SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR'S THE SECOND SEX

Controversial book in her day as well as today.  Conservatives, of course, rejected then, but so did the few "liberal feminists" (defined below).

Cultural feminists today would object to her view that women never had a separate religion or tradition from men; or could never exist seprately from men.  Rediscovery of the Goddess.  Certainly De Beauvior wins a point here.  Although some contemporary feminists reject men totally and  do live alone without them, there is no evidence that that was the case in ancient societies in which the Goddess was worshipped.  In present day India, both men and women worship the Great Goddess together.

De Beauvoir begins with the question: "What is Woman?"

BIOLOGISM: "Woman is a womb."  Quote p. 287 bottom.  Defined biologically.  A woman thinks with her glands.  "You think this way because you are a woman!"  Males never say that of themselves; as if they did not have hormones, too.  "Man superbly igonores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones" (pp. 287-88).

288:  She is simply a sexual being.  "For him she is sex--absolute sex."

ESSENTIALISM: "The Feminine essence" an "empty" universal.  An "essentialism" controlled by males.  Kant's view - males come under the "Good" and the "Rational" but women come under Plato's Form of "Beauty."  Aristotle's view of the empty universal: woman is an incomplete male with a "lack of qualities" and a "natural defectiveness."  Aquinas, a good Aristotelian, followed suit: woman is an "imperfect man" and "incidental" being (288).  Eve made from Adam's rib.  Medieval Christians:  The resurrected body (whole and complete) is a male body.  The successful Buddhist nun becomes a male in her next life!

NOMINALISM:  Woman is not a Platonic universal (essence) but simply a name that we give to a member of the species homo sapiens.  Just as there is no Jewish essence or Negro essence; these two are just names that we give to ordinary human beings.  Only sexists, anti-Semites, and racists believe that the names refer to some essence that makes them qualitatively different from the rest of us.

286:  Nominalism is the foundation of Liberal Feminism (Dorothy Parker)-- connected to the Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism.  Emphasis on equality of the sexes and individual rights.  Rational autonomy.  Critics:  ignores real differences and we are seduced by the male power behind liberalism.

Critique of liberalism: Autonomy (=self-legislation) is false and impossible and reason is overrated.  Autonomy and reason are used essentially for control.  Certainly a woman is a human being, but the latter is a mere abstraction.  In the concrete there are real differences.  De Beauvoir's example:  The bad faith of the female Trotskyite, small and frail, putting her dukes up.  Why is she in bad faith?  Because she is denying what she really is, just as Sartre's object of beauty ignored her lover's hand.  The Trotskyite "was denying her feminine weakness; but it was for love of a militant male whose equal she wished to be."

286 (bottom): De Beauvoir's critique of American feminists: "Methinks you protest too much."   Their protests that they are not essentially women "proves that they are haunted by a sense of their femininity."

287:  Let's begin again with the observation that "a man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex."  The relation between male and female is not symmetrical or mutual; rather it is asymmetrical. To use an electrical analogy:  The male occupies both the positive and neutral poles (the ground?), while the female represents the negative. [Back to the glands!]  Quote  "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities" - Aristotle one less tooth!  Aquinas - "an imperfect man."

"A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong." 

288:  Woman as "incidental" being.  Equality in Gen. 1:26,27 but inequality in Gen. 2 - made from Adam's rib.  Paul:  "[man] is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man." (1 Cor. 11:7)

288:  "He is Subject, he is the Absolute - she is other."  Hegelianism:  the category of the "other."  Fundamental in all human societies.  The other as "enemy."  Levi-Strauss and structuralism.

289:  Critique of Heid's Mitsein: "These phenomena [alien otherness] would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein  or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness." If Heidegger is right that we have a built-in relation to others, why is it that we view the stranger, the Jew, and Black, and woman as Other. Hegel must be right because he saw, and Sartre agreed with him, that "we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness. . . ."

Heidegger's response would be that this perception of otherness would not be possible without Mitsein.  Sartre and De Beauvoir seem to forget that each existential has its an inauthentic expression as well as an authentic one. (Authentic talk [Rede] vs. idle chitchat [Gerede].) They also misunderstand that the existentials are not attitudes or even emotions, but conditions for the possibility of existence.  All that Mitsein means is that a Dasein will always be with another Dasein, nothing more or nothing less.  It has nothing to do with either solidarity or friendliness.  Daseins who view each other as enemies are still "Being-with" one another.

Reciprocity and Reversibility: The traveller is shocked to find herself being perceived as the "Other."  But this is how the Hegelian dialectic of consciousness works.  But women have not seemed to have realized this, and have allowed themselves to be condemned and frozen in the negative pole.  Women need to learn the truth of Reciprocity and Reversibility.  Very strong women in positions of power have indeed learned this.  No one is essentially the Other, but essentialists on the question of sex have essentially accepted this as absolute truth.

290:  One might understand this better if women were a minority - like Jews and blacks, but women aren't a minority.  Jews and blacks are different, because at one time they were independent and had their own traditions.  They can draw power and pride from that. 

Well, are women like the proletariat - not a minority and no independent existence.  But proletarians have not always existed, and if Marx is right, may cease to exist.  But women have always existed and will continue to exist as long as males do.  The dependency of women is not the result of social change in history.  Cultural feminists disagree.  Blacks say "we" and so do proletarians, but women say "we" only at feminist meetings; otherwise, their "we" includes males.

290(bottom):  For some reason "women do not authentically assume a subjective attitude."

291:  "[Women] have no past, no history, no religion of their own."  New cultural feminists disagree.  There are no ghettos for women.  They live interspersed among the males that control them.  Divided allegiances.  Bourgeois women feel solidarity with their class; white women feel solidarity with other white women.  Contemporary women of color agree.

291:  "The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history."  Technology may change this?  "Male and female stand opposed in a primordial Mitsein...."  Earlier she rejected Heidegger's idea, but now it's OK?  A necessary other (not contingent)  Marx's ideas at end.

292:  De Beauvoir turns to political philosophy:  The only public good is the sum of private goods.  Private interest = happiness.  Anti-utilitarian libertarian position?  Women need liberty, not happiness.  Existentialist ethics rejects the idea of a homeostatic happiness.

Sol:  292:  Not asserting liberty (transcendence) and falling into bad faith and the en-soi (immanence) is a "moral fault"--"an absolute evil."  Patriarchal culture forces women into immanence.

293:  Changing her position on human nature?  "...In human society nothing is natural and that woman, like much else, is a product elaborated by civilization."  Women are not determined by biology?  Earlier she said the opposite?  Quote.

294:  Why does a girl feel odd if she is raised as a boy?  Must be biology.  Right?

294:  "The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities...."  Liberal feminism?  Next page, too.

295 bottom:  Comment on eroticism may not offend some feminists today.

296:  Appeal to Marx's view of human hates.