The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir Read Free Book Online Page B

that the absolutely contrary contrary, whose contrariety is in no way affected by the relationship that can be established between it and its correlative, the contrariety that permits its terms to remain absolutely other, is the feminine. Sex is not some specific difference … Neither is the difference between the sexes a contradiction … Neither is the difference between the sexes the duality of two complementary terms, for two complementary terms presuppose a preexisting whole … [A]lterity is accomplished in the feminine. The term is on the same level as, but in meaning opposed to, consciousness.” I suppose Mr. Levinas is not forgetting that woman also is consciousness for herself. But it is striking that he deliberately adopts a man’s point of view, disregarding the reciprocity of the subject and the object. When he writes that woman is mystery, he assumes that she is mystery for man. So this apparently objective description is in fact an affirmation of masculine privilege.
    4. See Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (The Elementary Structures of Kinship
). I thank Claude Lévi-Strauss for sharing the proofs of his thesis, which I drew on heavily, particularly in the second part, pp. 76–89.
    *
Mitsein
can be translated as “being with.” The French term
réalité humaine
(human reality) has been problematically used to translate Heidegger’s
Dasein
.—T RANS .
    5. See second part, this page .
    6. See Part Two, this page  to  this page
    *
“L’égalité dans la difference”
in the French text. Literal translation: “different but equal.” —T RANS .
    7. At least he thought he could.
    8. The article by Michel Carrouges on this theme in
Cahiers du Sud
, no. 292, is significant. He writes with indignation: “If only there were no feminine myth but only bands of cooks, matrons, prostitutes, and bluestockings with functions of pleasure or utility!” So, according to him, woman has no existence for herself; he only takes into account her
function
in the male world. Her finality is in man; in fact, it is possible to prefer her poetic “function” to all others. The exact question is why she should be defined in relation to the man.
    9. For example, man declares that he does not find his wife in any way diminished just because she does not have a profession: work in the home is just as noble and so on. Yet at the first argument he remonstrates, “You wouldn’t be able to earn a living without me.”
    10. Describing this very process will be the object of Volume II of this study.
    11. This will be the subject of a second volume.

| PART ONE |
DESTINY

| CHAPTER 1 |
Biological Data
    Woman? Very simple, say those who like simple answers: She is a womb, an ovary; she is a female: this word is enough to define her. From a man’s mouth, the epithet “female” sounds like an insult; but he, not ashamed of his animality, is proud to hear: “He’s a male!” The term “female” is pejorative not because it roots woman in nature but because it confines her in her sex, and if this sex, even in an innocent animal, seems despicable and an enemy to man, it is obviously because of the disquieting hostility woman triggers in him. Nevertheless, he wants to find a justification in biology for this feeling. The word “female” evokes a saraband of images: an enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm; monstrous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie down slavishly under the male’s imperial embrace, inert, impatient, shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated. Man projects all females at once