The Second Sex: A Summary
When I was at UofT, I was in a Jordan Peterson class and nothing he said made any sense, he was saying some of the most bizarre things I had ever heard. I believe I got a D on his exam in Personality Psychology. Years later I was watching his videos and they made more sense over time. One of the things he said was that the most complex problem we have is that of sanity, and we are in a constant state of exchanging solutions. Religion, money, yoga, avocado toast, memes, fashion, jokes, a conversation, maybe just a glance — everything is traded all the time in our social market. What it means to be marginalized then, is to be left out of all the best solutions to sanity. This is my interpretation of the female condition that is described in The Second Sex, written by Simone de Beauvoir.
Simone de Beauvoir is a French philosopher active around the 1930s, and I first heard of her partner, Jean Paul Sartre, who is known as the creator of Existentialism. The reason I got around to reading The Second Sex was because I turned thirty and I was faced with the most unremarkable and honest truth, that I hadn’t accomplished anything except to exist, and what should have been just another year of my life gave me so much confusion that I wanted to examine it. I once had a friend from Russia who told me that it was custom to read War and Peace as a coming of age ritual. So this would be my own.
I had always felt intense confusion at the debate surrounding feminism, and the only phrase that rang true for me was a quote of Simone de Beauvoir:
“If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male’s arrogance made it ‘a discussion’”
To have a problem and live ignorantly about it would only add unnecessary suffering. This is one of Beauvoir’s own prefacing thoughts on her endeavour. So, let’s get into the discussion.
The biggest obstacle for anyone reading this is how it is impossible to escape not challenging personal biases. Of course I thought I was not biased but I soon realized that in a world where none of this is encouraged or taught or discussed, there are so many I have been unknowingly accepting. The book begins by examining each belief we have about the difference of the sexes starting with basic biology. When two animals mate, there is no one species that is more essential than the other, the egg is not more or less important than the sperm. They are perfect equals in the creation of new life.
She then goes through history as our society grows more complex and so do the demands on the role of women. In hunter gatherer societies there was little oppression because no one had enough power and there were more pressing issues of survival. As societies accumulate resources, two patterns formed, societies where property is communal, like Sparta, and societies with private property. With private property there was a question of inheritance. If the women had children with multiple partners it became much more difficult to determine who should inherit from whom, and it became standard to favour inheritance passed down through the father. In all those cases women had diminished legal rights and essentially became to be considered as the property that was to get inherited, and any infidelity on her part was strictly avoided to preserve the certainty of inheritance. She always belonged to somebody, if not her husband then her father.
There is no ideological revolution more important in the primitive period than the one replace matrilineal descent with agnation; from that time on, the mother is lowered to the rank of wet nurse or servant, and the father’s sovereignty is exalted; he is the one who holds rights and transmits them. (p.87)
Under capitalism, if a worker’s wife felt free she would give him the emotional freedom to become free from oppression himself, so it was in the interest of the oppressors to control her, in order to control the population. This area of critique of capitalism is known as historical materialism.
More symptoms arise from economics; consider that insults women received for being lazy or disobedient revolved around whether or not they would provide their labour in the household. Women are affected across the class spectrum; if they are poor they are more likely to suffer from simply being poor, but if they are wealthy they must cling to a strict social code with similar desperation.
As society increased in complexity, women’s situation only became more severe. Most of the book feels incredibly shocking or disturbing because she describes things just as they are, which is 700 pages of the repeating topics of rape, prostitution, infidelity, divorce, and generally every possible way women can suffer. I don’t think there was any part of me that didn’t burn, but I think that was the point. Her words were sterile and logical but I felt emotionally excavated and I leaned into the process because everything she was saying was factual and thorough, and that for me was the beginning of freedom.
Beauvoir said the goal of a woman’s life is to find what is of value. She laid it out clear for me, because honestly at this point I didn’t know what the men were doing and what I was supposed to be doing. Women are often subservient to men, and sometimes worshipped as Goddesses, which seems patronizing when compared to the way women are treated. There are societies that worship female deities but still treat women just as poorly. Beauvoir says the problem is that women are not seen as equals, friends, or colleagues, because that is what would humanize them.
Men’s attitudes
Before we can comfortably or safely continue, our silent obsession is, ‘but what do the men think?’ Beauvoir describes a range of men who respond to the female condition with varied responses from disgust to helplessness. The most enlightened and empathetic of men will feel helpless in alleviating the condition. Possibly the only positive action described by Beauvoir is the account of the married man who will give his wife something to do, so that she has a life of her own, that she is at the mercy of a man makes her exempt from social scrutiny. There are men who are not at fault for the situation that both women and men find themselves in, but are blind and confused to the real problem. Many arguments and problematic dynamics happen between couples when neither understand what social pressures they are facing. Finally, there are men who are not healthy or whole in themselves and choose to target women to alleviate their suffering, because women represent a reminder that we are not gods, in their relations with mothers and wives they are unhappily reminded that humans are born, who are subject to the laws of nature and will one day die.
The Other
A concept used in the philosophical toolkit is the idea of ‘subject’ and ‘object’. These can be considered the subjective ‘self’ versus the objectified ‘other’. It does not strictly mean the difference between ‘me’ and ‘other people’, it is more of an abstract psychological distinction. You can identify with a group of people and they could be considered ‘subject’ to you. Also with internalized misogyny you can objectify yourself and painfully view yourself as ‘object’. The idea of ‘object’ does not necessarily have a negative connotation but you can consider it as something strange, foreign, like the way you think about the actors in a commercial, compared to how you think about yourself. This is how Beauvoir describes the mind of women, that women are ‘other’ to men and since the male perception dominates all our perceptions we had no choice but to adopt this and consider ourselves ‘other’. This alienation can be felt in standards of beauty or femininity. They seem allude women, and despite her efforts, the standards always come from outside. Beauvoir points out the irony that by definition, femininity is the nature of women. A woman cannot be unfeminine because feminine is whatever a woman is.
The most practical takeaways of this book are the manifestations of becoming the ‘other’ in the psychology of women because they are not as obvious as they should be, any woman reading this, including myself, might be able to identify with at least one of these roles.
Our situations and behaviour
For the largest section of the book, Beauvoir objectively diagnoses the real causes of women’s behaviour that can seem bizarre and motivated by fear, and in the worst cases detrimental to herself and other women. From overbearing wives and mothers who try to find independence in the wrong places (by trying to ‘lose themselves’ in serving men), mystics who find ways to excuse themselves by their devotion to god (as long as the women is in an subservient position it is acceptable), narcissistic women who claim to live for themselves but haven’t properly escaped scrutiny because she cannot live without the attention of others, and even women who are not biologically predisposed to lesbianism but explore it as a means to escape being ‘other’. There are sexual fantasies of rape and domination and girls anxiously trying to get married that on the surface might seem that this condition is desired, but may come from fear of the consequences of having opposing desires. Girls immerse themselves in daydreams and imagine themselves to be special and adored in their journals as a reaction to their growing understanding that their future holds limitations for them. With a lack of something to apply themselves, or to have challenges to overcome which would define a true identity, women express themselves through their appearance. Women who are confined to the house use interior decoration as an outlet to feel active in their diminished territory. They attach importance and identity to material objects as if it was an extension of themselves. To their husbands and sons they try to conquer the world vicariously through them, and find it is the only channel for their own ambition, and to their daughters they fear the day she discovers all the limitations that she experienced in her past, or may enjoy finally having someone to dominate as they are dominated.
This is not an exhaustive sample of all the types of women Beauvoir describes, but what is common across them is her objectivity in diagnosing each behaviour and cognitive process that had previously been missing, misdiagnosed, and left grossly unexamined. With her focus on the historical and social context, we can appreciate the immense, overwhelming, and powerful structure that women live under and she makes the compelling argument to connect the forces of society to the most seemingly unrelated and individual of female behaviours. She does a great service towards dispelling negative stereotypes towards women of all situations and walks of life.
On Motherhood
Simply put, there is no maternal instinct. There are a multitude of biological impulses that are circumvented or redirected at other activities in our society and women as individuals have the ability to do other things just as easily and naturally as we don’t urinate to mark our territory. Even if there are strong impulses to bear children it is no more proven in biology than whether humans are by nature good or evil. Women are pressured to marry and have children, and we are constantly answering or disputing this question. Many women feel duped and ashamed that when they have children, it is not the fulfillment of their lives that they were told it would be. Upon discovering this they feel ashamed that they are not more naturally inclined to caregiving.
Women to women
There is also a range of attitudes described by Beauvoir that happen between women to their peers, from competition to a safe hideaway. It is as if women are on performance in front of men, and with their female peers can relax ‘backstage.’ However the oppression is always felt and many times women will be bored of each others company, because Beauvoir says, prisoners don’t inspire camaraderie in each other in this case. I don’t interpret this as all interactions between women being useless, but it points out that there are productive and unproductive ways to collaborate with each other. Simply being together is not enough. It is not enough to hide from the problem.
On Romance
The most heartbreaking is the woman in love, there is a small hope or belief that a man will rescue you and a part of me looked forward to this chapter, hoping I would find something glamorous or beautiful in this chapter but I was met with the disappointing truth that I already knew. Emotions are where the physical factors of reality all get felt, it is this point between men and women that reality is at its most intense. I opened my eyes to an image of women as domesticated, morally and socially owned by and at the mercy of the other sex, and the promise of romance is the emotional hamster wheel so that we stay acceptably ‘alive’ to survive in a cage. I think romance between men and women can exist as a kind of strong friendship, but the problem is that wherever we seek the endless, open road of freedom, security, and a life built upon our individual moral values, we are encouraged to seek an ideal of romance in its place, and everywhere women seek it it out they inevitably lose.
On Liberation
What appears as liberation is often only another dead end. Even with the possibility of divorce, the prospects for women after divorce can be economically and socially devastating. Women successful in their careers find that there is no place for them to have a balanced social life. Female students in college give up on their ambition after being intimidated academically and by lack of future prospects, or are driven to exhaustion by their family imposing housework on top of their studies. Women can do whatever men can do, but they must do it on top of their current responsibilities. In this argument, Beauvoir asks us to examine the practical realities of liberation and all its social, economic, and moral possibilities, and not taken at surface value. Have we gotten what we needed, or is this only an appeasement?
A woman in her career that attempts to be independent may feel like an imposter. She can feel awkward and uncertain of her position. She often tries to exaggerate her aggressiveness or may do the opposite and be too natural, then not be intimidating enough. Exhausted and discouraged, she may not push herself at the right moments and take advantage of the right situations. She over-invests in small achievements and congratulates herself while being devastated at setbacks. Her competence is always in question and the worst effect of this is that she cannot take her eyes off self-examination and immerse herself in her work, which is the part that would make us enjoy our jobs. In order to forget herself, Beauvoir says that she must find herself and have an understanding of her place in the world.
The reasons I have given sufficiently explain this and do not in any way compromise the future. To do great things, today’s woman needs above all forgetfulness of self: but to forget oneself one must first be solidly sure that one has already found oneself. Newly arrived in the world of men, barely supported by them, the woman is still much too busy looking for herself. (p741)
The question is, do women have the genius and talent and strength to contribute more to this world than producing children? Beauvoir says the observations made about the ‘nature’ of women are the same as seeing trees trimmed into particular shapes in a garden, then exclaiming that is how those trees are naturally formed. How women have acted has been the way they were forced to be. There are less female writers, artists, scientists, and leaders because we have been busy trying to liberate ourselves. She makes the argument that in order to write the equivalent of War and Peace, a woman would have had the freedom to experience those things out in the world, but she is criticized for not being able to produce it while being forced to stay within the home. When the British criticized Americans trying to form an independent nation, they argued that Americans had no higher culture and did not deserve to be its own country.
Old Europe formerly heaped its contempt on barbarian Americans for possessing neither artists nor writers. “Let us live before asking us to justify our existence,” Jefferson wrote, in essence. Blacks give the same answers to racists who reproach them for not having produced a Whitman or Melville. Neither can the French proletariat invoke a name like Racine or Mallarmé. The free woman is just being born; when she conquers herself, she will perhaps justify Rimbaud’s prophecy: “Poets will be. When woman’s infinite servitude is broken, when she lives for herself and by herself, man — abominable until now — giving her her freedom, she too will be a poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her worlds of ideas differ from ours? She will find strange, unfathomable, repugnant, delicious things, we will take them, we will understand them.”(p751)
There are other arguments against the existence of female genius that are addressed:
Some misogynists affirm a bit more concretely that because women are neurotic , they will never create anything of value: but these same people often declare the genius is a neurosis. (p750)
In terms of the ideal relationship between men and women, Beauvoir believes the connection they share is the most natural, but humanity has been divided by a hypocritical system. To restore human nature,
‘men and women must, among other things and beyond their natural differentiations, unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.’ (p766)
As I’m writing this, my Spotify playlist found its way to Taylor Swift’s live-in-Paris version of The Man, and she sings ‘so It’s okay that I’m mad’, and her signature bright, luminous acoustic strokes pause for effect while the crowd on the track cheers triumphantly for half a minute. When I was close to finishing high school, my parents proudly regarded my step into adulthood by sharing stories of their own. For the first time I was privy to untold stories to estranged family an Ocean and a lifetime away, triumphs of one grandfather’s career as a journalist at the detriment to his family life, and the defeat of another as a socialist and blacklisted from finding a job because of his beliefs, finding meaning in making a home in a rural community and lifting a town’s spirit. Even more intimate were my parents stories of their relationships and story arcs into adulthood. For the first time I marvelled at the power of tracing a personal history and I found a firm footing on the world. Now for the second time, I look back at this long trail of stories back into antiquity and I know my place in history and in this story we are writing as we go along.
I took a world history class that said that the world was becoming more peaceful overall. If you looked at the number of human-inflicted deaths in ancient history, versus the twentieth century, even with its world wars, the statistic is something like 1% of what it used to be. In Sapiens, Yuval Harari says the pattern of history is for empires to conquer disparate tribes and effectively enforce peace between them. With the Cold War, we’ve finally conquered so totally that there would be no more major wars, at least to the extent that we mutually agree not to self-destruct. In an era of peacetime, for the first time in history, the ideal characteristics of leader might be feminine — empathetic, moderate, collaborative, and a long-term visionary.
Perhaps after all this time, and all the suffering caused by the economic need to inherit property to the rightful owners, women will inherit the world.
Sources
Beauvoir, S. (2011). The Second Sex (C. Borde, S. Malovany-Chevallier Trans.). New York, Vintage Books.
Harai, Y. N. (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. McClelland & Stewart.
