

Notes on Reading

Existentialism Defined (WIKI)

Existentialism is a philosophical movement that posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities creating it for them.

It emerged as a movement in twentieth-century literature and philosophy, though it had forerunners in earlier centuries. Existentialism generally postulates that the absence of a transcendent force (such as God) means that the individual is entirely free, and, therefore, ultimately responsible. It is up to humans to create an ethos of personal responsibility outside any branded belief system. In existentialist views, personal articulation of being is the only way to rise above humanity’s absurd condition of much suffering and inevitable death.

Chapter: Destiny (The Data of Biology)

Discussion on an argument of the basis of gender/sexuality/functionality that infers passivity and subordination as natural inclination or trait
7 “his mistake (Hegel) is always to argue from significance to necessity, to equate significance to necessity.”
9 “Thus man, in consequence of that differentiation, is the active principle while woman is the passive principle because she remains undeveloped in her unity.”
10 “without taking any stand on the relation between life and consciousness, we can assert that every biological fact implies transcendence, that every function involves a project, something to be done.”
Reproductive arguments; teleological, purposive and mechanistic philosophies.
13 “we may conclude then, that the two gametes play a fundamentally identical role; together they create a living being in which both of them are at once lost and transcended.”
Equality and difference in reproduction – a background setup of an argument and history of understanding of reproductive roles between genders – value ascribed, duality and contradictions, prejudices, outright erroneous biology, etc. She is dismantling the relevancy of the historical creation of this hierarchical structure in terms of any “scientific” or implied natural context of a “second sex”. De Beauvoir does this through a detailed account of theories past, and of knowledge and relevant information of current.

“gynadromorphism – in which male and female areas of the body are mingled in a kind of mosaic”

She asserts that we must observe an organism (specifically the female) as a whole.

“her existence is entirely used up in a monstrous travail of ovulation” – the female is hardly more than an abdomen.

19 “but this privilege is a social disgrace, and often the male pays with his life for his futility and partial independence. The species, which holds the female in slavery, punishes the male for his gesture toward escape; it liquidates him with brutal force” (in reference to the society of insects)

21 KEY POINT even when she is willing or provocative, it is unquestionably the male who takes the female – she is taken.

This is extremely important in the social sphere for women – there is a certain futility in “asserting” one’s sexuality as a woman as this is inevitably only manifested in the defense/publicity of behavior rather than in reference to the act itself. A physiological conundrum that undermines the desire, freedom and equal rights of an individual woman to take that which can be taken by the male gender. A point of resentment to be certain.

22 sexual adventure is immediately experienced by her as an interior event and not as an outward relation to the world and to others

This makes me wonder about the concept of perception and subjective reality – if it is that way that you experience it then it is the case, however is there possibly another way to relate to the circumstances that has not been readily encouraged, taught, etc.

An interesting passage on the maintenance of individuality by the man and the physical and psychological experience of the female to maternal duties.

25 “the individuality of the female is opposed by the interest of the species”
26 “he is his body”

29 “Woman, like man, is her body; but her body is something other than herself.”
30 “it is the species gnawing at their vitals”

31 “women of a certain age constitute a “third sex”; and in truth, while they are not males, they are no longer females”

33 CONCEPT– “the body is the instrument of our grasp upon the world”
De Beauvoir refutes that the biology is key to understanding women and societal positioning however that it should not “establish a fixed and inevitable destiny.

35 “the male principle creates to maintain, the female principle maintains to create”

36 “we should never decide the primacy of one sex or the other in regards to the perpetuation of the species”

Bravo. This is key to the entire argument of Beavoir in this chapter on Biology and the history of “what humanity has made of the human female”. And why I hate being referred to by customers as miss, you girl, young lady, etc. My gender status is irrelevant (or at least not key) to who I am and how I can help you.

Chapter : The Psychoanalytic Point of View

38 “the body as lived in by the subject”
“Woman is female to the extent that she feels herself as such.”

42 Adler issue with Freud
- deficiency of explaining human life on basis of sexuality alone
Adler’s system
Every individual – will to power
- inferiority complex
- flight from reality

Female divided against herself /humiliation, insubordination in society and sexuality

The human story is to be explained by the interplay of determinate elements.

46 “work, war, play art signify ways of being connected with the world which cannot be reduced to any others – they disclose qualities that interfere with those which sexuality reveals.”

47 “analogous individuals, placed in analogous conditions, will see analogous points of significance in the given circumstances”

47 Alienation – flight from self and search

49 “Psychoanalysis can establish its truths only in the historical context”

IMPORTANT – the blending of urgency and apprehension which is female desire

51 – a discussion of female self fulfillment – and the endeavors that are undertaken for the sake of their own merit – those typically dominated by male gender.

KEY – woman is defined as a human being in quest of values in a world of values, a world of which it is indispensable to know the economic and social structure.
From existential perspective – to study woman with regard to her total situation.

Chapter : The Point of View of Historical Materialism

53 two essential traits of women – less grasp upon world as man
- more closely enslaved to species

54 – private property as greates historical defeat of woman
- patriarchy made woman property in material ownership of men

55 “woman can be emacipated only when she can take part on a large social scale in production and is engaged in domestic work only to an insignifigant degree.

59 Woman is to Man – sexual partner/reproducer/an erotic object

PART 2

HISTORY

72 “ the persistence of the patrilocal residence bears witness to the fundamentally asymmetrical relation between the sexes that marks human society”

73 IMPORTANT “man remains woman’s master as he is the master of the fertile earth; she is fated to be subjected, owned, exploited like the Nature whose magical fertility she embodies.”

78 “the male will to power and expansion made of woman’s incapacity a curse”

80 Pythagoras “There is a good principle, which has created order, light and man; and a bad principle, which has created chaos, darkness and woman.”

95 “Thus is as just when woman was most fully emancipated that the inferiority of her sex was asserted, affording a remarkable example of the process of male justification of which I have spoken; when women’s rights as daughter, wife, or sister are no longer limited, it is her equality with man, as a sex, that is denied her; the imbecility, the weakness of the sex is alleged, in domineering fashion”

101 paradox of history and today : “the woman who is most fully integrated in society has the fewest privileges”

107 THE SINGLE WOMAN – mention of A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas (Virginia Wolf) and note that the material independence is key necessary condition for inner liberty
- female social/employment opportunity and material wealth at disadvantage to men’s throughout history

MYTH AND REALITY

Depiction of women as praying mantis/demon, muse, goddess, etc – a complex array of paradoxical representations – the virgin/whore complex and so on.

255 “to identify Woman with Altruism is to guarantee to man absolute rights in her devotion, it is to impose on women a categorical imperative”

woman as mysterious, fundamental ambiguity, indefinable

261 IMPORTANT

“to recognize in woman a human being is not to impoverish man’s experience: this would lose none of its diversity, its richness, or its intensity if it were to occur between two subjectivities”

THE IDEAL!

263 Laforgue “Ah, young women, when will you be our brothers, our brothers in intimacy without ulterior though of exploitation? When shall we clasp hands truly?”

PART FIVE :JUSTIFICATIONS

THE NARCISSIST

639 the woman who does nothing makes nothing of herself

THE WOMAN IN LOVE

644 love at a distance, however is only a fantasy, not a real experience

love was their only way out

646 overjoyed to find in her lover a witness

654 an authentic love should assume the contingence of the other; that is to say, his lacks, his limitations, and his basic gratuitousness.” “a human interrelation”

669 IMPORTANT
“on the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger”

THE MYSTIC

670 woman is habituated to living on her knees

678 there is only one way to employ her liberty authentically and that is to project it through positive action into human society.

The woman who does not conform devalues herself sexually and hence socially, since sexual values are an integral feature of society.

LIBERATION: THE INDEPENDENT WOMAN

694 “if she yields, she is once more a vassal; if she refuses, she condemns herself to a withering solitude”

torn and divided

698 “ the conflicts I have spoken of in fact reach their greatest intensity between the ages of eighteen and thirty, precisely the time when the professional future is at stake”