The Second Sex Simone De Beauvoir Analysis

Throughout history, women have constantly been objectified and forced into submission by the male dominated society. Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical work, The Second Sex, echoes the intense oppression of women and reflects the first wave feminist movement. Her existentialist decoding of genders resulted in the idea of the Other, which explores the phenomenon of women forced into the role of an object, while men are the subject. In the second chapter, “The Girl”, Beauvoir further studies the idea of this oppression during one’s transition from a girl into a woman. Beauvoir states that no matter how much freedom and sense of self a girl holds, she is always forced into the role of the Other in society. Beauvoir 's idea of the Other held

In the book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, by Seth Holmes he mentioned the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his philosophy “Bad Faith”. Holmes explains “The phrase “bad faith” was introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the ways in which individuals knowingly deceive themselves to avoid acknowledging realities disturbing to them(Holmes86). The phrase explains us, when something bad is happening in our lives, we lie to ourselves to escape the truth that we don’t have to face them. This happens to everyone when we commit a really bad mistake and we don’t want to accept it. Another way this may happen is when you’re in a bad situation and you try to replace it with something else to get your mind off of it. Basically it’s a distraction, so we don’t think about what’s actually going on.

In the chapter titled “History” within the book called The Second Sex, Beauvoir talks about various of events and changes along with encounters that provided opportunities to seize greater freedom for women as a collectivity. For instance, when women were able to leave their homes and actually take an outside job, it allowed women a bit confused as to what roles she needed to partake in. Given that men were always gender-policing women to fit the ideal role, the women found it difficult to transitions and thus loose a sense of self along the way. De Beauvoir also states that gainful employment can stop the cycle of dependency on man and thus allow the two genders men and women to see each other’s as equals. It is within the book The Second Sex that De Beauvoir tries to understand the imbalance of gender roles to help her understand this she turns to the biology, psychoanalyst and the historical materialism. In her findings, she reveals that although there are some physical differences between women and men there is no proven facts that women cant do the same task as men in a workforce.

She states that `to pose woman is to pose then absolute Other' (821). `The other' is referred to women who are classified as being different to men even though both share a human body. Women are also not seen as `a subject, a fellow human being.'(821). This is caused by men who believe a myth of females through experiences of which Beauvoir states as feelings and thoughts, rather then the reality of women themselves. Men see women as what they think they see because of the way they feel about women. Men have opinions in ways of physical or knowledge of women. These opinions created are myths which men believe to be the true women. These men usually belong in the western patriarchal society. Men hold myths against women and "placed women beneath men and held them to be the property of men" (Guerrero). Being "placed beneath men" can show that women are treated unequally in a patriarchal society where they are not respected. This is the woman in a patriarch world.

Sartre: I agree that bad faith is something that is natural, but it is also something which we must free ourselves from in order to achieve true happiness and to be able to live an authentic way of life.

One other aspect of Bad faith is someone denies current life situation because of past ego or event . And because of this current is negligible and we give importance to what don’t exist. For example a person is not always a bad person if he was in past he can change but if we deny this situation and only restrict to past then we can’t change situation in a positive manner. De Beauvoir described three main types of women acting in bad faith: the Narcissist who denies her freedom by construing herself as a desirable object; the Mystic, who invests her freedom in an absolute; and the Woman in Love, who submerges her identity in that of her male object. She also considered what she called the Serious Man, who subordinated himself to some outside

Historically speaking, women have never come before men; nor have we ever been considered as having more value to society than men. According to the Bible , Eve did not come into existence before Adam; she came from within him. She was made to be his companion through life, not his competitor. Until the twentieth century Women’s Rights Movement, women were rarely viewed as being in a position of power equivalent to that of a man. Their intelligence was also constantly under review, which left their opinions unaccounted for and lacking social merit. However, the depictions of the early modern French women by Suzannah Lipscomb, Leslie Tuttle, and Robert .I. Kalas beg to differ. Unafraid to venture outside the confines of a male-centered society, these women blurred gender and class lines in the pursuit of justice. With this essay, I hope to restablish the necessity of women, and their importance to the history of early modern France. From community influence and presence during one of France’s most volatile periods to the trial and error faced under male governance, early French modern women were not just seen; they were also heard.

Beauvoir: Ah yes, you must know that I am concerned with the plight of women, of oppression, of systematic suffering at the hands of denial of humanity and the stripping of one’s reality. I think that the tendency of invention that you speak of lies in a systemized persecution of women, though I wish to hear more of your concept. Therefore, I would focus on more of a societal structure, in politics mainly, for my analysis of that which is regarded as bad faith. Though you would view this concept

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.

Jean-Paul Sartre believes bad faith occurs when: (1) one refuses to admit the existence of one’s freedom to choose and; (2) one refuses to admit the truth of some aspect of one’s facticity. Facticity, in this context, refers to the idea that there are some aspects of ourselves that we cannot change but it can be used to shape and create our own version of ourselves. To deny one’s facticity means one has decided to construct an interpretation to believe that this certain factor is not a part of oneself. In order words, it is lying to oneself about who one really is. This man, as described in page 107, is an example of it because he refuses to acknowledge that he is a homosexual, even with all the evidence in which “he refuses to draw from them the conclusion which they impose” (Sartre 107). His denial would only be correct if “human reality can not be finally defined by patterns of conduct” (p. 108). In actuality, his pattern of conduct is “defined as the conduct of a pederast” but he deceives himself about this truth because he wants put himself

The battle for women’s rights has waged for a long time and continues even to this day. Although we have made significant progress in the advancement of women’s rights including being able to vote and work to support themselves, it was not always like this, and the farther back we go in history the more and more women were oppressed. In the old days it was quite uncommon for women to be anything other than a wife or nun. This is shown quite clearly in both Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun: Transvestite in the New World and Candide. While not the main topic of either book, the authors offer insight on what life was like as a woman in Spain and France, respectively. Both authors disagree with women’s place in society and subtly criticize it throughout the text. In Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun: Transvestite in the New World, Catalina De Erauso is born a woman and seems headed for the life of a nun living in a convent, however, she disagrees with this lifestyle and instead opts to cross dress, which is illegal at the time, and conceal her identity for most of her life to live as a man. In Candide, Voltaire writes about women getting raped, used as sex slaves, and having to try and marry into wealth to ensure a good life for themselves as they have little to no other options. Although set about a century apart, these two texts do not suggest a change in women’s status or role in society over time, in fact, they offer similar, but different, analysis on women’s roles

Suzie’s representation of the “being” gives meaning to Jon. Without her, his plan would not work and he would be forced to live out his boring life never reaching his true potential that is expected of him because he is a man. By Sex Criminals putting Suzie in the context of “being” she is stripped of her agency and her ability to function outside of what Jon decides. In fact, throughout most of the comic, the person that is front and center is Jon. Even though Suzie is narrating, Jon calls all the shots and decides what they will do. Even when Jon admits his reason for robbing the bank is not purely to help Suzie, but in fact a symptom of his “Oppositional Defiant Disorder”, she continues to be his support system and never questions what

(An Analysis of the Sources of Injustice Explained by Simone de Beauvoir in Second Sex)

Simone de Beauvoir starts her second volume of the book, The Second Sex, with the statement, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (267). This is one of the most famous statements of de Beauvoir. She argues that a woman is not born fragile, passive, or secondary; she is forced by her environment and the society to become so. A woman learns her role from her circumstance. I agree with de Beauvoir’s argument because nobody is born shy, gentle, or passive, they are just gradually shaped in that way by their upbringing. The same claim is plausible for women too. Femininity does not come from birth, it is shaped by our culture and sophistication. The difference between the characteristics of male and female is not because of any

The first text we explore in this step is Bonaventure’s “On Seeing God in his Image”. Bonaventure shows us that through inward reflection we can see God. God can then lead us to God’s two most important laws, and the best ways for us to live in community with others; by loving God, and our neighbors.