Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986) was a French author, philosopher, and feminist.

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir reasons through a feminist existentialism in The Second Sex, published first in French in 1949. As an existentialist, Beauvoir accepts the doctrine that existence precedes essence; therefore one is not born, but becomes a woman. Her analysis focuses on the concept of The Other. It is the construction of woman as the quintessential other that Beauvoir marks as fundamental to women's oppression.

Related Topics:
1949 - The Other

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Beauvoir argues that throughout history women have been considered the deviation, the abnormality. Even Mary Wollstonecraft considers men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. Beauvoir says that this attitude has held women back by maintaining the perception that women are a deviation from the normal, that they are outsiders attempting to emulate "normality". She says that for feminism to move forward, this assumption needs to be broken.

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Simone de Beauvoir asserts that females are just as capable of choice as males and can choose to elevate themselves and reduce male consciousness to immanence. Although not stated explicitly by Beauvoir, an example that actualizes females choosing transcendence is in the context of a sorority where females can claim their collective as "we" and being female is normal, reducing male consciousness to The Other.

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'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir (Free Online Version - English Translation).

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