JOIN USThe woman who laid the foundation of radical feminism
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) combined intellectual activity, literary productivity, and real-world political action to bring about important legislative changes to advance the cause of women. Her seminal work The Second Sex (TSS) published in 1949, remains a classic. A powerful role model for women in the 21st century, de Beauvoir was an exacting and critical thinker, and had a major impact on the development of modern thought in feminist philosophy, in literary studies, and in the social sciences throughout the world.
In the backdrop of the contentious overturning of the Roe v. Wade judgement, I re-read TSS and realised, as I progressed, that TSS laid the foundation for radical feminist theory, with de Beauvoir’s insistence that the most personal relationships and activities of a woman’s life are inherently political. De Beauvoir is the original feminist and TSS, is the original feminist manifesto.
Recent decades have seen an evolution of feminist theory, but these developments only reaffirm that de Beauvoir succeeded in defining the central issues that remain the focus of discussion within international feminism even today. She subjected every fashionable intellectual -- and male-dominated -- current to a rigorous critique from the standpoint of feminism: biological determinism, psychoanalysis, Marxism. Anticipating by a quarter of a century -- indeed sowing the seeds of -- later developments in the feminist movement, she suggested that Marx and Engel’s reduction of all antagonistic social relations to relations of production, and their inattention to the relations of reproduction, precluded them from understanding the bases of women’s oppression in society: “Woman cannot in good faith be regarded simply as a worker; for her reproductive function is as important as her productive capacity, no less in the social economy than in the individual life…it is impossible to regard women simply as a productive force; she is for a man a sexual partner, a reproducer, an erotic object.”
De Beauvoir was the first to point out all dimensions of patriarchy that distorted women’s lives and are common to all cultures throughout history: permeating laws, religions, literature, and governments. Her influence on Jean Paul Sartre in the development of Existentialism as a philosophy, and contemporary feminist theory, was foundational. She turned Freud’s psychoanalysis on its head, using it as evidence, and drawing insights from it to demand women’s social, economic and political autonomy, and to argue for an end to sexist educational practices.
De Beauvoir’s analysis of women’s oppression in TSS has been subject to many criticisms: for its idealism, for her focus on myths and imagery, and the absence of practical strategies for liberation. Yet, there is no theoretical text of comparable sweep that stimulates us to analyse and compels us to relentlessly question the situation of women in so many domains: literature, religion, politics, work, family, education, sexuality, and motherhood. Reading TSS demonstrates to the reader that, in essence, all feminist dialogue entails a dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir. A reading of TSS provides the fundamental basis of locating women within their feminist past, present, and future; and its biggest strength is that it is authentic because as de Beauvoir says, “I really wrote the book in a spontaneous way, as an answer to the question that I was asking myself based on the fact of being a woman…from my own experience; from my own reflections; not so much from another’s influence.”
De Beauvoir did not call herself a feminist until 1965. This was because she rejected ‘first-wave’ feminist groups in France as insufficiently radical; and in 1970, was asked by activists to become involved in second-wave feminist campaigns, such as the fight for legalised abortion. The 1970s then became a period of feminist activism for de Beauvoir. But how did she connect the feminist theory of The Second Sex with feminist praxis? De Beauvoir’s concept of ‘becoming woman’ is profound, and she writes “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. In essence: one is not born anything, everything we are, is the result of our choices; and those that society gives us. De Beauvoir presents a picture of human freedom, in which women struggle against the apparent disadvantages of the female body. She raises the core question of female embodiment: Are the supposed disadvantages actual disadvantages, or are they merely judged to be so by society? This depends upon the extent to which a woman sees herself as a free subject rather than the object of society’s gaze.
Patriarchy reduces women to mere instruments of the ends of others -- reproducers, caregivers, homemakers, relegating them to the second sex. TSS helps challenge social, religious, and economic forces that subordinate women. Behind De Beauvoir’s mythical persona was a philosopher-activist who wanted women to be “free to choose themselves”. De Beauvoir opens our minds for that freedom to flourish.