Simone De Beauvoir

In The Other Sex, who does De Beauvoir criticize - men or women, and for whom is her criticism intended? What are her main claims?

In The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir exposes the consistent parallel between all texts, old and new, making up the cannon of which everything we (men and women) think - is based on and derives from. Whether in adoration or condemnation, male thinkers have always dealt with the female individual on one fixed level. They have been and remain the eternal and absolute 'other'. More absolute then the slave, the Jew or the 'nigger' as even within such sects, women have been and remain the 'other' by which men - regardless of class, race, religion or ethnicity, define themselves.

Women are men's "other", but their "otherness" has always been understood not only as "being different from men" but also as being so in a hierarchical sense of reduction.

Women are defined and differentiated within reference to men and with no reference to their own individual being. It has been spoon-fed to both girls and boys that they are the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential and supreme.

A cultural and psychological revolution, as I see it , depends equally on women and men (however unjust it may seem, obviously the sex in position to get things going 'round here) acknowledging, that it is in effect men, men much like Godard ,who define and have always defined the "norm", which when measured up against, the mythical creature woman, is not surprisingly found to be lacking in many areas.

I find that men are in the wrong for having structured an "objective", "universal" paradigm that is a tad - how shall we say: binary, biased, masculinist, oppressive and negative towards women and the feminine in general.

Yet women are even more to blame for having taken it in silence and according to my understanding of The Second Sex, it is them who are at the heart of De Beauvoir's criticism.

Throughout history there was no room for female objective or execution of their own destiny (though De Beauvoir exemplifies in text as in the flesh that they certainly can when given a fair chance by their male counterparts). Woman existed only as man's destiny and it is the Sartres of the world, who were thought to directly relate to the higher things, while De Beauvoir and her counterparts, if they participated in such higher things at all, were assumed to only be doing so through interaction with men like the ones mentioned.

De Beauvoir must be attuned to this history as she has lived it. Before she wrote The Second Sex, she could have surely counted on most people seeing her as playing second fiddle to "genius- philosopher" Sartre.

De Beauvoir clearly illustrates that girls are 'made' into women, and as women, constrained: 'One is not born but, rather, becomes a woman' means, listen and follow your own voice, exercise your free will, make your own choices, stop taking it from behind so willingly and break free from the confinement you've been subjected to. De Beauvoir implies that woman, as children, are unable to recognize the potential freedom in their situation, sometimes not even aware of their own captivity. This is how she seems to understand today's pseudo-liberated 'woman in transition'. They're like children - hardly having the capacity to grasp true liberation, as they live and have been living, completely attuned to the world of their other.

'One is not born but, rather, becomes a woman' means that the choice to not become one was there all along. And for not having seen it and remaining virgins and whores for 2000 years - women are to blame for as well.

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