Book Reflection: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

And a project announcement!

I am starting a new project. It will be a long one, and given my habit of starting projects and not finishing them I wanted to establish a little momentum before announcing it. The project is to read and examine the foundational texts of feminism from the 2nd wave until the present (I am skipping the first wave not because those books are unimportant, but because most of them, like Vindication of the Rights of Women and The Subjection of Women [which I actually have read, many years ago] took place in such a different cultural milieu that I didn’t think the juice was worth the squeeze for understanding contemporary feminism). Feminism as a practical and philosophical movement has had a profound effect on Western life on par with maybe only Marxism among 20th century ideologies. It’s also a notoriously difficult thing to pin down, as are many of its central tenets like ‘patriarchy’ and ‘gender equality’; plenty of feminists will tell you it’s a purely egalitarian movement aimed at equality between the sexes, others will tell you its purpose is the eradication of gender as a social construct. Since there’s not really a right or wrong answer to the question of what feminism is or isn’t I’m seeking less to define it than to understand the different threads of feminism, how they interact, compliment and undermine one another, and examine the ways in which they’ve shaped modern social life. This is not an academic exercise, it’s a personal one, so while I look forward to interacting with what I hope will be many and thoughtful commentators on my reactions to these works I do not intend to engage in academic discussions. And anyone who tells me I don’t get to have an opinion about it because I am a guy will be instantly blocked, because if feminism really is about ending not only women’s oppression but also the patriarchal social structures that harm men as well then we surely have a stake in it. So without further introduction, here’s the list of books and essays I plan on reading. It’s not meant to be comprehensive as that’s virtually impossible with a subject as broad as feminism, but I’m trying to hit the most influential high points:

• The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

• The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

• Sexual Politics, Kate Millett

• The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone

• Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan

• Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin

• Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

• The Personal is Political, Carol Hanisch

• Gender Trouble, Judith Butler

• The Will to Change, bell hooks

• Ain’t I a Woman, bell hooks

• Intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw

• Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards

• We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Adichie

• Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay

• Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit

It will take time to get through this list. That’s fine. Against, it’s not an academic exercise, and some of these books are longer and harder than others. Some I expect I’ll enjoy reading (I really like the bell hooks I’ve read), some probably less so (I can’t stand Roxane Gay’s opinion writing, not looking forward to her book), but the purpose is to educate not entertain. So now onto the title of this post and a reflection on the first and what I think is likely to be the most difficult read on this list, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

Why do I think this might be the most difficult book? A few reasons. Firstly, having read de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity in the past, I know her to be an almost unbelievably erudite but also very dense writer. Not dense in the sense of 'stupid’ of course, but dense in the sense that every sentence is packed with meaning and can often take multiple reads to unpack. And indeed, I found myself returning to passages repeatedly as I read through this 776 page edition, apparently the first unabridged translation published in English. That’s the other reason I think this might be the hardest book: it’s looooong. 776 pages of philosophy is a huge read. To reference another famous existentialist writer, that’s long than many editions of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I enjoyed it, but it was at times a slog. We’ll get to why later.

Before I dive into my reactions to the book, I think the translators deserve some recognition. This edition was translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, and in my opinion their work is masterful. Much of book feels like you’re sitting in a Trocadero cafe with de Beauvoir while she expounds upon the state of women in pre-war France, and when she insults other writers (a common occurrence, she’s not afraid to throw literary shade) you can feel the sting of the dismissal and derision through the translation. I do not speak French so I have no idea how literal the translation is, but there’s a consistent voice throughout the work that feels very much like an extremely brilliant woman writing with some ire about the exclusion of women from male transcendence. I applaud the translators’ efforts.

So now to the book. The primary theme that kept leaping out to me was the tension between feminine immanence and masculine transcendence. de Beauvoir is using the term ‘immanence’ here to refer to way in which social conditioning and role expectations force women inward, to limit their worlds to their own subjective experience, the home, serving their husbands, and motherhood. Men on the other hand get to embrace transcendence. They can forge themselves through generative effort in the broad world of consequential action. Their roles are not predetermined, whereas women are tightly constrained from birth to narrow life pathways where the best they can hope for in most cases is secondhand status gained through the prestige of their husbands. To walk an independent path is to give up the protections and benefits of their prescribed roles, often degenerating into sex work, and in even in that they’re still slaves to masculine desire and wealth. One of the most striking things about TSS is the lengths at which de Beauvoir goes to describe the poor conditions women find themselves in. Much of the book consists of narrations from various women describing their plight; it’s striking as a 21st century reader mostly because so much of what she’s describing about women’s subjugation seems both very much a thing of past but also something that no educated person would need to be told. This is probably much less true for people who grew up in conservative households (my parents had a mixed marriage: my father is a Reagan republican and my mother a liberal democratic social worker), but I was raised with consciousness of the way societies historically oppressed women. I do say ‘historically’ intentionally because another striking thing about the book is how many of the situations that were taken entirely for granted in pre-war France such as engagements getting cancelled when a woman was found not to be a virgin are almost unthinkable today in mainstream society. Much of TSS is extremely relevant to current gender relations, but large swathes of it also read as distant history even though that distance is almost within living memory. Progress has been made.

Other sections of the book simply feel very out of phase with modernity. There’s a chapter devoted to Freudian ideas that while critical of Freud treats him more seriously than modern psychology does. Similarly the connections of gender oppression to class oppression via Marxism feel less relevant living in a (mostly) post-Marxist present. These chapters are early in the book; the first chapter that I found really engrossing was on mythology and how myth was a potent tool for othering women. The notion of mythology creating archetypes that reduce women from multifaceted human beings into ‘mothers’, ‘virgins’, ‘whores’, etc. remains topical. I was particularly struck by the way in which de Beauvoir described the tension that exists within women as they cycle back and forth between those archetypes, both within their own minds and under the gaze of men. That men utilize feminine archetypes as a justification for oppression via the flattening of women's lives is very convincing.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.

As de Beauvoir starts examining women’s lived experience the book starts to feel far more personal. The notion that historically boys were taught independence and girls are taught submission is hard to argue with. One of de Beauvoir’s more famous quotes comes from this chapter:

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

This refers to social conditioning, though it’s interesting to consider in light of the ongoing battle around gender identity and specifically transgender ideology. Purely speculation, but based on TSS alone I wonder if de Beauvoir wouldn’t have been a TERF. She fiercely defends the uniqueness and sanctity of female experience, it’s hard to imagine her thinking men could simply opt into that later in life. In any case her discussion of the violence of puberty and how menstruation and the development of secondary sex characteristics forces women from innocence was heart wrenching. Being a guy going through puberty was confusing and hard, but at no point was I forced to go from being a child recognized as such by all to suddenly being seen as a sex object by adult men in ways I couldn’t being to understand. This was for me one of the most powerful parts of the book communicating the pathos of female experience about as well as I can imagine anyone doing. I remember being a young adolescent in 7th and 8th grade and having the sense that the girls were drawing inward, arms constantly crossed underneath their developing chests, not smiling anymore, shoulders slumping forward, seemingly trying to make themselves small. Perhaps they were trying to physically retreat from the new world of sexuality their bodies had thrust upon them that their still very young minds weren’t ready for it? How does a young women deal with the simultaneous appearance of both vulnerability and sexual power that comes with womanhood? I would really value any thoughts on this period of life from any women who happen to read this piece.

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Marriage, sexual initiation, motherhood. de Beauvoir’s examination of how these stages of a woman’s life are further used to disempower her and erase her individuality shows you why the sexual revolution was a necessary antithesis to the institution of female oppression. Of special interest to me was the section on perimenopause and the effect it has on women. Time for a short digression.

I came to Substack mostly to read Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias (yes, I’m that guy). Instead, apropos of nothing, I found myself enamored by stories about the romantic/erotic journeys of middle aged women. I’m middle aged myself at 42, seeing the feminine reflection of the male midlife crisis is intriguing. So many of these stories are about the liberation and empowerment women feel, often after exiting bad marriages, as they pursue their own desires for the first time. The stories are often exhilarating, sometimes touching, and I unabashedly love them. I wish all the late 30 and 40 something newly single women the best of luck on their journeys of self discovery. Honestly a lot of them sound, to be blunt, pretty hot. What this has to do with de Beauvoir however is a little bit of rain on the parade of midlife female bildungsromans. She posits instead that the loss of the ability to create life through pregnancy that occurs in midlife is a precursor experience of death that inspires a desperate quest for life affirmation on the part of the aging woman. I didn’t love reading this section because it cast what had been for me fun vicarious escapades in a much harsher light. I would be curios again if any women in that situation who read this whether you think there’s any truth in that characterization, but as part of a broad female life arc the decreasing importance of women post-childbearing years hits hard. de Beauvoir’s examination of the way in which beauty standards and the contrasting increase in authority men often see in later middle age vs. the decline in social standing of women is deeply affecting.

So where does all this leave us? Most of the book is an examination of the situation of women, the ways in which patriarchy (though she uses that word only once or twice) constrains their life choices and decimates their individuality. Only the final chapter, The Path to Liberation, really reads like a feminist text vs. more of a sociological examination. de Beauvoir makes a very crucial point that real liberation is not just a function of legal equality but a rejection of the role of women as The Other by broader society. Her thesis is that until a masculine view of society ceases to be the dominant one that true liberation and equality can never be achieved. My reaction to this is…confusing. Even to me. On one hand, I do believe that there should be no social restrictions on the ability of women to live the lives they want to live. On the other hand, I am somewhat of a biological determinist. I do believe men and women, on average, want different things, relate to the world and society in different ways, and are best served by being socialized according to those natural inclinations. Its neither just women not just men: People are not born, they’re made. And to make a person society needs scripts to follow. That’s how people contextualize the choices they make and the roles they adopt. To me the central tension of feminism is how to make space for choices that reject the dominant social scripts without entirely eliminating those scripts that help most people find their place in the world in a way that leads them to fulfilling lives. Maybe the other books in this project will help me resolve that question, we’ll see. In any case, I’ll leave you dear reader with a quote that sums up the ultimately egalitarian ethos of The Second Sex, one that demands an escape from the Otherness of women without requiring the denigration of men or women who conform to stereotypically feminine roles.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

Thanks for reading.