Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Second Sex” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Second Sex

(Le deuxième sexe #1-2)

Simone de Beauvoir,

H.M. Parshley (Translator & Editor),

Deirdre Bair (Introduction)

4.13 · Rating details · 32,865 ratings · 1,533 reviews

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaki ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 746 pages

Published December 17th 1989 by Vintage (first published 1949)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Second Sex, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Feminist Books

2,237 books — 3,301 voters

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Best Books of the 20th Century

7,565 books — 49,683 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.13 ·

Rating details

· 32,865 ratings · 1,533 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Second Sex

Nov 07, 2009 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: 20th-century, feminism, non-fiction, philosophy

Le Deuxième Sexe = The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

The Second Sex is a 1949 book by the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history.

Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months when she was 38 years old. She published it in two volumes, Facts and Myths and Lived Experience. Some chapters first appeared in Les Temps moderns. One of Beauvoir's best-known books, The Second Sex is often regarded as a major work of ...more

flag 196 likes · Like · see review

Aug 12, 2013 Dolors rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Those who want the full picture

Recommended to Dolors by: Aubrey

Shelves: read-in-2014, best-ever

Reading De Beauvoir’s seminal “feminist manifesto” has allowed me to compose my genealogical tree, for The Second Sex is a book about my mother and the mother of my mother and the mother of my grandmother and of all my female ancestors in endless regressive progression who rebelled before obeying and who ended up capitulating like slaves shackled to the indomitable future of preordained inferiority.

“Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not re ...more

flag 182 likes · Like · see review

Oct 21, 2012 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: think-think-think, non-fiction, 500-wm, reality-translated, r-goodreads, antidote-think-twice-read, translated, french, reality-check, reviewed

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: ‘virtue’, as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of ‘that which depends on us’.

My life has led me to develop a love for thought, a love heavily dependent on the context of reality and my personal view of such, a love that has been, is, and will continue to grow through heavy doses of words both spoken and printed. I will admit to being biased towards the printed, as well as to being biased in many things as a result of characteristics both physical and mental; the fault of nature and nurture, neither one of which I can help very much. My method of coping with having a love for thinking, while being aware of the inherent inaccuracies of said thinking, is a rabid interest in argument, debate if you will, on many fronts that concern me.

Being a woman concerns me. With that, let us begin.

I am a white middle class female undergraduate who has spent all twenty-two years of her life in the United States. I did not read this book for a class. I do not in any way claim that this book speaks on all women’s issues, or deem women’s issues more important than those of any other oppressed group, whether via race, sexuality, financial security, et al. I simply don’t have the firsthand experience with other issues that, I believe, would accredit me to speak on them to such length. Account for the inherent biases as you see fit.

Females are biologically different from males in the interest of propagation of the species, resulting in imposed monthly cycles that involve a whole host of painful and bloody side effects, as well as the inconvenient and sometimes dangerous states of pregnancy and giving birth. Females also have a more difficult time of building up muscle mass and other aspects lending to physical movement, due to the consequences of puberty and resulting chemical development.

The bearing of maternity upon the individual life, regulated naturally in animals by the oestrus cycle and the seasons, is not definitely prescribed in woman - society alone is the arbiter. The bondage of woman to the species is more or less rigorous according to the number of births demanded by society and the degree of hygienic care provided for pregnancy and childbirth. Thus, while it is true that in the higher animals the individual existence is asserted more imperiously by the male than by the female, in the human species individual 'possibilities' depend upon the economic and social situation.

We are now acquainted with the dramatic conflict that harrows the adolescent girl at puberty: she cannot become 'grown-up' without accepting her femininity; and she knows already that her sex condemns her to a mutilated and fixed existence, which she faces at this time under the form of an impure sickness and a vague sense of guilt. Her inferiority was sensed at first merely as a deprivation; but the lack of a penis has now become defilement and transgression. So she goes onward towards the future, wounded, shameful, culpable.

In the United States, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, which declares that: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. This occurred 144 years after the US declared independence, 137 years after the US was recognized as independent, and 132 years after the Constitution itself was ratified.

In masculine hands logic is often a form of violence, a sly kind of tyranny: the husband, if older and better educated than his wife, assumes on the basis of this superiority to give no weight at all to her opinions when he does not share them; he tirelessly proves to her that he is right. For her part, she becomes obstinate and refuses to see anything in her husband's arguments; he simply sticks to his own notions. And so a deep misunderstanding comes between them. He makes no effort to comprehend the feelings and reactions she is not clever enough to justify, though they are deeply rooted in her; she does not grasp what is vital behind the pedantic logic with which her husband overwhelms her.

On June 20, 2013, many news organizations issued articles discussing a report released by the World Health Organization titled Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. The results? One in three women has faced intimate partner violence or sexual violence. 40% of women killed worldwide were slain by the partner.

And therein lies the wondrous hope that man has often put in woman: he hopes to fulfill himself as a being by carnally possessing a being, but at the same time confirming his sense of freedom through the docility of a free person. No man would consent to be a woman, but every man wants women to exist.

Man has no need of the unconditional devotion he claims, nor of the idolatrous love that flatters his vanity; he accepts them only on condition that he need not satisfy the reciprocal demands these attitudes imply. He preaches to woman that she should give—and her gifts bore him to distraction; she is left in embarrassment with her useless offerings, her empty life. 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. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself. The innumerable martyrs to love bear witness against the injustice of a fate that offers a sterile hell as ultimate salvation.

There is currently in the US a widespread political machination in many states aiming towards the eradication of legalized abortion, in essence granting living women less rights to their bodies than dead individuals who in life chose not to donate their bodies to science.

...modern woman is everywhere permitted to regard her body as capital for exploitation.

The fact is that a true human privilege is based upon the anatomical privilege only in virtue of the total situation.

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.

...the distortion begins when the religion of Maternity proclaims that all mothers are saintly. For while maternal devotion may be perfectly genuine, this, in fact, is rarely the case. Maternity is usually a strange mixture of narcissism, altruism, idle day-dreaming, sincerity, bad faith, devotion and cynicism.

Also current in the US is the discussion of rape culture and slut shaming in light of the events of the Steubenville High School Rape Case, where media outlets offered biased coverage that sympathized with the rapists and rarely focused on the victim.

As a matter of fact, the privileged position of man comes from the integration of his biologically aggressive role with his social function as leader or master; it is on account of this social function that the physiological differences take on all their significance. Because man is ruler in the world, he holds that the violence of his desires is a sign of his sovereignty; a man of great erotic capacity is said to be strong, potent - epithets that imply activity and transcendence. But, on the other hand, woman being only an object, she will be described as warm or frigid, which is to say that she will never manifest other than passive qualities.

It is a mistake to seek in fantasies the key to concrete behaviour; for fantasies are created and cherished as fantasies. The little girl who dreams of violation with mingled horror and acquiescence does not really wish to be violated and if such a thing should happen it would be a hateful calamity.

Masculine desire is as much an offence as it is a compliment; in so far as she feels herself responsible for her charm, or feels she is exerting it of her own accord, she is much pleased with her conquests, but to the extent that her face, her figure, her flesh are facts she must bear with, she wants to hide them from this independent stranger who lusts after them.

Man encourages these allurements by demanding to be lured: afterwards he is annoyed and reproachful. But he feels only indifference and hostility for the artless, guileless young girl...she is obliged to offer man the myth of her submission, because he insists on domination, and her compliance would only be perverted from the start.

In the US, prostitution, the ‘business or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment’, is illegal.

The Cinderella myth flourishes especially in prosperous countries like America. How should the men there spend their surplus money if not upon a woman? Orson Welles, among others, has embodied in 'Citizen Kane' that imperial and false generosity: it is to glorify his own power that Kane chooses to shower his gifts upon an obscure singer and to impose her upon the public as a great queen of song. When the hero of another film, 'The Razor's Edge', returns from India equipped with absolute wisdom, the only thing he finds to do with it is to redeem a prostitute.

One remarkable fact among others is that the married woman had her place in society but enjoyed no rights therein; whereas the unmarried female, honest woman or prostitute, had all the legal capacities of a man, but up to this century was more or less excluded from social life.

Sewers are necessary to guarantee the wholesomeness of palaces, according to the Fathers of the Church. And it has often been remarked that the necessity exists of sacrificing one part of the female sex in order to save the other and prevent worse troubles. One of the arguments in support of slavery, advanced by the American supporters of the institution, was that the Southern whites, being all freed from servile duties, could maintain the most democratic and refined relations among themselves; in the same way, a caste of 'shameless women' allows the 'honest woman' to be treated with the most chivalrous respect. The prostitute is a scapegoat; man vents his turpitude upon her, and he rejects her. Whether she is put legally under police supervision or works illegally in secret, she is in any case treated as a pariah.

The Equal Pay Act was signed into law in the US in 1963. The male-female income difference in the US was in 2010 at a female-to-male earnings ratio of 0.81, medium income in full-time year-round workers being $42,800 for men compared to $34,700 for women.

When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman, his theme is the principle of abstract equality, and he does not base his attitude upon such inequality as may exist. But when he is in conflict with her, the situation is reversed: his theme will be the existing inequality, and he will even take it as justification for denying abstract equality.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present.

The history of literature is dominated by male writers. Since 1901 when the first annual Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded, out of the 109 individuals that have received it, twelve were female. More women have been awarded the Nobel in this field than any other, save for the Nobel Peace Prize, of which fifteen of the 101 recipients were female.

When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he often betrays also the gap between his world view and his egotistical dreams.

…the categories in which men think of the world are established from their point of view, as absolute: they misconceive reciprocity, here as everywhere. A mystery for man, woman is considered to be mysterious in essence.

And while her lover fondly believes he is pursuing the Ideal, he is actually the plaything of nature, who employs all this mystification for the ends of reproduction.

'Pendants have for two thousand years reiterated the notion that women have a more lively spirit, men more solidity; that women have more delicacy in their ideas and men greater power of attention. A Paris idler who once took a walk in the Versailles Gardens concluded that, judging from all he saw, the trees grow ready trimmed.'

–Stendhal

Feminism is, well. You tell me. I have to say, though, bra-burning and unshaven legs seem empty condemnations in comparison to rape and domestic abuse.

The truth is that just as—biologically—males and females are never victims of one another but both victims of the species, so man and wife together undergo the oppression of an institution they did not create. If it is asserted that men oppress women, the husband is indignant; he feels that he is the one who is oppressed—and he is; but the fact is that it is the masculine code, it is the society developed by the males and in their interest, that has established woman’s situation in a form that is at present a source of torment for both sexes.

It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.

I thought about keeping a list of how many authors/philosophers/lauded historical people I’d have to completely boycott due to misogyny. That action makes as much sense as completely boycotting those who favor feminism. Think about it.

Alternative Title: Woman Fucks/Fucking Terrifies Man - A Treatise ...more

flag 180 likes · Like · see review

Aug 14, 2013 Elenabot rated it really liked it

Shelves: know-thyself, favorites

To seem, rather than to see, to appear, rather than to be: this, in a nutshell, has been woman's existential project thus far, according to de Beauvoir. Woman's historic destiny has prohibited her from developing into a self, understood as an autonomous ontic unit and agent. Instead, hers has been a merely instrumental existence defined entirely by her social roles. Never a maker of meaning, her success in life was defined to the extent that she was a suitable canvas for receiving others' meanin ...more

flag 96 likes · Like · see review

Jun 13, 2020 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: recs, 2020

Foundational and packed with insight, so much so that much of the work's worth checking out, even if parts now read as dated. In dense, dizzying prose the first volume critiques psychoanalysis and Marxism, overviews the history of women in Western civ, and unpacks the assumptions behind sexist cultural myths; the second walks through the major stages of human life and considers how they differ for men and women, implicitly focusing on the experiences of middle-class white Europeans. The first is ...more

flag 96 likes · Like · see review

Dec 29, 2007 Jojo Richardson rated it it was amazing

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 "the other" as opposed ...more

flag 84 likes · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2016 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to El by: The F-Word

Shelves: hear-me-roar-and-gender, 20th-centurylit-early, big-effing-books, cultural-studies-and-other, science-and-medicine

As a feminist, it's been recommended to me for years that I read Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book, The Second Sex. As a regular person, though, I have always felt like it "wasn't the right time" to read it.

What does that even mean?

As someone living as "the second sex" myself, there is no excuse for this. I was lazy, bottom line. It's a big book, and while big books do not normally frighten me, I was worried I wouldn't be smart enough for Simone de Beauvoir. She was, from what I understand, a highl ...more

flag 61 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2009 Ellen rated it it was ok

Shelves: feminism, theory

Knocked Up
Preggers
Up the Spout
A Bun in the Oven

* * *

The word “pregnant” is pregnant with connotation. And for women—often viewed in more bodily terms than men—nothing foregrounds a woman's body more than pregnancy. It’s interesting to consider what Simone de Beauvoir, dubbed the "mother" of modern feminism, thought about motherhood itself. Given what she writes in The Second Sex, Beauvoir would probably concur with my friend’s attitude…

...A number of years ago, a friend of mine spoke to ...more

flag 55 likes · Like · see review

Apr 30, 2017 Zhaleh rated it it was amazing

it seems it has taken me almost a year to finish this book. in my defense it's 701 pages.
for as long as i can remember, since first i heard her name and after when i knew that there is a book called the second sex written by a French woman (and i admire the french), i have wanted to read it.
the years passed by, i was playing with the idea of learning as much french as i can to read it in the original but alas, so little time, so many books to read. and i also have a fetish for books in paper and it seems it has taken me almost a year to finish this book. in my defense it's 701 pages.
for as long as i can remember, since first i heard her name and after when i knew that there is a book called the second sex written by a French woman (and i admire the french), i have wanted to read it.
the years passed by, i was playing with the idea of learning as much french as i can to read it in the original but alas, so little time, so many books to read. and i also have a fetish for books in paper and i search all over the world before i resign to reading a PDF of a book. well i searched and searched and then searched some more but no signs of this book (and the Persian version doesn't count cause let's face it when things get tough, translations get rough).
anyways, as a student of English Literature and discovering myself through the years, i realized the more i live, the more i see, the more i read, the more i feel that i am a feminist, so i picked up (or got stuck with) my thesis subject: Difference Feminism, and NOW i had to read this book, let's face it. This woman started Feminism. and so it began, my one year journey to reading this masterpiece.
first chapter and i was blown away, even though it's all about biology (the first chapter), she talks about the female of a lot of species but even that is interesting. in the next chapters she looks at women from every single possible view, within, without, social, biological, philosophical, historical, cultural, she probes everywhere, the conscious and the unconscious, she goes deep and then deeper than you knew existed, to explain the why and the how and the when of why women are the way they are, who is doing this to us, why hasn't it changed through the years, who benefits from all this and then after 600 pages of fabulous reading, comes the sweet conclusion of how to fix it, how to change it, how to overcome. and i love how she just like Woolf is not interested in separating men and women, she believes in difference and equality. no one needs to hate, we don't need to fight, we just need to look deep inside and find our answers, because no matter how hard you fight it, the future IS coming, and the future is equal. ...more

flag 60 likes · Like · see review

Oct 13, 2013 Vikas Lather rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

700 pages of magical reality. Beauvoir is one of those handful writers, worth a name. Simone's narrative quality is so much powerful, I've never experienced before. A must read for third world.

I will be revisiting this book very soon. ...more

flag 43 likes · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2016 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, philosophy, essays, non-fiction, feminism

This unfortunately was the short version of Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' as I made a mistake when ordering (because of the price), so this is only extracts from the full version which hopefully will read at another time. As a passionate supporter of feminism, equality and sexual liberation for women this was an interesting and for it's time controversial take on feminist philosophy and would suit anyone who doesn't have the time on their hands to read the longer edition, but I am a litt ...more

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Feb 28, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: frogs, cul-poli-phil-art, reviews-5-stars, re-read, reviews, sexuality, read-2014, de-beauvoir

No Wonder Intrigue and Strife Abound

"A Man never begins by representing himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a Man."

Man represents himself as both the positive and the neutral. He represents Woman as the negative. Man represents himself as objective. He represents Woman as subjective.

Ironically, Man is the Subject, but objective; Woman is the Object, but subjective.

Aristotle defines a Woman in terms of a certain lack of qualities and therefore as de No Wonder Intrigue and Strife Abound

"A Man never begins by representing himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a Man."

Man represents himself as both the positive and the neutral. He represents Woman as the negative. Man represents himself as objective. He represents Woman as subjective.

Ironically, Man is the Subject, but objective; Woman is the Object, but subjective.

Aristotle defines a Woman in terms of a certain lack of qualities and therefore as defective. Woman is defined relative to Man. Man is not defined relative to Woman.

Yet, both together constitute a pairing, a duality, "a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another." A pairing does not necessarily imply the permanent subjection or submission of One to the Other.

Yet, a certain level of subjection is present in all relationships. "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself." It derives from the duality of the Self and the Other.

De Beauvoir argues that subjection would be incomprehensible, "if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness." However, according to Hegel, we find in consciousness, the ego, itself "a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed."

Thus, there is subjection, but it is not simply in one direction. The Subject opposes the Object. It defines itself as the essential as opposed to the inessential. However, the other consciousness, the other ego, makes a reciprocal claim.

In its (the second consciousness’) perception, it is the Subject and the first consciousness is the Object. Each Subject is the Master and each Other is the Slave. "Willy-nilly, individuals and groups are forced to realise the reciprocity of their relations."

De Beauvoir asks the killer question, "How is it, then, that this reciprocity has not been recognised between the sexes, that one of the contrasting terms [the Male] is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative [the Female] and defining the latter as pure Otherness? Why is it that Women do not dispute Male sovereignty?

No Subject will readily volunteer to become the Object, the inessential; it is not the Other who, in defining [itself] as the Other, establishes the One.

The Other is posed as such by the One in defining [itself] as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, [she] must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view."

What, then, is the origin of Woman’s submission? What is the origin of Man’s domination of Woman? Why does Man "stabilize" Woman as Object and doom her to be "overshadowed and forever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign?

The drama of Woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every Subject (ego) – who always regards the Self as the essential – and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential?

What circumstances limit Woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome?"

Although built on a philosophical foundation, "The Second Sex" seeks concrete answers to these questions. ...more

flag 53 likes · Like · see review

May 21, 2009 Helynne rated it it was amazing

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 is that there is no 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 is that there is no valid reason for the age-old phenomenon of a male-dominated world. "But what privilege has permitted [men] to dominate women?" she asks. She notes that it was men who created values, mores, and religions. Therefore, male prejudices rather than any inborn defects in women, have resulted in the debased position of females in society. Beauvoir is equally adamant about the need for women to rise above the traditionally inferior education with which men have limited their influence.
Beauvoir also criticizes the fact that married women under French law were treated for centuries as minors; that is, more as daughters of their husbands than as spouses. The law that allowed such subjugation—and even demanded that a wife obey her husband— continued in France until 1942, just four years before the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe.
And here is a fact that I complain about to my French students all the time: American women did not receive the right to vote until 1920, which is bad enough, but French women did not get to vote until 1946 (coincidentally, the same year The Second Sex was published)!
But lest I am giving the impression that Beauvoir is a man-hater, I hasten to add that she is not. She is simply urging equality of the sexes and the chance (and desire) for women everywhere to reach a higher potential and to function mentally, emotionally, and creatively on the same level that formerly has been reserved just for men. Also, although Beauvoir opted not to marry or have children (in fact, she was one of the first women to request and receive a tubal ligation), she had a long live-in relationship with fellow existential writer Jean-Paul Sartre. Theirs was a true meeting of the minds.
There are many, many more interesting points Beauvoir makes about feminism as she urges women of her time and in the future to rise to their full intellectual and creative potential.
This is a fairly long and dense read, so plunge in, take it slowly, mark up the text, and take a billion notes. I plugged away gamely at the French version for a while, then relented and read the rest of the work in English with my French version nearby for highlighting and note-taking. It was well worth the time in both languages! ...more

flag 31 likes · Like · see review

Mar 12, 2009 Natalie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, i-blame-the-patriarchy, read-in-2010, philosophy, female-pen

The Second Sex is one of those dense old feminist classics I was embarrassed not to have read. When I finally started it last month, it was almost impossible to put it down (though I did take a break in order to read William Vollmann's new magnum opus.) Simone de Beauvoir theorizes, hypothesizes, and generalizes about every phase of a woman's life, from infancy to old age, and the events marking each phase, such as menarche, sexual initiation, childbirth, and menopause. While Nick's review makes ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Apr 05, 2021 Théodore added it

Personally, I believe that de Beauvoir has never felt the effect of injustices or gender inequalities.
I think, rather, that it all started when she realized that people considered her inferior to Sartre, her lover - just because she was a woman. I think she was surprised to see that her existence was reduced to an essential fact : " I'm a woman ".

" The Second Sex" - is not only a book about the role of women in history and society, but also about " otherness " - as an archetype and philosophic Personally, I believe that de Beauvoir has never felt the effect of injustices or gender inequalities.
I think, rather, that it all started when she realized that people considered her inferior to Sartre, her lover - just because she was a woman. I think she was surprised to see that her existence was reduced to an essential fact : " I'm a woman ".

" The Second Sex" - is not only a book about the role of women in history and society, but also about " otherness " - as an archetype and philosophical category, often replaced by the concept of " the other ". These philosophical foundations make the book go beyond the status of a feminist manifesto, becoming a fascinating read.
The book is an attempt to answer the question " what woman is ? " - as an archetype as opossed to woman as individuality. The notion of " otherness " , says de Beauvoir, can be applied to any group in society that is not considered a main group.
Men do not feel the need to justify themselves objectively, but they feel superior because they are not women. )) The result is the cliché that a woman has to do twice as many things, in order to be considered equal to a man.

De Beauvoir expresses her astonishment that although men say that women are equal to them, their attitude says the opposite.
What would de Beauvoir say, however, nowadays ? In rich and free countries, many women might think that " The Second Sex " is an outdated study, that equality is for real. A lot of de Beauvoir statements can be contradicted by science, but the truth is that we are not completely undifferentiated in terms of gender, but we are born with a series of behavioral tendencies, whether we are men or women. The conditioning is real, no doubt, but it is not necessarily defining, and we cannot understand the limitations of which women are considered " guilty " , without understanding the biological differences too. The more we know about our bodies and brains, the less ground biology will gain in defining our destiny as human being.
In my humble opinion, the woman is a prize to be won, the dream within which all other dreams are contained. Her positive and defining characteristic would be that she always inspired the man to overcome his own limits.
And that is a great thing. ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Nov 13, 2017 Liam rated it it was ok

Shelves: on-feminism

Video Review
2020: Hopefully I won't be burnt at the stake for making an unfavourable review about this.

-----2017 Review------
This isn't light reading, and in retrospect, I wouldn't recommend you read it unless your university or lover forces you to do so.

This was a painful and frustrating read for me as reflected in the names I gave it I soldiered through it:
"Being second, sucks"
"Why Kurt Vonnegut hated the semi-colon"
"The most masochistic thing I ever did"
"Comprehensively diabolical"
"Two legs b ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2009 Nancy Monson rated it it was amazing

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

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2020 Vartika rated it liked it · review of another edition

Most people consider The Second Sex to be the Feminist 'Bible'. While Beauvoir's text is certainly a seminal text in feminism — both in terms of feminist theory and the larger movement for emancipation — it has some of the same flaws as its theological counterpart(s).

Beauvoir starts her nearly-800-pages-long existential project for the woman's condition with a hugely impressive Introduction highlighting some of the principal arguments of the feminist movement and why it exists. Going forth, s Most people consider The Second Sex to be the Feminist 'Bible'. While Beauvoir's text is certainly a seminal text in feminism — both in terms of feminist theory and the larger movement for emancipation — it has some of the same flaws as its theological counterpart(s).

Beauvoir starts her nearly-800-pages-long existential project for the woman's condition with a hugely impressive Introduction highlighting some of the principal arguments of the feminist movement and why it exists. Going forth, she divides The Second Sex into two books, the first of which, entitled 'Facts and Myths', undertakes meticulous research in looking at and seeking to counter male arguments about women through biology; psychology; historical materialism; history; mythology; and literature. Book II, 'Woman's Life Today', traces the various phases and conditions of women throughout their development, debunking the myth of the "eternal feminine" and arguing about the development of this feminine through various factors in lived reality and conditioning that thwart women into alterity instead of transcendence. She looks at the various roles the adult bourgeois woman performs, studies some ways in which they reinforce their own dependency, and looks at the barriers to real equality the independent woman in the 1940s continues to face.

Much of Beauvoir's arguments hold currency today in that they deal with issues that are as yet prevalent. Her ideas about education/upbringing and feminine narcissism as well as those regarding birth control and marriage are those that we still discuss in terms of feminist perspective today. Particularly striking are her statements about some fundamentals of women's oppression — that as victims of class and other male institutions they are unable to form a coherent group of their very own and representing their own interests, despite comprising roughly half of all human population.

However, just like many revered theological texts such as the Bible, a good chunk of The Second Sex emerges through the test of time as horribly dated; some of it may even be considered sexist when looked at from the lens of our times. One obvious limitation lies in the sources available for the author to refer to and infer from: in the fields of biology and psychology; and especially psychoanalysis; most of the studies Beauvoir interacts with in writing this book have since then been disproven and discarded, and moreover also suffer from the subjective biases of the men who conducted and recorded them. Moreover, while Beauvoir often refutes and counters the affirmations of these studies, she also bases some of her own suppositions on them. Thus, many of her arguments — particularly those about women's pain and 'imagined' diseases and women's behaviours in marriage and old age — end up perpetuating the same masculinist assumptions and attitudes they collectively seek to fight against. Similarly, while she lays ground for the performativity of gender that Judith Butler later explores in her own work on queer theory; Beauvoir takes a rather ambiguous stance on homosexuality, asserting lesbianism as a matter of choice but not quite, a confused and confusing conundrum.

In fact, many errenous assertions in The Second Sex, such as its stance on lesbianism, result from the restrictions of her theoretical framework (namely that of Existentialism). Beauvoir is also guilty, as many women of her time, of overlooking intersectionality: her work is modelled on women of her own kind, and yet she generalises these specific behaviours onto all of womankind. While she does include examples from the Orient, she only does so to fit her own thesis and does not situate them in a proper context. Thus, perspectives from women belonging to the working class and women of colour are absent in her work, and the actualities and values of the women she constructs throughout the text difficult to ascribe. It is also true that Beauvoir's writing here is prone to taking to the inaccessible flourishes of the ivory towers of academese, and one often finds her work difficult to engage with and to sustain interest in. I found myself skimming over at least some of her ideas — perhaps only because my position in time means that I know better, but also out of the sheer tedium of reading through some things. I guess that as a woman writing at her time, Beauvoir had to really justify her assertions, but at some points she seems to have done it at the cost of lucidity.

Nevertheless, The Second Sex raises some of the most important and undeniably cogent points regarding the subjection and emancipation of women, as well as about human nature itself. The book lays essential groundwork for what we learn and build on as feminists today, and even its mistakes allow us the space for greater assertion and amendment. It remains, despite its flaws, an essential read. ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2019 Petre rated it really liked it

The Second Sex examines gender as a social construct in society, especially how the position of women determines their oppression through setting woman as "other" in relation to man and masculine institutions. The book represents a classic manifesto of the liberated woman, its subversiveness has changed how we think of women.

This book explores wholeness of a woman's life. The first part is about facts and myths, exploring the woman through the point of view of biology, psychoanalysis and histori ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2014 Soycd rated it it was amazing

Shelves: feminism

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

Incredibly interesting and eye-opening essay that describes the oppression of women throughout the years. Beauvoir analyses the historical, biological and socio-economic conditions that have led females to become the second sex and tries to define a path for them to overcome that disadvantages and fulfill their destiny. One of the best passages was the chapter where Beauvoir depicted the circumstances that led woman to be left behind in art:

Men we ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

May 24, 2013 Poet Gentleness rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: All women and men

Recommended to Poet Gentleness by: EF Reims

Shelves: classics, books-that-make-u-think, existencialism, political, feminism

Why I never manage to find the right edition of the book I'm reading on Goodreads baffles me.
Twice I've read Beauvoir in French. Mine is an old treasured edition, which I didn't find listed here. So, I set to read it again in English. It would be quite weird to write the review in English and quote Beauvoir in French...

Alors, on y va!

Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis – in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to

...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Mar 07, 2020 jade rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: you, if you are also desperately wanting to read all the Big Feminist Classics

Recommended to jade by: me, in a desperate bid to read all the Big Feminist Classics

Shelves: quest-for-classiques, non-fiction, feminism

“one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

no biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine.”

i know, i know. everybody and their mother (...) uses this quote when they talk about simone de beauvoir’s magnum opus: le dieuxième sexe, the bible of second wave feminism. the groundwork, the foundation, ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Nov 14, 2011 Nina rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, chunksters, i-expected-more, feminism-or-thereabouts

This was surprisingly old-fashioned. It was published in 1949 but it just seems so out-dated and often - dare I say it? - wrong and irrelevant.

de Beauvoir's mission is to define woman and find out why the male is the "default" or "normal" sex, while the female sex is the other, the one who deviates from the norm. She does this by looking at biology, psychoanalysis, the history of women from the stone ages to today (or well, 1949) in France, USA, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, the Middle East. This was surprisingly old-fashioned. It was published in 1949 but it just seems so out-dated and often - dare I say it? - wrong and irrelevant.

de Beauvoir's mission is to define woman and find out why the male is the "default" or "normal" sex, while the female sex is the other, the one who deviates from the norm. She does this by looking at biology, psychoanalysis, the history of women from the stone ages to today (or well, 1949) in France, USA, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, the Middle East...She looks at how women have been represented in literature, religion and myths, and she looks at the different stages of a woman's life, from childhood through puberty to middle age. She leaves no stone unturned, and yet it just seems... out-dated. But what is worse, de Beauvoir comes across as a bitter old hag who blames men that their lives are so easy, while women's are oh, so hard.

For instance, puberty is apparently easy for boys, while it leads to neurosis and mental break-downs in girls. Men love conquering the world and see women as silly, stupid puppets, while women hate their lot in life, hate their off-spring, hate their husbands and are filled with Freudian complexes. When de Beauvoir started analysing why some women become lesbians I had to laugh out loud (this is one of the places where the out-datedness shines through).

The introduction was great and thought-provoking, the first chapter boring, the next handful of chapters OK, and from there on I started skipping pages here and there because of all the repetitions. de Beauvoir's central message can be boiled down to this: Men achieve transcendence, women are doomed to immanence (and I cannot tell you how many times she wrote that during the 740 pages. Every third page had de B. blaming men their transcendence and regretting women their immanence from whence everything bad comes. Oh, the repetitions!) And also, much as I love literature, I hardly think quoting passages from D.H.Lawrence, Tolstoy or even my beloved Virginia Woolf constitutes hardcore truth or facts that can be used in scientific study, which is what Simone de B. does here.

Finally, it is hard to take someone seriously who claims that a) marriages are never founded on love but is merely a social institution meant to keep women in place, and b) "Women's fellow feeling rarely rises to genuine friendship" because women must fight individually to gain a place in the masculine world and so they are hostile towards other women.

Seriously.

Simone de Beauvoir has not aged well. ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Aug 06, 2012 Jill Collins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books

I read several criticisms that assert Simone de Beauvoir must hate women, or perhaps she simply hates being a woman. These reviewers are so close to insight but they do seem to miss the point.

Throughout The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir constantly reaffirms the state and condition of femininity is a direct result of woman's situation. Women are not victims of hormones or mysterious whims, they are victims of systematic oppression. Women are defined as other, they have no identity of their own, ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Jul 12, 2019 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: woman-authors, jerusalem-prize, list-le-monde, non-fiction, 4-europe

It might be owing to our short-term memory loss as masses but humanity is generally a very thankless species. The negative criticism that feminism receives, especially from women, seem, to be the result of this ingratitude. If you don't think we are all thankless folks, then tell me who invented condoms?

Times are changing fast and things one generation fought so hard for could be taken for granted by the next one - and to this new generation, the struggles of the previous generation might seem It might be owing to our short-term memory loss as masses but humanity is generally a very thankless species. The negative criticism that feminism receives, especially from women, seem, to be the result of this ingratitude. If you don't think we are all thankless folks, then tell me who invented condoms?

Times are changing fast and things one generation fought so hard for could be taken for granted by the next one - and to this new generation, the struggles of the previous generation might seem comical. People had grown to dislike her while she was still alive. The negative reviews of Simone De Beviour's thesis seem to spring from this lack of understanding.

I am not a feminist myself (assuming men can be that) as it seems to mean a lot of different things to different people. I can't ever be sure what a particular person means when he or she say that they are feminist. If the belief in the fact that women are worse off in society be the definition of feminism might be used as defining characteristic, than one runs the risk of calling people with patronizing ways toward women feminists - most religions have such patronizing ways. A lot of people in India would want women to stay indoors after dusk 'for their own safety' - sometimes they are genuinely concerned but the point is most feminists I like reading from won't agree - I don't either.

.... Or it might mean to others, stronger women. The worst of it is Indian School girls being taught karate so that they might be able to defend themselves. An example I have seen commonly among western people is to shame weak female characters. Any weak female characters especially one weakened by love for a man is a 'spineless' character. Two examples of fictional characters that are criticized for this are Bella from Twilight (which I have not read) and Tonks from Harry Potter series (Tonks btw was the only character in series I had a crush on). From saying that 'it is the duty of every woman to be strong' you are just one step away from saying 'whatever happens to a weak is deserved by her because of her weakness'. I think it a great precept of Feminism that every woman should have a source of her own income, but not all of them can or they might not find work best suited to their abilities and to some people - both men and women, even having breakfast is an act of anguish.

I hope you get why I don't like calling myself a feminist. But I do have an outsider's admiration for certain feminists - Charlotte Bronte, Henrik Ibsen, Woolf and now Beauviour. Like most writers who are too rhetorical, she is open to misinterpretation at times - especially if you only read the book in parts. But if you ignore follies of her language, she means by feminism what every such egalitarian philosophy should mean - that we are all individuals. That not all girls (or humans) want to learn or care for self-defense techniques. What would be the purpose of laws and police if such assumptions are encouraged? That some women (and men too) can be emotionally weak at times, get depressed, for no good reason or because they are abandoned by ones they love - and that is no reason to guilt trip them. (Sometimes it is even a sign of strength or quality. Tonks was strong enough to be an Aurora but loved putting smiles on faces of others, it makes sense she should get depressed to know that someone as good a person as Lupin should give up on all hope of ever being happy).

That at least seems to be a general message though Behaviour's language actually seems to encourage the opposite idea - that she is trying to talk in stereotypes. She uses the words like 'woman' and 'she' which seems to invite prejudice; but what she really means most of those times are 'some woman' and 'some of them'.

She s a novelist and it shows in how she presents her arguments - many of which could make very good fictional short stories.

I think Eastern Feminists can gain a lot more from the book. A lot of anti-feminist arguments she had to answer are not raised in the west anymore but might still be common in East - women have smaller brains or are less of humans, why housewife will not have a fulfilling life) or shaming based on mensuration or the arguments raised because of biological reasons. It can be a good starting book for one studying feminism at least in India.

There are things though from which whole world can look - the heavy focus given to looks when we take character estimates of women (men are udged for far more qualities - their brains, physical strength, kindness, wealth etc all come into consideration but such qualities are not as valued as much among women; women are less likely to be complimented for such things); about how women are more likely to 'respect' men or make sacrifices for them (which sits at root of women giving up their careers for their husbands, a lot of D/s - but not all relationships; especially ones that turn into abuse. Respect is always a bad thing - a distancing quality and often cruel to people you worship as well as a way of lowering yourself; true for lovers friends, parent-student relationship too and true even if it is men that are supposed to respect women as the Indian version of feminists say men should - give each other a human dignity, anything more is to give them too much power for good of both parties. And sacrifices for your lover is equally cruel to both you and the lover), why women are more likely to be physically weak (less likely to be encouraged to do strength exercises in the gym, mostly they are in there to get thinner).

The book though won't always stand the test of times. For example, the writer is too judgemental of actresses for example.

There are a couple of more points I should like to make in case someone cares to read these boring reviews might be interested. I have recently seen feminism criticized for things that didn't result from it. One of them is the rising inequality of incomes. Some women from the USA who are quite intelligent and my friends have claim that now both man and woman have to earn when a few decades ago, one person's income was enough to maintain the household. Well, it is the fault of capitalism and not feminism - or lack of it, US government is failing to tax the rich corporations and is more willing to tax middle-class workers, so it is the fault of US government. In India too, much of inequality of income is owed to lack of proper laws and their implementation.

Another related criticism is that children feel abandoned when both parents are working. It too is owed to capitalism. If incomes of middle and lower classes were to rise with GDP, that would have made the two parents to work lesser and avail them more time to spend with their children. ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2009 Fretty Panggabean rated it liked 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

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2010 Judy rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone who has the guts to read it

Shelves: feminist, non-fiction, books-from-1953

I began reading The Second Sex in August, 2008; I finished it in May, 2010. It is not a book one reads for pleasure, in the usual sense of the word. It is written in the style of a textbook, with Jean Paul Sartre's version of existentialism as the underlying philosophical base. Since de Beauvoir wrote it in the late 1940s, it is to some degree an historical document with a French middleclass viewpoint. When I began reading and experiencing the density of the prose, I attempted to read 50 pages

I began reading The Second Sex in August, 2008; I finished it in May, 2010. It is not a book one reads for pleasure, in the usual sense of the word. It is written in the style of a textbook, with Jean Paul Sartre's version of existentialism as the underlying philosophical base. Since de Beauvoir wrote it in the late 1940s, it is to some degree an historical document with a French middleclass viewpoint. When I began reading and experiencing the density of the prose, I attempted to read 50 pages a day, then decreased to 20 pages every few days and finally put it down for about a year. When I picked it back up, I finished it at the rate of about 10 pages a day a few times a week. If I hadn't studied up on some of the basic vocabulary and tenets of existentialism, I would never have made it.

Since so much has been written, critically as well as hysterically, about The Second Sex, I will leave that stance alone and merely attempt to state what the book meant to me. I am very glad I read it. The author was born eleven years before my mother, so that is the generational context. My mother was an intelligent and perceptive woman with musical aspirations. She married at the age of 28, after a short career as an elementary school music teacher, and for the next twenty years devoted her days to housekeeping, marriage, raising three daughters and contributing to her church as Sunday school teacher and choir member. She made her compromises and it wasn't until my youngest sister was in high school that she even stopped to wonder who she had become and who she might have been. She raised us in the conventional attitudes towards women in 1950s middle class America.

Even though I began to consider myself a feminist in the 1970s, that was primarily an attitude towards my first unhappy marriage. I have read The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and other feminist writings, but it was The Second Sex that opened my eyes to the insidious examples, teachings and attitudes that pervaded my childhood concerning what it meant to be female.

Reading this book was an experience in emotional upheaval. I discovered thought patterns and methods of existing which I hadn't even known were deep in my makeup. I have had countless hours of mostly beneficial therapy but none of that went as deep into personal self-knowledge as did some of the chapters in The Second Sex.

Ultimately I finished the book feeling that I hadn't done too badly for a girl. Yes, I have missed several golden opportunities to become a more self-realized person but I feel at peace about all that. Now I am in my 60s, living the life I want to live with goals and achievements still ahead of me. I am writing a book which I hope will be enlightening for my grandchildren's generation as well as easier to assimilate than Simone de Beauvior's tome.

The very week I finished the 1952 translation by H M Parshley (a male professor of zoology), a new translation, by two American women who have lived in Paris and taught English there for many years, was released. Reviews have been mixed but so were they in 1953. I will probably not attempt the new translation in the years I have left to read. I am not sure that women who could be my daughters need to read The Second Sex. In some ways it is dated for modern women growing up in Western democratic societies. But to anyone of any age who has the stamina, I would recommend reading some version of it. The book is not a man-hating work. It is a demonstration of the truth that to be oppressed you must agree with oppression; to be free you must agree with freedom and take responsibility for your own. ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Mar 15, 2012 Arda rated it really liked it

Additional notes (upon having read more parts on September 14):
After reading the chapters on love and marriage, I had to come back here and upgrade the review from a 3 star to a 4 star, and I know I am not being generous here, because what reading those chapters did, at this particular point in time, was shift my entire way of thinking. In that respect, this book now represents a spiritual experience: an awakening of some sort. This is a reminder of the magic of books and to what people might re Additional notes (upon having read more parts on September 14):
After reading the chapters on love and marriage, I had to come back here and upgrade the review from a 3 star to a 4 star, and I know I am not being generous here, because what reading those chapters did, at this particular point in time, was shift my entire way of thinking. In that respect, this book now represents a spiritual experience: an awakening of some sort. This is a reminder of the magic of books and to what people might refer to as "education." In search of a spiritual path, a calling, a faith of some sort to bring on "peace of mind", de Beauvoir shares the struggle of the path of WOMAN: Women just perceive things differently, and this "difference" embodied in the forms of sacrifice, giving and "love" - dressed up in the mask of "natural", is in fact, in many ways, indoctrination. All those expectations we have about what things should be, how men should "love" a woman, how woman is to be treated and loved, bring with them a series of expectations and ideals that will not be met. It's a lost battle. To want to "possess" and fully "have" a person leads you to a path of death: it in and of itself is targeted toward death, just like the faithful call to God: to fully losing yourself and abandoning yourself as a sacrifice to "God" is also a path of death, and "marriage," "motherhood," "love" all have within them those same "callings" for 'pure voluntary sacrifice'. It is a lost battle that drives a woman insane as she struggles to possess a man's love, to capture his eyes and looks, as she measures herself by the love that she receives, and she takes on all the insecurity that comes as a result of it all. These chapters may appear to be cynical or disappointing to some, but they have the captivating ability to shift one's complete way of thinking: particularly as a woman: wake up and do not abandon yourself in a never-ending quest for possessing anyone: not your loved one, not your children, not even your worth: the struggle to capture and possess is a never-ending struggle: give it up and realize that the path is not about abandoning the self, but about transcending beyond yourself and floating above this thing called life.

"But there are few crimes that bring worse punishment than this generous mistake: to put one’s self entirely in another’s hands."

"One of the misfortunes of the woman in love is that her love itself disfigures her, demolishes her; she is no more than this slave, this servant, this too-docile mirror, this too-faithful echo."

"A passionately demanding soul cannot find tranquillity in love, because she sets her sights on a contradictory aim..... The situation of the woman in love is analogous: she only wants to be this loved woman, and nothing else has value in her eyes..... It is the harsh punishment inflicted on those who have not taken their destiny in their own hands."

"The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not a mortal danger."

Notes from Gender Studies Class (September 7):
I was first introduced to Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” when I was a teenager. Why I was interested in purchasing this book when we had more than enough class reading to do at the time, I am not sure, but I do remember that reading this book back then started to make me feel more and more isolated. De Beauvoir had a certain power, I knew that, and, in turn, I knew that if I were to keep on reading her, there was a great chance I would metamorphose into something else which I was not sure I was ready for. And so, I did not continue reading at the time. This book, in some respect, scared me.
For starters, De Beauvoir defies much of what we may want to learn and accept about that which has to do with conforming, pleasing, and, basically, to being feminine. We grow up with a certain notion and understanding of what it means to be a “girl” in the world at large, and in relationship to man in particular. But de Beauvoir declares that in fact “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” This sentence often re-visited me in different stages in life, and I would realize that regardless of the historical timeframe and the various social, geo-political perspectives that one is to consider, the sentence nevertheless has relevance, and in acknowledging an understanding of what the sentence means, we may begin to de-construct and re-construct our own perception, identity, and, eventually, our destiny as women.
The general viewpoint in this book, much of which generated my discomfort in it years ago, has to do with the actual physical, biological, carnal and animalistic flesh of the makeup and libido of that which is woman. De Beauvoir refers to the female body as a “situation,” and she approaches the subject of the object (of woman) in a way that is beyond nature, and delves into questions related to what it means to “be” and “become” a woman.
Woman, to some extent, is spoken about as sub-part: After all, man is whole, by which woman is part of. Man’s sexuality is deemed intact, while a woman’s libido is considered unexplainable, abstract, and incomplete. Man, in other words, is in one way or another the “it” that a woman follows, and eventually becomes part of. Among other things, de Beauvoir highlights on the other-ness of woman: she considers the subject of woman as she is presented to man as essentially being a carnal entity to an otherwise complete human being. In many ways, woman is considered as passive, and the destiny of woman is largely dictated by the social order that is attached to what becomes of her as a sexual body. To man, woman is the embodiment of sexuality, and this creates a juxtaposition between that which is instilled in the image of the mother vs. the carnal desire of sexuality.
One of the expressions de Beauvoir uses is the “disquieting hostility” that woman presents to man. The sense of hostility presented by woman towards man is, to some extent, connected with the sense of intimidation I felt upon first reading this book years ago. To acknowledge much of what this book presents brings with it a sense of discomfort, and, in turn, a sense of hostility which is deemed as unfavorable to that which is otherwise supposed to be docile, accepting, nurturing, and feminine. The “feminine” has an expectation, after all, to obey and be submissive, as presumably determined by nature. De Beauvoir explains this submission in the form of woman “waiting” for man. It is this state of “waiting” which dictates much of a woman’s destiny, as it accordingly follows suit with that which is considered as going by “nature.” Yet de Beauvoir challenges what gets picked up as “nature”, and examines, instead, all of that which gets considered as nature but that which is essentially and remarkably the product of social behavior and conformity.

...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Jul 12, 2020 Luís rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: france-belgium-swiss, 2020-readings, sociology, female-writers, philosophy, classics, favorites

"The Second Sex", six decades after it first got published, still stands supreme for its highly comprehensive work in the field of gender. Simone de Beauvoir, though writing keeping in mind her French upbringing, it is surprising to see how much her work is globally relevant, even today's time. She does not limit herself to a particular viewpoint, but sincerely tries to dig into the? Why? Of things that are concerned here. Her work is holistic, ranging from perspectives from the field of biology "The Second Sex", six decades after it first got published, still stands supreme for its highly comprehensive work in the field of gender. Simone de Beauvoir, though writing keeping in mind her French upbringing, it is surprising to see how much her work is globally relevant, even today's time. She does not limit herself to a particular viewpoint, but sincerely tries to dig into the? Why? Of things that are concerned here. Her work is holistic, ranging from perspectives from the field of biology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, sociology, law, psychology, history, amongst others! Exploring the issue, that just how the gender demarcation came into being and the whole sociology that goes along with it evolved remains her key inquest throughout the book. She initiates the book by explaining how women have not been allowed to exist in their real sense. What becomes of a woman is a social construct. The woman is what man will enable her to be. How Simone de Beauvoir puts it?
Human Society is an antiphysis - in a sense, it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of life but instead takes over the control of the environment on its behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action? It is this viewpoint through which she tries explaining the gender discrimination that exists in the human mind. Is it in human nature to demarcate the world? Us? And the other? From a historical viewpoint, she explains that as man discovered better control over the quality, his fear and along with that, his respect for nature decreased. The women, who represented nature? For a certain mystique attached to her, and also because only she could produce life, now declined as man realized his worth. He explored, he discovered and accomplished new things. His self-esteem rose. With his increasing prosperity, his workload increased. When the man is not able to do everything himself, he has no choice but to enslave others. Woman's subjugation is a byproduct of this progress? She, who seen as the mystique in nomadic times, was seen as the other? The negative? The impure? In an agricultural society, as she could not keep up with the workload demanded from heavy agrarian tools, which the only man could handle.
In a farming community, the concept of holding of property? Emerged, and with it came patriarchy, which worsened women's position to the hilt. She now is seen as a means of expanding economic and social ambitions, according to what suited the man. Recognizing the irony of things, the author explains that unlike tools that had restricted woman's participation, the industries, the machines opened for her a new era. The considerable workforce required which propelled her to come out of homes. The woman is subjected to beautification, to uncomfortable clothes, to high heels, so that she is never able to match the man's steps; that she remains so involved (read lost) in these particulars that it takes up the whole of her time and life's ambitions.

The second part of the book explains women's socialization and development of self through the various stages of life, keeping in context her exceptional circumstances. She maintains how, contrary to Freud's psychoanalytic work, it is the boy who envies the girl because of the extra cajoling that she receives. Penis envy? According to her is more of a socially constructed phenomenon, rather than having any biological roots. She explains, in an entirely non-judgmental way, the insecurities and dilemmas that define women - At any stage of her life starting childhood, to attaining puberty, to being a woman in love, to being married, to sexual initiation, to being a mother, to enter old age. She also explains the situations of prostitutes and lesbians. Does she explain? Are prostitutes human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? According to her is women's true nature, and it subjugated to meet the demands of men. Also, it explained how, through her children, a mother wants to conquer the world. Through her son, she wants to satisfy her ego. Because he is a male, he will be a conqueror, a leader one day. She takes pride in creating him. The problem starts when the children start individuating. She considers it an insult. She cannot tolerate the individuating of her double. Also, she cannot tolerate her little girl to be her double, to take her position so that the household can function without her, that the father gives more time to the daughter. Who is more charming than her - All in all, a highly detailed, deeply introspective work of utmost quality. ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Jul 26, 2015 vicky. rated it liked it · review of another edition

How could the Cinderella myth not retain its validity? Everything still encourages the girl to expect fortune and happiness from a “Prince Charming” instead of attempting the difficult and uncertain conquest alone.

I am not a true woman.

Because the majority of man that are featured in this book (and the majority of man in history) describe a true woman as “…frivolous, infantile, irresponsible, the woman subjugated to man.”

Yeah, no.

The book is not only about feminism, is a long essay about wom ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
잇플릭스《 i t - f l i x . c o m 》일본망가,최신웹툰,프리미어리그분석,해외축구중계,호두코믹스,늑대닷컴,오피스타,오피가이드,스포츠실시길중계,밤토끼,섹툰,툰코,리버풀사우샘프턴 실시간중계,첼시 맨시티 실시간중계	1	1	Feb 19, 2021 01:59AM
Why is there no women and feminist literature as a genre?	2	16	Jun 28, 2017 06:14AM
Made me feel humiliated and ashamed to be a woman. Anyone else have this response?	5	189	Apr 02, 2017 08:01PM
Goodreads Librari...: Merge authors and combine books	2	12	Mar 10, 2017 02:15PM
نادي أبواب: الجنس الآخر - سيمون دي بوفوار	9	64	Feb 14, 2017 07:16AM
Catching up on Cl...: The Second Sex -Buddy Read	54	98	Jan 26, 2017 06:43AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Feminism

2,533 users

Nonfiction

1,880 users

Philosophy

1,682 users

Classics

647 users

Womens

254 users

Gender

249 users

Cultural > France

231 users

Sociology

191 users

Politics

161 users

Gender > Gender Studies

144 users

See top shelves…

About Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

5,885 followers

Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including "She Came to Stay" and "The Mandarins", and for her 1949 treatise "The Second Sex", a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including "She Came to Stay" and "The Mandarins", and for her 1949 treatise "The Second Sex", a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.

----
Simone de Beauvoir est née à Paris le 9 janvier 1908. Elle fit ses études jusqu'au baccalauréat dans le très catholique cours Désir. Agrégée de philosophie en 1929, elle enseigna à Marseille, à Rouen et à Paris jusqu'en 1943. C'est L'Invitée (1943) qu'on doit considérer comme son véritable début littéraire. Viennent ensuite Le sang des autres (1945), Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946), Les Mandarins (prix Goncourt 1954), Les Belles Images (1966) et La Femme rompue (1968).
Simone de Beauvoir a écrit des mémoires où elle nous donne elle-même à connaître sa vie, son œuvre. L'ampleur de l'entreprise autobiographique trouve sa justification, son sens, dans une contradiction essentielle à l'écrivain : choisir lui fut toujours impossible entre le bonheur de vivre et la nécessité d'écrire ; d'une part la splendeur contingente, de l'autre la rigueur salvatrice. Faire de sa propre existence l'objet de son écriture, c'était en partie sortir de ce dilemme.
Outre le célèbre Deuxième sexe (1949) devenu l'ouvrage de référence du mouvement féministe mondial, l'œuvre théorique de Simone de Beauvoir comprend de nombreux essais philosophiques ou polémiques.
Après la mort de Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir a publié La Cérémonie des adieux (1981) et les Lettres au Castor (1983) qui rassemblent une partie de l'abondante correspondance qu'elle reçut de lui. Jusqu'au jour de sa mort, le 14 avril 1986, elle a collaboré activement à la revue fondée par Sartre et elle-même, Les Temps Modernes, et manifesté sous des formes diverses et innombrables sa solidarité avec le féminisme.

...more