Casi cuatro meses nos ha llevado leer a Simone en el grupo de lectura.
Ha sido todo un reto y no sabéis lo orgullosa que me siento de haber llegado al final.
No es un libro fácil; requiere un esfuerzo y un trabajo brutal, no solo por la forma sino por el contenido, pero el viaje ha merecido mucho la pena a pesar del saborcito agridulce (spoiler: no hemos avanzado tanto, queridas)

Me ha gustado leerlo ahora, con mi bagaje vital y lector, porque gracias a eso, he podido tener una visión más crítica de 'El segundo sexo'.
Hay cosas con las que estoy de acuerdo y otras no tanto.
Pero, sin duda, es un libro que sorprende por la atemporalidad de muchas ideas y la valentía de Simone al exponerlas en los años 40, más en el entorno académico masculino en el que se movía.

También es fundamental tener en cuenta el contexto en el que se escribió -me sigue fascinando que lo publicara en 1949- y el momento en el que estaba Simone al escribirlo (gracias Tania por tus aportes con la biografía que me han ayudado a entender el tono y el por qué lo escribió de esta manera).
Este libro es un imprescindible como documento histórico del feminismo que ha servido de base para entender mucho de lo que nos ha llegado hoy, me quedo con eso.

Tener la posibilidad de comentar este libro con mis compañeras de #elcirculodemedusa es lo que más valoro. Estoy muy contenta y agradecida por formar parte de esta pequeña gran familia de mujeres con las que no paro de aprender, es de lo mejorcito que me ha pasado este año. ¡Mil gracias por este viaje chicas!
Y a ti, querida Simone, gracias por tu inmensa voz.

Simone De Beauvoir, pareja de Sartre, utiliza la variación del método de la dialéctica existencialista propuesta en el Ser y La nada.

El libro es sumamente denso, son 902 páginas de ensayo, probablemente el ensayo más significativo en el tema, el cual trata absolutamente todos los temas y etapas que en el ciclo de vida de una mujer se dan. La biología no determina la superioridad del hombre por a, b o c motivo, no existe tal cosa, simplemente una diferencia.

Víctimas de poliandria, de violencia, de restricciones, de prejuicios, y de una infinidad de circunstancias impuestas, De Beauvoir explica lo que ya es verdad, lo que está plasmado en la historia para que podamos entender de que somos la misma especie homo sapiens que no ha desarrollado del todo su sapiencia; se exige igualdad, la emancipación es colocar al mismo nivel todas las piezas, es poder apreciar, es incentivar que no existe trato diferencial para ningún individuo por género o casta, es solamente pedir igualdad de derechos, en medida de lo que se pueda.

Es importante mencionar que Simone escribió esta magnum opus en 1949, en esa época no existía ni siquiera el descubrimiento de la estructura del ADN (creo que en 1962 se otorgó el Nobel de Medicina a Crick y Watson), mucho menos existía la neurociencia como se la conoce hoy, y muchísimo menos la psicología evolutiva como rama.

El ensayo es excelente, pero está errado. Lamentablemente, decir que el sexo es ÚNICAMENTE una construcción social, es falso. Pero no es culpa de Simone, simplemente no existían las ciencias que existen ahora que en efecto, establecen diferencias en el cableado cerebral tanto del hombre como de la mujer. Existen diferencias biológicas, como hormonales, proteínicas, cerebrales, etc; la antropología forense sabe cómo diferencia una cadera masculina de una femenina (cosa que ningún transexual podrá ocultar, pero ese es otro asunto).

En fin, se equivoca, y es un error atribuible al Zeitgeist de la época, y más aún a la ciencia. La psicología evolutiva es una ciencia objetiva, y lamentablemente el pensamiento progresista (identity politics) está alterando la forma de pensar de la juventud particularmente.

No se equivoca sin embargo, cuando en el final exige justicia, y derechos; debemos reconocer nuestras diferencias, ya que nosotros (hombres) ganamos más en partidos de fútbol (por razones que Gad Saad o Steven Pinker pueden explicar), así como las mujeres ganan muchísimas veces más en modelaje. Sin embargo, es esencial que se respeten siempre incluso nuestras diferencias biológicas, las cuales se manifiestan de manera social. Es un ensayo que le hace falta complementar con la ciencia actual, ya que una construcción social es algo que pertenece al reino de lo -subjetivo- y no es una realidad -objetiva-.

Es importante dar a notar que la psicología evolutiva determina que -no existe determinismo biológico-, por tanto, -y continuando con la tesis de Simone-, que tengas útero es una realidad biológica, pero, la sociedad, pese a que reconozca que puedes construir un ser humano gracias a la evolución, y luego darle de lactar (somos mamíferos) únicamente porque la mujer genera una enzima llamada prolactina, no se tiene que obligarlas a ser madres, esa es una cosa totalmente distinta.

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.

Beauvoir said that only when writing The Second Sex had she understood that the vast majority of women simply did not have the choices that she had had and that women are, in fact, defined and treated as the second sex by a male-oriented society (Beauvoir, 1976).

This is an existentialist feminist philosophical book. So, it's super interesting and intelligent. And it's a very good book, in fact. Especially for one written in 1940s Europe. This review contains a lot of quotes, but I just had to share them. I also like re-reading my reviews so these quotes are mostly for me to come back to and think about again later.

If the ‘vast majority of women’, as Beauvoir thinks, are oppressed everywhere, why do they often accept their situation? She thinks that women, like all ‘economically and politically dominated peoples anywhere’ first have to realise that they are in a disadvantaged and unfair position, and then they have to think it is possible to change it. Beauvoir presents women are shaped by their position in society to the point that often they do not even realise that they are oppressed.

"… those [women] who have the most to lose from taking a stand, that is, women like me who have carved out a successful sinecure or career, have to be willing to risk insecurity – be it merely ridicule – in order to gain self-respect. And they have to understand that those of their sisters who are most exploited will be the last to join them. A worker’s wife, for example, is least free to join the movement. She knows that her husband is more exploited than most feminist leaders and that he depends on her role as the housewife-mother to survive himself. Anyway, for all these reasons, women did not move."

What, Beauvoir asks, does it mean to be a woman? Beauvoir rejects the essentialist view, which contradicts the fundamental existentialist claim that existence precedes essence, that the free choices of our consciousness determine what we are. In this sense, her famous formula ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (Le deuxième sexe II: 13/267) is for her, a philosophical platitude. But Beauvoir also rejects the anti-essentialist view: Being a woman is, at least in our world, not a casual fact, irrelevant to a person’s core identity - any more than is being Jewish or black or old. Nor is being a woman simply a matter of one’s own choice: precisely how you are a woman may be up to you, but the fact that you are a woman and that this fact makes a great deal of difference is imposed on you by your situation. On that view, being a woman could limit my freedom only to the extent that I chose it to be a limitation. Beauvoir, however, recognizes that some features of my situation may well be obstacles to my freedom no matter how I choose. It does not follow that such a feature must always be an obstacle: we can imagine a situation in which being a woman is of no more significance than having blue eyes. But the fact is that in the current historical situation, being a woman does restrict your freedom, no matter how you choose to live your life. This is a significant revision of the naïve existentialist conception of freedom.

"[W]hat is a woman? ‘Tota mulier in utero: she is a womb,’ some say. Yet speaking of certain women, the experts proclaim, ‘They are not women’, even though they have a uterus like the others. Everyone agrees there are females in the human species; today, as in the past, they make up about half of humanity; and yet we are told that ‘femininity is in jeopardy’; we are urged, ‘Be women, stay women, become women.’ So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven? Is a frilly petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women zealously strive to embody it, the model has never been patented. It is typically described in vague and shimmering terms borrowed from a clairvoyant’s vocabulary. If there is no such thing today as femininity, it is because there never was. Does the word ‘woman’, then, have no content? It is what advocates of Enlightenment philosophy, rationalism or nominalism vigorously assert: women are, among human beings, merely those who are arbitrarily designated by the word ‘woman’."
n  "My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, whoever we are, should be considered as human beings.’ But nominalism is a doctrine that falls a bit short; and it is easy for anti-feminists to show that women are not men. Certainly woman like man is a human being; but such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every concrete human being is always uniquely situated. Rejecting the notions of the eternal feminine, the black soul or the Jewish character is not to deny that there are today Jews, blacks or women: this denial is not a liberation for those concerned, but an inauthentic flight. Clearly, no woman can claim without bad faith to be situated beyond her sex."n

"Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularises it. ‘The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ Aristotle said. ‘We should regard women’s nature as suffering from natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas in his turn decreed that woman was an ‘incomplete man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is what the Genesis story symbolises, where Eve appears as if drawn from Adam’s ‘supernumerary’ bone, in Bossuet’s words. Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being."

Even when a woman's rights are recognised abstractly, long-standing habit keeps them from being concretely manifested in customs.

And she continues,
"To prove women’s inferiority, antifeminists began to draw not only, as before, on religion, philosophy and theology, but also on science: biology, experimental psychology, and so forth. At most they were willing to grant ‘separate but equal status’ to the other sex. That winning formula is most significant: it is exactly that formula the Jim Crow laws put into practice with regard to black Americans; this so-called egalitarian segregation served only to introduce the most extreme forms of discrimination. This convergence is in no way pure chance: whether it is race, caste, class or sex reduced to an inferior condition, the justification process is the same."

A must-read. Iconic. You don't necessarily have to be a seasoned existentialist to be super interested or convinced by what she says.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex became a crucial work for the feminist movement that developed from the 1960s onwards, although it was first published in 1949. Beauvoir was not only aware of the delay of its impact, but also regarded it as consistent with the inevitable obstacles that women encounter in understanding their own situation.

Confession for my book club buddies: I went ahead and finished.
I know we have like 30% of the book left to go, but I reached the point where I wanted to get the whole thing over and done with already.

This is an impressive book. It is impressive for 2025. I can only imagine how impressive it was for 1949. I respect Beauvoir's ability to jump from history to philosophy to psychology to literature. She is clearly well read and put a lot of thought and work into this book.

Yet for all that, I found most of this book a bit like studying Freud as an undergraduate. Once you get past all the shock value, your professor shrugs and says 'but most of these theories have been discredited. You just need to know his theories because they are important historical footnotes, not accurate representations.'

While reading this with my book club has convinced me there is more nuance here than an initial read would assume, I still can't say I find this book more than an interesting historical footnote.

My biggest frustration is that it hardly feels like Beauvoir knows women, or at least she doesn't know women outside of her class and race. (And those she does know, she rather seems to despise.) The book is full of sweeping generalizations about womanhood that just feel awkwardly irrelevant or untrue. Then she provides "proof" by referencing either fringe mental health cases or nineteenth century novelists (Tolstoy's female characters and/or wife being a favorite of hers for providing 'proof.')

To be fair, if she wrote this book today, it would probably look very different. It is very much a product of its era. She makes some interesting points. But she also spends an inordinate amount of time focused on women with no real knowledge of sex ed and bemoaning their plight. It was hard for me to reconcile her view of women with my own experience, or that of the women (married and single!) I know today.

(But hey, my book club still has a few more weeks to convince me otherwise.)

ماجرای غم انگیز زن، تضاد است.تضاد بین طلبِ اساسیِ هر ضمیری که پیوسته خود را به مثابه اصل مطرح میکند و مقتضیات وضعی که او را به مثابه غیر اصلی در نظر میگیرد.
مرد نیروهای خاصِ نوع را جزئی از شخصیت خود کرده است،حال آنکه زن ، برده ی نوع است و بیش از مرد، به خدمت نوع گرفته شده است.به عبارتی مرد، فعالیت خود را میدهد و زن، شخصِ خود را...

در حاشیه ی جهان قرار داشتن برای زنی که میخواهد آن را از نو بیافریند، موقعیت مناسبی نیست، برای سربراوردن در ورای معلومات ، ابتدا باید عمیقا در آن ریشه دواند.خواسته زنان این نیست که در زنانگی خود مورد تجلیل قرار گیرند، بلکه می خواهند در آن ها نیز، مانند مجموع بشریت، تعالی بر حالیت برتری داشته باشد.اما موانعی در این راه وجود دارد: امتیاز اقتصادی که مردان طی سالیان در اختیار گرفته اند، ارزش اجتماعی آنان، اعتبار ازدواج و فایده ی وجود تکیه گاهی مردانه زن را ناگزیر می‌کند که به شدت بخواهد مورد خوشایند مردان قرار گیرد.همه چیز دختر جوان را تشویق میکند که در انتظار شاهزاده زیبا، ثروت و سعادت بماند ولی به تنهایی برای رسیدن به پیروزی دشوار و نامطمئن نکوشد.
مرد، از اندازه گرفتن فاصله ای که او را از زن جدا میکند لذت میبرد، گهگاه او را به سوی خود می کشد، به او رفعت می‌بخشد، او را به تصرف خود در می آورد و سپس به دور می افکند.مردها تا حدود نسبتاً زیادی می پذیرند که زن، فردی مشابه و برابر باشد، ولی باز هم توقع دارند که زن به صورت غیر اصلی باقی بماند.این دو سرنوشت برای زن ناسازگارند....

زنها جز آنچه مردان حاضر شده اند به آنان واگذار کنند، چیزی کسب نکرده اند.هیچ چیز را به زور نگرفته اند، بلکه دریافت داشته اند.علت این است که آنان وسایل واقعی و ملموس ِ گِرد آمدن در واحدی که از طریق مخالفت ورزیدن بتواند خود را مطرح کند ندارند.آنان گذشته، تاریخ، و مذهبی که خاص خودشان باشد،ندارند و فاقد همبستگی در کار و سودا نیز هستند.زنان بصورت پراکنده در میان مردان به سر می برند.
فشار اجتماعی شدیدی زن را فرا میخواند که در ازدواج، موقعیت اجتماعی و توجیهی بجوید لذا به ظاهر خود، به مرد و به عشق می اندیشد و جز بر حسب ضرورت به مطالعه و کسب و کار نمی پردازد.اینجا موضوع ِ ضعف نیروی فکری و ناتوانی از تمرکز حواس در میان نیست، بلکه موضوع تقسیم علایقی که به خوبی قابل آشتی نیستند مطرح است.
زن وقتی چتر حمایت مرد بر سرش گسترده نباشد، در برابر طبقه ای برتر که خود را مهاجم، اهل تمسخر یا مخاصم نشان می دهد، خود را خلع سلاح شده می یابد در حالی که هیچ مرد جوانی ازدواج را به مثابه طرح اساسی خود در نظر نمی گیرد و چیزی که شایستگی ِ بزرگسالان را به او می دهد، موقعیت اقتصادی است.مرد از زمان بلوغ به امور جهانی توجه می یابد، اندکی حقوق میداند، در جریان سیاست است، به حزب، سندیکا یا انجمنی وابسته است.چه کارگر و چه شهروند فکرش درگیر عمل است.یعنی اینکه مردِ متوسط دارای تکنیک استدلال، میل به واقعیت ها و تجربه و نوعی حس انتقادی است. در مقابل زنها حتی اگر کتاب خوانده باشند، در سخنرانی ها حضور یافته باشد، به هنرهای کوچک تفننی نزدیک شده باشند، شناخت هایشان که کم و بیش بر اثر تصادف روی هم جمع شده،فرهنگی پدید نمی آورد! اما این بر اثر عیب و نقص مغزی نیست که زنها نمیتوانند به استدلال بپردازند، علت آن است که عمل، آنهارا به این کار ناگزیر نکرده است.اگر لازم بود عمل کند، ناگزیر بود روشن بینی داشته باشد، در حالی که میتواند در میان مِه انتظار شاهزاده رویاهایش را بکشد...زن بر اثر حجب و حیا، بر اثر ناشیگری ویا بر اثر تنبلی، وظیفه ساختن عقاید مشترک در باب تمام موضوعات کلی و انتزاعی را به عهده مرد میگذارد...

اگر زن، خود را به مثابه عامل غیر اصلی که هرگز به اصل باز نمی گردد، آشکار میکند، از آن روست که خود به این بازگشت دست نمی زند!
زن همراه با خطر اقتصادی، از خطر نوعی آزادی که بدون کمک باید هدف های او را ابداع کند، می‌گریزد.دختر جوان وقف انفعال شده ولی خواهان قدرت است پس مجبور است به جادوی پیکر خود که مردان را به زیر یوغ او در می آورد اعتقاد داشته باشد و به جادوی سرنوشت کلی خود، که خواسته هایش را بی آنکه ناگزیر به انجام کاری باشد، براورده سازد.حتی اگر استقلال هم بر زنها مجاز شناخته شده باشد، باز هم راه عشق است که به نظر اغلب آنان جذابترین می رسد، به عهده گرفتن ِ اقدام زندگی، کاری اضطراب آور است.
حال که مرد برای زن، تجسم بخشِ سرنوشت است،زنان بر حسب کمیت و کیفیت مردانی که تابع قدرت خود کرده اند، موفقیت خود را می سنجد.

زن در دنیا، هدفهایی که با حرکتی آزاد و موثر خود را به سویشان بیفکند نمی یابد، او در حالیت غوطه ور است.زنها همیشه می‌کوشند حفظ کنند، اصلاح کنند و سامان دهند، نه آنکه خراب کنند و از نو بسازند.آنها سازشها و مصالحه ها را بر انقلابها ترجیح می دهند.
زن میلی به راه حل های قطعی ندارد، بر ضدّ مرد، برضد زندگی، بر ضد وضعیت خود اعتراض می کند ولی از آنها نمی گریزد.او امکان های لازم را برای این که جامعه ی دیگری بسازد ندارد، با این همه به جامعه ملحق نمی شود.در نیمه راه طغیان و بردگی، با کراهت، به اقتدار مردانه رضایت می دهد...در این میان گاهی مذهب، با ادعای پیروزی بر بی عدالتی، حتی وسوسه طغیان را هم از بین میبرد. اینجا زن دیگر از تعالی خود محروم نیست، زیرا حالیت خود را وقف آسمان کرده است!
از لحظه ای که زن دیگر انگل نباشد، دیگر بین او و دنیا، نیازی به واسطه مذکر نیست.زنِ تولیدکننده و فعال، تعالی خود را به دست می آورد و در طرح هایش، خود را به نحو واقعی، به مثابه نفس، آشکار می کند.اما زن معمولا ادای کار کردن را درمی آورد و کار نمی کند، چون به فضیلت های جادوییِ منفعل بودن اعتقاد دارد.بخش اعظم تنبلی زنان را این امر توجیه می کندکه آنها پیوسته خود را نمایش دهنده در نظر گرفته اند و گمان می کنند که ارزش هایشان ناشی از موهبتی است که در آنان جای گرفته است و تصور نمی کنند که ارزش بتواند اکتسابی باشد و خطا و اشتباه از جانب خودشان را چون نقصی مادرزاد و فاجعه ای جبران ناپذیر تلقی میکنند ، نه گشاینده ی مسیر پیشرفت...
زن به جای اینکه خود را با سخاوت در اختیار اثری که به آن دست می یازد، قراردهد، آن را چون زینتِ ساده ی زندگی اش در نظر می گیرد و این واسطه ی غیراصلی، به زن اجازه میدهد که واقعیت اصلی یعنی شخص خودش را آشکارا به معرض تماشا بگذارد.

چیزی که زن امروزی فاقد آن است، همان فراموش کردن خویش است.اما انسان برای فراموش کردن خود، ابتدا باید به نحوی اساسی مطمئن باشد که خود را یافته است.زن که در دنیای مردها تازه از راه رسیده به شمار می آید ، هنوز گرفتارتر از آن است که به دنبال خود بگردد.زن جرات و همت خود را صرف از بین بردن سرابها میکند و آن وقت وحشت زده در آستانه واقعیت قرار میگیرد...اما کار تازه از اینجا آغاز می شود...... دستیابی به هویت شخصی و گام نهادن در مسیر اهداف و آرمانهای شخصی چیزیست که اگر زن به آن نائل شود، میتواند خود را به مثابه نفس، به رسمیت بشناسد و در کنار آن برای مرد، به عنوان دیگری هم مطرح باشد.دوجانبه بودن رابطه آنها، معجزه هایی را که تقسیم موجودات انسانی، به دو دسته ی مجزا ایجاد میکند، یعنی میل، تصاحب، عشق و ماجرا را از بین نخواهد برد و کلمه هایی چون بخشیدن، تسخیر کردن و به هم پیوستن که مارا به هیجان می آورند، معناهای خود را حفظ خواهند کرد....

One of the greatest intellectuals. I haven't re-read her work in a while, so I have been biting off bits of this (one of my favorites) for the last few weeks. If you're a woman of any age, this is a book I'd recommend in a stack of 20 books to read at least once in your lifetime.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐+++

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

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

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

Siento que llevo leyendo este libro toda una vida. ¿Soy la misma que cuando lo empecé? No lo sé. Lo que sí es seguro es que me siento reivindicada como mujer y como ser humano.

Evidentemente, el paradigma está cambiando, pero no por eso es menos doloroso ver reflejadas algunas de nuestras conductas o las de las mujeres de nuestro entorno. La sociedad que nos es descrita resuena lejana y familiar al mismo tiempo.

Simone no juzga, expone. Analiza. Puedes estar o no de acuerdo, pero no puedes escapar de ella: sus reflexiones penetran dentro de ti y sacuden los cimientos de murallas que ni sabías que existían.

El mundo no volverá a ser el mismo tras haberla leído.

Donna si nasce o si diventa? Cosa conduce il sesso femminile a vedersi sempre un passo indietro rispetto all'uomo, a vivere una costante sensazione d'inadeguatezza, debolezza, fragilità? Perché la società seguita a pensare in termine di "maschi" e "femmine" e mai in termini di "persone"? A questi e altri interrogativi, la lucida analisi di una delle più fini intellettuali del Novecento cerca una risposta razionale. E non lo fa ricorrendo a triti luoghi comuni, bensì analizzando la figura della donna dal punto di vista biologico e psicologico ed esaminando con grande acume tutti i condizionamenti psicologici, religiosi, sessuali, legati alla tradizione, al mito, alle consuetudini sociali che, nei secoli, l'hanno indotta a incarnare "tipi" più o meno coincidenti con i desideri maschili e a perder il proprio diritto a formarsi come semplice individuo.

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 feminist philosophy and the starting point of second-wave feminism.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 2003میلادی

عنوان: جنس دوم، تجربه عینی؛ نویسنده: سیمون دوبوار؛ مترجم: قاسم صنعوی؛ تهران، توس، چاپ پنجم 1382؛ در 728ص؛ شابک 9643155625؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 20م

کتاب جنس دوم در دو جلد نگاشته شده؛ جلد نخست در سه قسمت با نامهای «سرنوشت»؛ «تاریخ»؛ و «اسطوره»؛ و جلد دوم در چهار قسمت با عنوانهای: «شکل‌گیری»؛ «موقعیت»؛ «توجیه‌ها»؛ و «به سوی رهایی» هستند؛

بر این باور دارم، که بانو «سیمون»، توانائیهای شگفت انگیز بسیاری داشتند، بررسیها و یافته های ایشان برایم جالب بودند، پیشتر در جای دیگر آنها را نخوانده بودم، ستم دیدگان را از یاد نبرده بودند، ایشان باور دارند، که بدبختی گاه میتواند امری طبیعی باشد، گاه از امتیازهای یکسویه برای جنس دوم، چشم پوشیده، و برابری مرد و زن را باور کرده، و در نهایت کوشش نموده اند همگان را وادارند، تا بر سرنوشت خویش پیروز شوند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 10/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 03/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

The charge society imposes on her is considered a service rendered to the husband: and he owes his wife gifts or a marriage dowry and agrees to support her; using him as an intermediary, the community acquits itself of its responsibilities to the woman.

I knew when I started to read this door-stopper that it would take me ages to finish just because it's so long and filled with non-fiction data. I had a break from January until April where I read zero pages and started to question whether I was giving up, again.
In the past, I've attempted at The Second Sex at least four times. Never getting past about 100 pages.
I haven't been ready.
I haven't been committed enough.

As long as she still has to fight to become a human being, she cannot be a creator.

Not that I didn't find the book fascinating before my two-month break, after it I was wholly engrossed in the book. It sucked me in and I let it willingly.
I loved the beginning of the book because of all the research of history de Beauvoir had done and how much I learned as well as how much of it confirmed a lot of what I'd always thought was true.
But reading the Part Two of Volume Two, Situation, (Mother, Maturity, Married Woman, Social Life etc), was like getting confirmation of why I felt how I felt or rather, feel what I feel. I found my mother, and other relatives and friends, but mainly my mother. And through her, I found myself. As polar opposites, as I like to poetically see us, which all of you know is completely untrue, it's easy to read about her in the chapters that make the woman out to be a brute, wench, evil witch woman, and me, the naive, childish, dreamer.

It takes belonging to the privileged caste to view the universe as one's own, to consider oneself as guilty of its faults and take pride in its progress.

Some of it you already know, it will emphasize some parts of your knowledge and you'll think "hmm, yes, I've read that somewhere" or "yeah, I've always felt that way". Other parts you won't agree with, there are sections where I was compelled to write long rants in the margins as if I was answering a question de Beauvoir was asking. Let's just say at times she could be annoyingly generalising and leave it at that.
No, let's not leave it. I'm just gonna add that it's good work from a researcher when other people have room to question and criticize. And it affirmed my belief that I don't hold her as an idol and don't worship her blindly just because.
Analyzing, and more analyzing, is what the idle mind will do. Woman has no reason for all her thoughts, thus she will find reason in the ridiculous. Here, in The Second Sex, I found too many answers to my questions for it to be a coincidence. de Beauvoir - a genius? Or just a really good researcher with a work that holds its place.

neither immutable essence nor flawed choice has doomed her to immanence and inferiority. They were imposed on her.