Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Simone de Beauvoir, French existentialist, novelist, autobiographer, journalist, and self-described “woman of letters,” is considered one of the founding thinkers of Western feminism. Predominantly known for what many now consider a canonical text in feminist theory, The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir dramatically influenced what came to be known as Second Wave feminism by disrupting traditional understandings of sex, gender, and identity. In her most famous line from The Second Sex , “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” Beauvoir contests the “biology is destiny” argument historically used to justify women's economic, political, and social subordination. Drawing on existentialism and Marxism , Beauvoir illuminates the historical and material constraints surrounding women's “situation” in a patriarchal society. She reveals not only how patriarchy oppresses women, but also how women are sometimes complicit in their own oppression by a refusal to exercise freedom outside the prescribed boundaries of gender roles. By confronting the sexism prevalent within psychology and within the hard sciences of her time, she recognizes the signifier “woman” as a historical and thus not a universal or essential category. Thus she departs from her long-term intellectual interlocutor and partner Jean-Paul Sartre's early attempts to posit existentialist categories of freedom and choice ... log in or subscribe to read full text