I've attached the reading as a file and below is the link to the video.
https://youtu.be/SRhuCpO-GC4
After reading the De Beauvoir piece and watching the accompanying video, create a set of notes outlining her main ideas.
- The notes can be informal and in any format you like, but they must do the following:
- Outline the reading's overall claim and major points;
- Define how she present the following concepts:
- conceptualism
- nominalism
- the one v. the other
- subject v. object
- In your notes, make sure you make reference to specific quotes/sections of the readings and include the page numbers where they can be found.
- You will be graded on the completeness and clarity of your notes.
Simone de Bcallvoll The Second Sex, Woman as Other 1949 hUp ://www,n1a[xists.org/rerereneeisubject/cthicside-heau\'0 iri2uti ~ sex.: .. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) Introduction Woman as Other FOR a long time I have hesitated to write a book 011 woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the problem. After all, is there a problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women, really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its adherents who will whisper in your ear: 'Even in Russia women still are women'; and other erudite per.;ons ... ~Omei!ineS the'vcry same - say with a sigh: ~\\'()man is losing her way, woman is lost.' One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be. 'What has become of women?' was asked recently in an ephemeral magazine. But first we must ask: what is a woman? 'Tota niulier in utero', says one, 'woman is a womb'. But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incalllate this essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and I of 17 73i2007 433 P\1 S,1110ne de Beauvoir The Second Sex, Woman as Other 1949 http://www.marxists.org/reference/subjeetJethies/de-bealivoir12 ncl- se'" ... dazzling temlS that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the seers, and indeed in the times of St Thomas it was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy But conceptualism has lost ground. The biological and social sciences no longer admit the existence of unchangeably fixed entities that determine given characteristics, such as those as~;ibed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro. Science regards any characteristic as a reaction dependent in part upon a situation. If today femininity no longer exists, then it never existed. But does the word WOII/an, then, have no specific content? This is stoutly affirmed by those who hold to the philosophy of the enlightenment, of rationalism, of nominalism; women, to them, are merely the human beings arbitrarily designated by the word woman. Many American women particularly are prepared to think that there is no longer any place for woman as such; if a backward individual still takes herself for a woman, her friends advise her to be psychoanalysed and thus get rid of this obsession. In regard to a work, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, which in other respects has its irritating features, Dorothy Parker has written: 'I cannot bejust to books which treat of woman as woman ... My idea is that all of u~, men as well as women, should bF, r~garded as human beings.' But nominalism is a rather inadequate doctrine, and the antifeminists have had no trouble in showing that women simply are not men. Surely woman is, like man, a human being; but such a declaration is abstract. The fact is that every concrete human being is always a singular, separate individual. To decline to accept such notions as the eternal feminine, the black soul, the Jewish character, is not to deny that Jews, Negroes, women exist today this denial does not represent a liberation for those concerned, but rather a flight from reality. Some years ago a well-known woman writer refused to permit her portrait to appear in a series of photographs especially devoted to women writers; she wished to be counted among the men. But in order to gain this privilege she made use of her husband's influence! Women who assert that they are men lay claim none the less to inasculine consideration and respect. I recall also a young Trotskyite standing on a platform at a boisterous meeting and getting ready to use her fists, in spite of her evident fragility. She was denying her feminine weakness; but it was for love of a militant male whose equal she wished to be. The attitude of defiance of many American women proves that they are haunted by a sense of their femininity. In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough 2 of 17 7,320074:33 Pi'vl SllllfJllC de LJeau\'olr The Second Sex, Woman as Otller 1949 http:f.i\w.'w,marxlsls,org/reference/sub.leet!ethles'de-beau \() ir2nd-se ~I , 3 of 17 to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that they do most obviously exist. If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through'lthe et~rn~l" feminine', a~d if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question "what is a woman"? To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: 'I am a woman'; on this truth must be baSed all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sei;i!goes without saying that he is a man. The \ '~Ulsculille andjeminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of fonn, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not ql\Jte like that of two electrical poles, for Ul.an rep.resents both the positive 4and the neutral, as common ._ is indicated'by the _ use of man tOdesignate human beings in general;.~ereas woman represents only the negative, 'd;rznedlJylimiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract ~ IS vexing to hear a man say: 'You think thus and so because you are a woman'; but I know that my only defence IS to reply: '[ think thus -;nd so because it is true,' thereby removing ~ubjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: 'And you think the contrary because you are a man', for it is understood that the fact ofbeing a \ man is ~peculi~~n is in the right in bei~; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: ~ese peculiarities imprison herin her sUbjecti~ty, circu;;;scribe lier within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and nonnal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as) a ~ -------- 7/3,20074:.13 P\1 Sunonc de Beauvoir The Second Sex, Woman as Other 1949 http://www.marxisls.orgireference!subjecliethics!de·be"" V0 ir!2nd·scx .. hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. 'The fcmale is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,' said Aristotle; 'we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.' And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an 'imperfect man', an 'incidental' being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called 'a supernumerary L , _ £ A ..J _ •__ pt~~'l;:" ~;;;~·ct-'.'HD'i~;,r Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: 'Woman, the relative being ... ' And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d 'Uriel: 'The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself ... Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.' And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called 'the sex', by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex - absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute .- she is the Other' The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality - that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts. It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumezil on the