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Dec 10, 2010

notgettingenough rated it:

Update: Who isn't barracking for Assange? I doubt the idea that the US or any other government, including the Swedish government which is apparently a covert member of NATO, with US intelligence sharing being kept from parliament, is behind the allegations in Sweden.

But it is a case of the ideals of protecting women from violence being well and truly exploited, as far as I can tell. A couple of girls trying it on. Does anybody have information to stand against the details given here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-... More...

16 comments like (11 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2012

Ameera H. rated it:

كان هذا العالم دائما عالم الرجال وكل الأسباب المعللة لذلك بدت لنا غير كافية على أننا سنتمكن أن نفهم كيف تشكل التمايز بين الجنسين ,على ضوء الفلسفة الوجودية , ومن ذلك تنطلق الكاتبة النسوية الوجودية سيمون دي فورا بعدد تردد كما ذكرت أن الكتابة عن المرأة أمر مثير ولكن ليس بالشيء الجديد .

إذا كانت الأنوثة وحدها لا تكفي لتعريف المرأة , و ينبغي أن نسلم ولو بصورة مؤقتة أن هناك نساء على الأرض فعلينا حينئذ أن نتساءل ما هي المرأة ؟

ففي عهد القديس توماس كانت المرأة تبدو More...

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May 29, 2008

Jojo rated it:

The part of this book that has affected me the most in the ten years since I've read it is most certainly the introduction, where de Beauvoir says that in order to define herself to herself she must start with, "I am a woman". This surprised her then as it surprises me now when I realize that that is how I must start, too. Although I grew up in a post-feminist "you can have it all" type of environment, it was eye-opening and disconcerting to learn that women are considered More...

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Apr 18, 2011

Helynne rated it:

This extensive, scholarly study, written in 1946 by French existentialist novelist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir is a seminal text for 20th-century feminism. The lengthy study contains numerous chapters, beginning with the history of women in societies throughout the world. Beauvoir's first basic observation is that the world has always been dominated by men--hence, her title that names women as "the second sex" or le deuxième sexe." Her premise that runs through the book i More...

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Nov 14, 2007

Namrirru rated it:

So after mulling over the book for a few days, I came to the realization that de Beauvoir tends to harp on the negative in this text. How lack of purpose makes women neurotic and affects their relationships with people, or the various ways men are/were outrageously mysogyinistic, etc, etc. But given the time period, a little bit of firebrand preaching is acceptable.

She does lend some words for more commonplace issues, but then the text is subdued and explanatory so that a reader' More...

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Aug 27, 2007

David rated it:

For me, reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex left me feeling overwhelmed, and even slightly frustrated--not at the text itself, but the lack of time I had to spend on it. I will definitely be re-reading it in the near future.

De Beauvoir disassembles feminine “inferiority” with rare, methodical tact. It seemed as though every other page summoned a flood of ideas and reappraisals in my mind. For instance, her description of the male/female relationship as “The One” and “The O More...

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Jan 27, 2009

Nancy rated it:

Fantastic! Should be distributed in 7th grade to all females. It is the handbook we were looking for.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2008

Nick added it

I've a battered mass-market edition, about the most unappetizing way to package ~900 densely-printed pages imaginable. I gave up after maybe 20 turgid pages covered in a hard hour; even affording Mme. De Beauvoir a maintained linear ratio of actionable information to time invested, two full days of my life seemed better spent elsewhere (as reported here, DFW claimed to "receive 500,000 discrete bits of information [per day], of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of i More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 08, 2011

Jee rated it:

Finally finished reading Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" last Monday. "One is not born, but rather becomes, woman," so translate Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier that resounding challenge. So many terrific things in de Beauvoir's analysis of how one becomes woman. Nietzsche is transmuted into the existentialist project of self-transcendence. Part One rejects the idea of female destiny, as promoted by biological, psychoanalytical or historical materialist v More...

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Mar 02, 2011

Venus rated it:

در کتاب جنس دوم، سیمون دوبووار استدلال‌های خود را از طریق اگزیستانسیالیسمی فمینیستی بیان می‌کند. بووار به‌عنوان یک اگزیستانسیالیست باور داشت که بودن مقدم بر ماهیت است. وی به‌همین منوال استنباط می‌کند که یک انسان زن زاده نمی‌شود، بلکه تبدیل به زن می‌شود، چرا دختران از اوان کودکی، نقش‏های فرهنگی معینی را می‏پذیرند. تز کلی کتاب، نشان دادن آن است که چگونه زنان به وسیله‏ی تاریخ و افسانه‏هایی تعریف و محدود شده‏اند که آن‏ها را در جایگاهی پایین‏تر قرار می‏دهد. به باور بووار، تاریخ فرهنگی مانع از آن شده‌ More...

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Oct 23, 2010

Naxa rated it:

This book has an already well established reputation, regardless of whether I love or hate it, in the end it is a necessary read in regards to the history of gender studies and or a look at the existentialist stance on women and their views on them. As someone who was interested from it in both regards it didn't disappoint.

Philosophically I am somewhat at odds with this book. I am not a fan of existentialism or the dichotomy between essence and existence she adopted from Sartre. I d More...

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Feb 11, 2009

Fretty rated it:

I didn't read this book from cover to cover. See, I had to read this book because I was using feminism theory on my final thesis. But I do agree with Simone de Beauvoir's opinions that in many countries including Indonesia, women are positioned mostly as citizen number two who have less privileges than men do in so many aspects of life. What I dislike most is the double standards applied to women. It's not enough for a woman to be good at one aspect of her life, she has to be good in all aspects More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Amy rated it:

This is a difficult book and not only for it's length. 60 years later and still so much remains to be thought and worked through existentially, philosophically, socially, theologically, etc on women. I was surprised at her reach, impressed by her candor and thankful for her contribution. It is not an easy read, especially if one is not terribly comfortable thinking about the realities of what women have faced and continue to face (I had to put it down several times in order to release myself fro More...

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Apr 23, 2008

Louise rated it:

This was the first book I read after signing up for a class in French and American women writers. While I found myself overwhelmed with the class, this book totally destroyed my old ideas of men and women and our roles in the world.

De Beauvoir wrote so beautifully of all the things I'd been thinking and couldn't express. Woman as "The Other". . .

I became a feminist with this book. Please read it.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Hypatia rated it:

I have mixed feelings about this book. I can see that, historically, it was ground breaking, and completely revolutionized thinking about feminism. Even today, 60 years later, there were parts of the book that had me thinking, wow, things really haven't changed. Kind of a depressing thought. But the vast majority of the book I found somewhat out-dated and irrelevant, at least to me. First of all, I think much of the biology she discusses is not really correct. Our knowledge in this field h More...

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Dec 06, 2008

Ryan rated it:

The book is one of the first things I've read that really changes my way of looking at how I go through my day, and the things I say..or don't say. For that it is fantastic. What is written from the perspective of a modern woman (about being 'the other', etc.) is extremely insightful.

What I find somewhat ambiguous is the chapters like "early tillers of the soil". de Beauvoir seems to make dangerously large assumptions about the lives of people who lived thousands of years More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Martha rated it:

When I bought this book, I hadn't had access to English nonfiction for months, so I tore ravenously into The Second Sex and soon found the lesson I wanted: "'shopgirl morality' is more authentic than fairy tales of emptiness because it has its roots in life and reality, whence the higher aspirations can arise." (213) Beauvoir returns to this argument frequently in different ways, cataloging Man's empty fantasies of Women in Part One, and Woman's empty fantasies of Herself in Part Two. More...

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Apr 21, 2010

ONTD rated it:

LJ user rhapsodeeinblue:

Essential feminist reading. The concept of the Other is introduced and elucidated with ease and clarity. Women are seen as the object and men the subject, a social and cultural construction that has been internalized over the course of history, and De Beauvoir explains this well. She writes, "For him she is sex--absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the iness More...

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Aug 04, 2011

Sheldon added it

Beauvoir attempts to catalogue Woman and here situation. As a feminist, she obviously condemns the model of woman as the feminist mystique but instead she truly investigates what it is to be Woman. She travels from childhood to puberty to sexual initiation to old age and also investigates the impact of society on forming the role of Woman.

Her ultimate motivation is to improve the lot of women by illuminating what it is exactly to live the body of a woman and why this role of woman is a horribly More...

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Jul 11, 2007

Tia rated it:

Excellent. Of course it has become a staple of feminism, but people often forget how literary and elegant the writing is. I enjoyed this book not because of its earth-shattering ideas (a lot of the stuff, especially how menstruation affects women, is outdated), but because it was a pleasure to read the words.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2009

Beth rated it:

Wow is this a tough read. This is an academic tome, not popular literature, and the fact that is was written in French and then translated to English made it that much more work to get through. Having said that, this was well worth my time. As modern philosophy, parts of the message have become somewhat dated, but the arguments are well-drawn, and I had to remind myself that the message was utterly new when this was written. Like most humans, my world is somewhat less black-and-white when it More...

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May 17, 2009

Adrian rated it:

I followed up my reading of Sartre's Being and Nothingness with reading de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. It seemed only fair to read a big long book by her after reading one by him. I was disappointed by this book; it was like I'd heard it all before. I don't think that's quite fair of me to be disappointed on that account. She was the first one to say a lot of those things so the popularity of her thought has made the original expression of it seem a bit tired and slow going. More...

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Apr 19, 2011

Christopher rated it:

Impressive, well-researched argument into why women have come to be oppressed by men over the past few millenia. Looking back at this work from 60 years down the line, it's apparent that de Beauvoir relied a bit too much on psychoanalysis for its explanatory value (of course, it was one of the paradigms, along with existentialism, that seemed to best describe certain phenomena), and, although she backs up most of her conclusions with sociological, historical, and testimonial data, she relies a More...

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Oct 20, 2010

Janis rated it:

I have a very hard time reading non-fiction, especially non-fiction as serious and densely written as this book. And I must admit, the way Beauvoir constantly deferred to Sartre irritated me in the extreme. However... once I began reading, I couldn't stop. In fact, I found myself stopping at a sentence, disagreeing, thinking it through, reading on, then finding myself reversing my stance a few days later - thanks to de Beauvoir's ability to illuminate the corners of my thoughts. I still own my t More...

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Jan 20, 2011

Sue Mee rated it:

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".
(여자는 태어나는 것이 아니라 만들어지는 것이다)
This classic formulation by Simone de Beauvoir, which distinguishes the terms 'sex' and 'gender' generally suggesting that the latter is an aspect of identity which is "gradually acquired" had inspired me for a long time in the perspective of feminism especially throughout my college years. I was probably 19 years old (sophomore?) when I finished to read this massive book for the first time an More...

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Dec 14, 2011

Kiara rated it:

Oh, Simone...if i shall have the privilege to read ever literary, philosophical, and ultimately revolutionary word you have ever exclusively written...it would not suffice me. you move me.
I am currently in the process of reading this book...i am finding every aspect of it completely eye opening. i am not yet half way finished with this book, but i know already that i will be referring back to the many chapters of this book that have awakened this new insight in me...for as long as i shall More...

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Jun 14, 2011

Madeline rated it:

1. I read Beauvoir's book for a class devoted solely to reading it, which is kind of the perfect way to tackle this enormous, multifaceted examination of what it was like and what it meant/s to be a woman. Things have changed, she gets things wrong (Simone de Beauvoir and I do not have the same tastes in literature) but there are also many, many elements of The Second Sex that ring even more true now - "The Independent Woman" chapter particularly.

2.Holy shit, this book.
More...

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Aug 11, 2010

Holly rated it:

This is my third reading of this book. The first was in late 1980s for a women's studies course. I am sure I didn't read it carefully and I was way too novice at being a women to appreciate its accuracy. Second reading probably about 15 years ago, before I had children. I was very interested in feminism and the choices people my age were making about careers and families. I felt lucky to be a by-product of all the early feminist movements that allowed me to have unbridled choices. I still chose More...

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Jul 29, 2010

Ms. Online added it

A SECOND LOOK
Reviewed by: Kristana Arp

A New Translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s magnum opus has appeared at last. The first English edition was published almost 60 years ago, its translator H. M. Parshley, a retired Smith College zoology professor who lacked a background in philosophy and French literature and who mistranslated key terms, obscuring the work’s deeper intellectual dimensions. Responding to the publisher’s demands, he also cut about 15 percent of the French origi More...

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Jul 14, 2011

LadySabrina rated it:

De Beauvoir. Simone. The Second Sex. Translated and Edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Simone De Beauvoir, is the writer of many books of fiction including Les Mandarins (The Mandarins,1954); Memoires d'une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958). Her philosophical, existentialist feminist treatise, The Second Sex, was written when she was close friends with existentialists Jean Paul Sartre. In this controversial non-fiction book More...

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