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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
challenging
slow-paced
für mich, als eine leserin, die beauvoirs bücher großartig findet, war das sehr ... ernüchternd. vielleicht schreibe ich irgendwann ausführlicher über die probleme, die ich mit dem buch hatte, schließlich sollte man gerade bei so einem hochgelobten feministischen werk die eigene kritik sehr klar ausdrücken. mir war schon vor dem lesen bewusst, dass ich bei beauvoir auf binäres denken und fehlende intersektionalität stoßen würde, deswegen ist das gar nicht die größte kritik, die ich anbringen würde. aber dazu später mehr! ich werde mich vorher noch mit sekundärliteratur auseinandersetzen, um zu begreifen, welche auswirkungen ihr buch damals genau hatte. +++ stay tuned oder auch nicht +++
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
I loved this. Truly a remarkable piece of feminist literature.
It was such an uncomfortable and sad read, yet I kept rereading parts until I finally finished. I mean I just read this book because being a woman concerns me. So yeah femininity is only an artificial construction of societal and cultural requirements/commodities along time and space. Reading de Beauvoir makes me rethink my feminism and femininity a little, and think more about the need of new models for the coexistence of women and men. Perhaps this should be a good read for every woman, it refers what and why a woman is from perspectives like physiology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, politics, etc. In a sense, de Beauvoir has been a kind of psychotherapist that has guided me to understand my nature a wee bit better, I even feel more empathic, and probably I even want to contribute, maybe not to women liberation, but to woman understanding.
informative
slow-paced
Okay, so firstly: I read this book as research for my thesis about feminism. In my thesis, I talk about the different views on feminism of different philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir being one of them. Therefore, I have compared de Beauvoir's feminism with many other views, so I might be a little biased in my review.
I think Simone de Beauvoir makes some pretty good points in this book: for example her most famous line, that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. I think this is still one of the crucial aspects of modern feminism: it explains the gender differences without excluding people that don't identify with 'male' or 'female'. On the other hand, there are many points in her theory that I don't agree with, and I dare say that some wouldn't do women any good. In my opinion, she wants women to become more men-like in order to participate in society, which I don't think should be necessary.
On top of the content which I didn't always agree with, this book was very hard to read and it took me over four months to read it. Therefore, I've decided on giving this three stars.
If you're interested in feminism and Simone de Beauvoir, you might want to check out this easy to understand Youtube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMBYFXZknGQ
I most certainly found it interesting and it explains de Beauvoir's ideas in just a few sentences, after which her theory is compared to others.
I think Simone de Beauvoir makes some pretty good points in this book: for example her most famous line, that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. I think this is still one of the crucial aspects of modern feminism: it explains the gender differences without excluding people that don't identify with 'male' or 'female'. On the other hand, there are many points in her theory that I don't agree with, and I dare say that some wouldn't do women any good. In my opinion, she wants women to become more men-like in order to participate in society, which I don't think should be necessary.
On top of the content which I didn't always agree with, this book was very hard to read and it took me over four months to read it. Therefore, I've decided on giving this three stars.
If you're interested in feminism and Simone de Beauvoir, you might want to check out this easy to understand Youtube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMBYFXZknGQ
I most certainly found it interesting and it explains de Beauvoir's ideas in just a few sentences, after which her theory is compared to others.
http://lesfleursdelafoi.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/a-review-of-the-second-sex-by [full review on the link]
I understand the impact of this book and I agree with some of the critiques it makes, though I would not use the same arguments, I'm also against historical materialism. But I cannot wrap it around my head, this is so close to libertarianism that it's truly scary. At least she admits that socialism won't work. It still feels as if she didn't know what she wanted. Some of the arguments such as: "It's easier to blame one sex than to excuse the other", a quote by Montaigne, are very much applicable to modern feminism (which still does both to a great extent). I don't understand how women are simultaneously about half of the world's population when some of the statistics don't seem to match. What she has in hand demonstrates that somehow, more women die. Because of biology, and biology has been alered because of oppression. She never claimed women and men's biology to be exactly the same, but this is saying women have become weaker than they ought to be because of oppression and that there's no way to escape it. Hermaphrodites are neither, and women with more masculine traits because of hormones are still women, still oppressed.
So as long as we don't surrender to socialism, we'll keep hanging onto a comfortable oppression, because we side with men, and not with women from other races / classes. The fact that pregnancy is merely stated as passive suffering right after it's implied that physically it represents no benefit but that psychologically it might or might not be, that is a litle difficult to understand for me.
She also claims that women had no religion or history of their own and that restraint from sexual activities cannot be imposed by the state or anyone at all.
Matriarchy in the past is a myth according to her. Because the woman has never been an equal to man. She makes this very contradictory statement often heard from the mouths of feminists that says "Things are much better than they used to be, but women still have it much worse", while, at the same time, telling the reader to beware of feminists because it's all meaningless talk, they're essentialists still.
"Society has always been masculine and political power has always been in the hands of men".
Biological privilege is stated as the reason why patriarchy took over. The start of private property made women be much worse than they had been until up to that point because they became men's property. Still, destroying the family is nearly impossible: humans are social beings.
Romans made the situation a bit better by making her able to divorce. But at the same time, she's made independent from the family and denied many other rights such as professions. Prostitution and adultery are ways to cope, even when the latter is condemned by law and thus satirists start attacking women.
Christianity is oppressive and it has made the situation of the women go even more backwards. St. Paul reaffirms, in Beavouir's eyes, the Jewish tradition, strongly anti feminist (please, let me scream anti-semitism, at least). Ironically, Judith is a pop icon to modern day feminists. It's weird that she cherrypicks some Fathers of the Church to quote from, those who exactly make her point by claiming that marriage is not compatible with sainthood. I would have to check that, but in reality, I think that would enter in contradiction with the Holy Family. Perhaps one ought to remember that a lot of the thought of the Renaissance wasn't so distant from the Middle Ages, not to mention the start of the Marian cult... establishing the prayer through Rosary... all of that don't seem very oppressive practices to me. Hildegard von Bingen was a very important figure too.
Germans are also oppressive, subjugate women and the Middle Ages was a mixture of the two. Feudalism praised and also denigrated women. And in a span of four centuries, according to Beauvoir (from the 15th century to the 19th) things have remained pretty stable, except in the wealthy classes. Renaissance is highly praised.
The 17th century marks some entering into education, though not as organized and deep as men's. Women start getting involved in politics. Actresses came somewhere at the end of the 1500s. In the 18th century, liberty grows though the choices for women still are severe and few: marriage or convent. During the Ancient Regime, the shelter of women is literature.
Mention of Woolf's A Room of One's Own and her conception of the "sister of Shakespeare". There's a bit of french history in between. French Revolution did not change women's luck. Because it was male dominated.
Socialism is women's liberation. That, in her mind, is the key. At moments it's very reminiscent of Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed in its tone, if it werent by the topic being somewhat different, the Marxist rhetoric is utterly predictable.
Women and work from Marx's point of view and the creation of unions allow Beauvoir to deduce that the progress has been slow and that women have been exploited for longer than men as their rights took more time to be recognized.
One of the problems is the conciliation between the reproductive role and the working possibilities of women.
The very interesting part is when she tells how the Christian doctrine philosophically defended the anti-abortion stance even since St. Augustine, though of course she considers this as ancient moral which restricts the freedom of women. Obviously her politics advocate for birth control as she predicts that maybe in the future, women will be able to reduce the quantity of pregnancies they experience and dominate her body.
There's a section dedicated to laws of divorce and how they evolved in the US, Sweden and France. Praises John Stuart Mill and the Socialist Congress of 1879. Tells the history of women's suffrage and admits both the Catholics and extreme left see it as good (for different reasons, of course). Italy's fascism was antifeminist, while the USSR is the country where the feminist movement acquired major freedom to act.
All of it to conclude that the problem of women has not been solved by women but by men, and therefore this solution cannot be accepted. The only way women would get power is by abolishing their feminity. The new emancipation has resulted in double burden: work and family.It's curious that many feminists claim women to be liberated when being able to do the same as Beauvoir claims the exact opposite.
Her historical commentary and review gets reduced, often ambivalent but very critical of every religion, citing religious texts and social practices. Showing how all of these cults have marginalized women, and considers Christianity the most dangerous one, because she sees in the image of the Virgin and the consequences of marriage as well as the different, negative outlooks on menstruation and virginity.
Symbolism of women through male written an dominated philosophy, art and religion have contributed to her domination and categorization into what's known as the virgin / prostitute dichotomy. Women are trusted as mothers, educators, but also seen as deprived of their youth. Old women are not seen as something worthy of attention in a male dominated world which conceives women as objects. Passivenes through french literature and romances involving knights, as women are often kidnapped and rescued by men. She also shoes the contemproary validity of this conception with US crime novels and movies. It's an ideal that's man-made, where man projects his own trascendent plane. Once the woman is dominated through her inclusion in society as wife and mother (servant), she's deprived of her magic (sexual attractive).
Women's education is what's discussed in the fourth part. Women as they are, there's not such a thing. One is not a woman, rather becomes one. Freudian analysis of the baby or little kid psychological / instinct approach to the figure of the mother. Everything is a world of sensations. It also talks about how kids resent the separation from their mothers that's done progressively as they grow. But female kids still have the privilege of maternal attention. Men have an earlier separation from the mother, and what's demanded from them is more important, the role of the penis remakrs the difference that women point out. The destiny of women is another thing, they do not suffer this lack of sexual distinction. Debunks the myth of the female envy of the penis as presented by Freud because women tend to be ignorant of male anatomy until much later.
Influence of clothing in the self-perception of women and the consequences related to urinating. Dolls are passive objects given to girls as they do not have a body part to project themselves in, like boys do with their penises. The doll represents a body in its entirety. Sel-identification with the doll and self-objectification. Narcisssism. Boys are obliged to deprive from their anatomical discovery as they are expected to socialize, but in women, the tendency of kids to think of themselves as objects is reinforced. Women thinking of themselves as feminine is, then, a social construct, not a biological fact. To be something that is desirable, women must renounce to their autonomy, and this is what they're told. Clothing as severly excluding, male manners are something rejected.
Boys escape from their mother's understanding at an early age, girls must be included in the feminine world. Mothers have an ambivalent relationship with their daughters as they're their double but also someone they can take revenge on by imposing them their destiny. Girls resign to an education related to manners and aesthetics that sacrifices their freedom, unlike the boys. Girls and boys have different conceptions of motherhood during their early childhood. Girls are turned into housewives and tend to envy boys' manhood as they grow up.
When boys become older, the masculine superiority is affirmed and the hierarchy of sexes is discovered in the family structure. In all the dominant mythology, women have been created for men and not because of their own dignity. Fairies and such are more attractive than biblical myths as they escape male domination. Popular culture feeds her hope of having to rely on a man who will come to rescue her, the myth of the charming prince and this somehow shapes an early desire for men in little girls as old as 10. Games and dreams drive women towards passiveness. Because of this, they later perceive that they do not have the smae freedom as boys and do not desire to be girls. There's very few exceptions to the rule. De Beauvoir then proceeds to, once more, as she has done in the preface, compare this with the slavery of the blacks in the US.
Motherhood provokes horror in the girl who perceives the baby as a parasite which will alter her body, according to the author. it's important to note how these visions, while they preserve some truth attached, aren't as strong in the 21st century, as it is imposed to women to renounce to their feminity as much as possible, or to only use it when it can get her what she wants. Feminism has turned into an ambivalent protest where women are the puppets of companies' designs. There's many testimonies that back up her case, but I don't think that with everything that has happened since the publishing of this book, the fears remain exactly the same.
A perception of strangeness associated to the woman's body development that she cannot control (such as growth of their breasts and menstruation) during puberty is also a key factor in this part of the book. Of course, boys do not perceive their own body changes with such negativity and shame.
The body is an objective expression of the self during teenage years, to discover weakness destroys women and condemns them to passiveness. Because of all of these things, there's an inferiority complex that women develop. Women do not have initiative and do not plan activities alone, since they fear being raped, and because women are obliged to retain self control at all times, as it is socially imposed because of their sex. Their spontaneous behavior is tamed through this education in fear. Self-affirmation is essentially anti feminine as the patriarchy defines. Being male and a human being do not contradict each other, since ambition is a manly value. Dehumanization is the key to feminity. During teenage years, women have to renounce to their autonomy. There's not only a big difference between the past and the future, all her erotic impulses and relationships seem subordinated to social expectation and passiveness. This is when some women conceive themselves as frustrated projects of what was intended to be a boy and then they have a tendency to homosexuality. [?] (Oh,this is somewhat traditional for someone who believes that identities of feminity and masculinity are constructed, for she seems to imply that lesbians are just frustrated women that aimed to be men, then again I don't know enough about the nature of homosexuality and its causes to approve this, but in any case I'd believe it's the parents, or the environment where a person is raised in, that fails to show the person a way to relate to the other individual, and only teaches through fear and prohibition, though I'm not an advocate of sexual liberation at all)
Analysis of female friendships as a projection of homosexuality or extension of their narcissism. Men are to women like a divinity that provokes horror in them, and at the same time, a divinity they worship. She makes then a choice to be able to love a man despite certain obstacles that she has previewed in purpouse, to make of love an abstract, purely subjective experience that does not present any risky to her integrity (this is a bit hard to understand, and perhaps denotes some immaturity). If the person is near her, then it doesn't matter how unattractive and old he can be, if it's more further and inaccessible, then she'll consent to lay his eyes upon a more attractive man.It's the kind of love that reaffirms her narcissism with no real presence of the other. With this, the teenager can elaborate an intense emotional life, to cope with her fear and avoid it all costs. To elude the problems of sexuality, women become pretentious in partner choices. Maybe they do suffer of the same problem as men, aiming to be in a relationship with an ideal and by this logic, men would be responsible for their lack of realism
The topic of the female that's finally dominated, such as in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, is another topic that Simone de Beauvoir renders all too common and seductive for both men and women, for men because it reaffirms their dominant role in society. For women, because they have been educated as to accept the man's desires. Another common trope is the woman feeling fascinated by men and losing interest only once they are, in fact, capable of entering into a relationship, and are also drawn to men who pursue many women. Again, I've observed this is also common in men, a lack of proper education regarding the relationship of men and women has induced them to see women as objects that are either an ideal or all too common, but they're also seduced by "experienced" women while they'd also reject the fact that they're not as pure as their ideal conceived them.
Male desire provokes irritation and is flattering at the same time for women during teenage years. Women do fear as soon as they realize that such behavior may initiate them into passiveness. Laughter also is a form of rejection of sexuality that's common among teenagers. This is somehow similar and could be connected to Henri Bergson's theory of laughter as we are able to laugh about things we fear such as death or others. The use of language that's not proper, is also a way to challenge adults.Her theory is that some women become masochists as to prove men that they're not afraid of the sexual act [?].
When teenage boys challenge authority, they self-affirm their existence, according to Beauvoir this is not allowed to women. This is why some resort to destroying physical objects as a way to fight against her future as a servant. There's women that remain infantile for most of their lives and there's some who are able to be more mature as they grow up. These women who are able to bury childhood as a past phase, think of marriage more than love, and a social stable position as a result. Female friendships break as they're seen as rivals by each other, and the search for a man to settle down becomes more desperate as years go by. If women are distracted by personal projects, this phase will be less painful to her in a sentimental and sexual sense, but society [?] will put obstacles that will make her goal harder. Weomen will dedicate lesss time to thier study than thinking of finding a man because of how they have been brought up. A woman must sacrifice education if she wants to marry. Some women are destined to a long period of virginity because of personal circumstances that feed their fear of men.
Erotism of women is more complex than men's. Women are penetrated and impregnated by men through their vagina, which is only converted in an erotic center by intervertion of men, this will always imply some sort of violation, a kind of violence that turns her into a woman [?] (I have serious objections to this particular part, I'm pretty sure that men could see it this way, if they're not properly educated to conceive women as objects, and that women who fear men might see it this way, but it's not an objective fact). A diatribe about the nature of female orgasm follows before Simone de Beauvoir makes the assertion that: "Many men just aim to satisfy their desire and do not care for women during the act, women are objects during this event. Sex is only gotten through male consent and it only aims to satisfaction of the male sex" [?] Again, I have serious objections to that and I wholeheartedly point at oversexualization, pornography, promiscuity and similar kind of evils as a cause for this, but it's also possible that making this kind of assumption that a lot of men are like this and there's nothing we can do but turn into a socialist world which confuses equality with sameness is part of the problem.
There's a brief paragraph on the antiquity of dildos before she jumps into the all very known theory that society confined women into pure chastity and men into total sexual liberation (at least she doesn't attribute this to the church but to the ~patriarchy~, at the same time the church is seen as a patriarchal institution, so...it's more or less the same). To the man, the sexual act is conquest and victory. So men are seen as this aggressive animal which some women may reject for too long, and they become homosexuals or pedophiles (this is her theory, not mine). Then there's a few stereotypes of how women of different nationalities are and react to sex [?] (this, in a book by a feminist icon? Surprising but not any less disgusting). Comparation of male and female sexual desires. Frigidity might be a consequence of many insecurities concerning body image that women present and are reinforced by their husbands (this I cannot discuss, for I know absolutely nothing on the topic). Phallic penetration is always comparable to rape in its violence because it's not the caress or known pleasure women expect [?] (Again, I have serious objections to this because I think that while painful, rape is not just this and she's assuming all sexual acts will imply domination under the "patriarchy" even when men can openly reject a domination model). Also, the vocabulary which is used to refer to sexual excitement is to Beauvoir something that makes women feel ashamed for theit asosciate it with urinating.
I understand the impact of this book and I agree with some of the critiques it makes, though I would not use the same arguments, I'm also against historical materialism. But I cannot wrap it around my head, this is so close to libertarianism that it's truly scary. At least she admits that socialism won't work. It still feels as if she didn't know what she wanted. Some of the arguments such as: "It's easier to blame one sex than to excuse the other", a quote by Montaigne, are very much applicable to modern feminism (which still does both to a great extent). I don't understand how women are simultaneously about half of the world's population when some of the statistics don't seem to match. What she has in hand demonstrates that somehow, more women die. Because of biology, and biology has been alered because of oppression. She never claimed women and men's biology to be exactly the same, but this is saying women have become weaker than they ought to be because of oppression and that there's no way to escape it. Hermaphrodites are neither, and women with more masculine traits because of hormones are still women, still oppressed.
So as long as we don't surrender to socialism, we'll keep hanging onto a comfortable oppression, because we side with men, and not with women from other races / classes. The fact that pregnancy is merely stated as passive suffering right after it's implied that physically it represents no benefit but that psychologically it might or might not be, that is a litle difficult to understand for me.
She also claims that women had no religion or history of their own and that restraint from sexual activities cannot be imposed by the state or anyone at all.
Matriarchy in the past is a myth according to her. Because the woman has never been an equal to man. She makes this very contradictory statement often heard from the mouths of feminists that says "Things are much better than they used to be, but women still have it much worse", while, at the same time, telling the reader to beware of feminists because it's all meaningless talk, they're essentialists still.
"Society has always been masculine and political power has always been in the hands of men".
Biological privilege is stated as the reason why patriarchy took over. The start of private property made women be much worse than they had been until up to that point because they became men's property. Still, destroying the family is nearly impossible: humans are social beings.
Romans made the situation a bit better by making her able to divorce. But at the same time, she's made independent from the family and denied many other rights such as professions. Prostitution and adultery are ways to cope, even when the latter is condemned by law and thus satirists start attacking women.
Christianity is oppressive and it has made the situation of the women go even more backwards. St. Paul reaffirms, in Beavouir's eyes, the Jewish tradition, strongly anti feminist (please, let me scream anti-semitism, at least). Ironically, Judith is a pop icon to modern day feminists. It's weird that she cherrypicks some Fathers of the Church to quote from, those who exactly make her point by claiming that marriage is not compatible with sainthood. I would have to check that, but in reality, I think that would enter in contradiction with the Holy Family. Perhaps one ought to remember that a lot of the thought of the Renaissance wasn't so distant from the Middle Ages, not to mention the start of the Marian cult... establishing the prayer through Rosary... all of that don't seem very oppressive practices to me. Hildegard von Bingen was a very important figure too.
Germans are also oppressive, subjugate women and the Middle Ages was a mixture of the two. Feudalism praised and also denigrated women. And in a span of four centuries, according to Beauvoir (from the 15th century to the 19th) things have remained pretty stable, except in the wealthy classes. Renaissance is highly praised.
The 17th century marks some entering into education, though not as organized and deep as men's. Women start getting involved in politics. Actresses came somewhere at the end of the 1500s. In the 18th century, liberty grows though the choices for women still are severe and few: marriage or convent. During the Ancient Regime, the shelter of women is literature.
Mention of Woolf's A Room of One's Own and her conception of the "sister of Shakespeare". There's a bit of french history in between. French Revolution did not change women's luck. Because it was male dominated.
Socialism is women's liberation. That, in her mind, is the key. At moments it's very reminiscent of Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed in its tone, if it werent by the topic being somewhat different, the Marxist rhetoric is utterly predictable.
Women and work from Marx's point of view and the creation of unions allow Beauvoir to deduce that the progress has been slow and that women have been exploited for longer than men as their rights took more time to be recognized.
One of the problems is the conciliation between the reproductive role and the working possibilities of women.
The very interesting part is when she tells how the Christian doctrine philosophically defended the anti-abortion stance even since St. Augustine, though of course she considers this as ancient moral which restricts the freedom of women. Obviously her politics advocate for birth control as she predicts that maybe in the future, women will be able to reduce the quantity of pregnancies they experience and dominate her body.
There's a section dedicated to laws of divorce and how they evolved in the US, Sweden and France. Praises John Stuart Mill and the Socialist Congress of 1879. Tells the history of women's suffrage and admits both the Catholics and extreme left see it as good (for different reasons, of course). Italy's fascism was antifeminist, while the USSR is the country where the feminist movement acquired major freedom to act.
All of it to conclude that the problem of women has not been solved by women but by men, and therefore this solution cannot be accepted. The only way women would get power is by abolishing their feminity. The new emancipation has resulted in double burden: work and family.It's curious that many feminists claim women to be liberated when being able to do the same as Beauvoir claims the exact opposite.
Her historical commentary and review gets reduced, often ambivalent but very critical of every religion, citing religious texts and social practices. Showing how all of these cults have marginalized women, and considers Christianity the most dangerous one, because she sees in the image of the Virgin and the consequences of marriage as well as the different, negative outlooks on menstruation and virginity.
Symbolism of women through male written an dominated philosophy, art and religion have contributed to her domination and categorization into what's known as the virgin / prostitute dichotomy. Women are trusted as mothers, educators, but also seen as deprived of their youth. Old women are not seen as something worthy of attention in a male dominated world which conceives women as objects. Passivenes through french literature and romances involving knights, as women are often kidnapped and rescued by men. She also shoes the contemproary validity of this conception with US crime novels and movies. It's an ideal that's man-made, where man projects his own trascendent plane. Once the woman is dominated through her inclusion in society as wife and mother (servant), she's deprived of her magic (sexual attractive).
Women's education is what's discussed in the fourth part. Women as they are, there's not such a thing. One is not a woman, rather becomes one. Freudian analysis of the baby or little kid psychological / instinct approach to the figure of the mother. Everything is a world of sensations. It also talks about how kids resent the separation from their mothers that's done progressively as they grow. But female kids still have the privilege of maternal attention. Men have an earlier separation from the mother, and what's demanded from them is more important, the role of the penis remakrs the difference that women point out. The destiny of women is another thing, they do not suffer this lack of sexual distinction. Debunks the myth of the female envy of the penis as presented by Freud because women tend to be ignorant of male anatomy until much later.
Influence of clothing in the self-perception of women and the consequences related to urinating. Dolls are passive objects given to girls as they do not have a body part to project themselves in, like boys do with their penises. The doll represents a body in its entirety. Sel-identification with the doll and self-objectification. Narcisssism. Boys are obliged to deprive from their anatomical discovery as they are expected to socialize, but in women, the tendency of kids to think of themselves as objects is reinforced. Women thinking of themselves as feminine is, then, a social construct, not a biological fact. To be something that is desirable, women must renounce to their autonomy, and this is what they're told. Clothing as severly excluding, male manners are something rejected.
Boys escape from their mother's understanding at an early age, girls must be included in the feminine world. Mothers have an ambivalent relationship with their daughters as they're their double but also someone they can take revenge on by imposing them their destiny. Girls resign to an education related to manners and aesthetics that sacrifices their freedom, unlike the boys. Girls and boys have different conceptions of motherhood during their early childhood. Girls are turned into housewives and tend to envy boys' manhood as they grow up.
When boys become older, the masculine superiority is affirmed and the hierarchy of sexes is discovered in the family structure. In all the dominant mythology, women have been created for men and not because of their own dignity. Fairies and such are more attractive than biblical myths as they escape male domination. Popular culture feeds her hope of having to rely on a man who will come to rescue her, the myth of the charming prince and this somehow shapes an early desire for men in little girls as old as 10. Games and dreams drive women towards passiveness. Because of this, they later perceive that they do not have the smae freedom as boys and do not desire to be girls. There's very few exceptions to the rule. De Beauvoir then proceeds to, once more, as she has done in the preface, compare this with the slavery of the blacks in the US.
Motherhood provokes horror in the girl who perceives the baby as a parasite which will alter her body, according to the author. it's important to note how these visions, while they preserve some truth attached, aren't as strong in the 21st century, as it is imposed to women to renounce to their feminity as much as possible, or to only use it when it can get her what she wants. Feminism has turned into an ambivalent protest where women are the puppets of companies' designs. There's many testimonies that back up her case, but I don't think that with everything that has happened since the publishing of this book, the fears remain exactly the same.
A perception of strangeness associated to the woman's body development that she cannot control (such as growth of their breasts and menstruation) during puberty is also a key factor in this part of the book. Of course, boys do not perceive their own body changes with such negativity and shame.
The body is an objective expression of the self during teenage years, to discover weakness destroys women and condemns them to passiveness. Because of all of these things, there's an inferiority complex that women develop. Women do not have initiative and do not plan activities alone, since they fear being raped, and because women are obliged to retain self control at all times, as it is socially imposed because of their sex. Their spontaneous behavior is tamed through this education in fear. Self-affirmation is essentially anti feminine as the patriarchy defines. Being male and a human being do not contradict each other, since ambition is a manly value. Dehumanization is the key to feminity. During teenage years, women have to renounce to their autonomy. There's not only a big difference between the past and the future, all her erotic impulses and relationships seem subordinated to social expectation and passiveness. This is when some women conceive themselves as frustrated projects of what was intended to be a boy and then they have a tendency to homosexuality. [?] (Oh,this is somewhat traditional for someone who believes that identities of feminity and masculinity are constructed, for she seems to imply that lesbians are just frustrated women that aimed to be men, then again I don't know enough about the nature of homosexuality and its causes to approve this, but in any case I'd believe it's the parents, or the environment where a person is raised in, that fails to show the person a way to relate to the other individual, and only teaches through fear and prohibition, though I'm not an advocate of sexual liberation at all)
Analysis of female friendships as a projection of homosexuality or extension of their narcissism. Men are to women like a divinity that provokes horror in them, and at the same time, a divinity they worship. She makes then a choice to be able to love a man despite certain obstacles that she has previewed in purpouse, to make of love an abstract, purely subjective experience that does not present any risky to her integrity (this is a bit hard to understand, and perhaps denotes some immaturity). If the person is near her, then it doesn't matter how unattractive and old he can be, if it's more further and inaccessible, then she'll consent to lay his eyes upon a more attractive man.It's the kind of love that reaffirms her narcissism with no real presence of the other. With this, the teenager can elaborate an intense emotional life, to cope with her fear and avoid it all costs. To elude the problems of sexuality, women become pretentious in partner choices. Maybe they do suffer of the same problem as men, aiming to be in a relationship with an ideal and by this logic, men would be responsible for their lack of realism
The topic of the female that's finally dominated, such as in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, is another topic that Simone de Beauvoir renders all too common and seductive for both men and women, for men because it reaffirms their dominant role in society. For women, because they have been educated as to accept the man's desires. Another common trope is the woman feeling fascinated by men and losing interest only once they are, in fact, capable of entering into a relationship, and are also drawn to men who pursue many women. Again, I've observed this is also common in men, a lack of proper education regarding the relationship of men and women has induced them to see women as objects that are either an ideal or all too common, but they're also seduced by "experienced" women while they'd also reject the fact that they're not as pure as their ideal conceived them.
Male desire provokes irritation and is flattering at the same time for women during teenage years. Women do fear as soon as they realize that such behavior may initiate them into passiveness. Laughter also is a form of rejection of sexuality that's common among teenagers. This is somehow similar and could be connected to Henri Bergson's theory of laughter as we are able to laugh about things we fear such as death or others. The use of language that's not proper, is also a way to challenge adults.Her theory is that some women become masochists as to prove men that they're not afraid of the sexual act [?].
When teenage boys challenge authority, they self-affirm their existence, according to Beauvoir this is not allowed to women. This is why some resort to destroying physical objects as a way to fight against her future as a servant. There's women that remain infantile for most of their lives and there's some who are able to be more mature as they grow up. These women who are able to bury childhood as a past phase, think of marriage more than love, and a social stable position as a result. Female friendships break as they're seen as rivals by each other, and the search for a man to settle down becomes more desperate as years go by. If women are distracted by personal projects, this phase will be less painful to her in a sentimental and sexual sense, but society [?] will put obstacles that will make her goal harder. Weomen will dedicate lesss time to thier study than thinking of finding a man because of how they have been brought up. A woman must sacrifice education if she wants to marry. Some women are destined to a long period of virginity because of personal circumstances that feed their fear of men.
Erotism of women is more complex than men's. Women are penetrated and impregnated by men through their vagina, which is only converted in an erotic center by intervertion of men, this will always imply some sort of violation, a kind of violence that turns her into a woman [?] (I have serious objections to this particular part, I'm pretty sure that men could see it this way, if they're not properly educated to conceive women as objects, and that women who fear men might see it this way, but it's not an objective fact). A diatribe about the nature of female orgasm follows before Simone de Beauvoir makes the assertion that: "Many men just aim to satisfy their desire and do not care for women during the act, women are objects during this event. Sex is only gotten through male consent and it only aims to satisfaction of the male sex" [?] Again, I have serious objections to that and I wholeheartedly point at oversexualization, pornography, promiscuity and similar kind of evils as a cause for this, but it's also possible that making this kind of assumption that a lot of men are like this and there's nothing we can do but turn into a socialist world which confuses equality with sameness is part of the problem.
There's a brief paragraph on the antiquity of dildos before she jumps into the all very known theory that society confined women into pure chastity and men into total sexual liberation (at least she doesn't attribute this to the church but to the ~patriarchy~, at the same time the church is seen as a patriarchal institution, so...it's more or less the same). To the man, the sexual act is conquest and victory. So men are seen as this aggressive animal which some women may reject for too long, and they become homosexuals or pedophiles (this is her theory, not mine). Then there's a few stereotypes of how women of different nationalities are and react to sex [?] (this, in a book by a feminist icon? Surprising but not any less disgusting). Comparation of male and female sexual desires. Frigidity might be a consequence of many insecurities concerning body image that women present and are reinforced by their husbands (this I cannot discuss, for I know absolutely nothing on the topic). Phallic penetration is always comparable to rape in its violence because it's not the caress or known pleasure women expect [?] (Again, I have serious objections to this because I think that while painful, rape is not just this and she's assuming all sexual acts will imply domination under the "patriarchy" even when men can openly reject a domination model). Also, the vocabulary which is used to refer to sexual excitement is to Beauvoir something that makes women feel ashamed for theit asosciate it with urinating.
Gonna come back to this one when I don’t have 3 nonfiction books checked out from the library with looming due dates. Oops.
