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    Tutoveanu Andreea-Miruna, Critical Essay

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    This document summarizes and comments on ideas about feminism from Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex. It discusses how de Beauvoir asks what it means to be a woman and argues that women have historically been seen as lacking qualities and inferior to men. While women can give birth, their bodies have also been seen as prisons. The document notes that true equality between genders has never existed and that women need freedom of expression equal to men in order to be considered independent.

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    Tutoveanu Andreea-Miruna, Critical Essay

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    AndreeaMiruna
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    This document summarizes and comments on ideas about feminism from Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex. It discusses how de Beauvoir asks what it means to be a woman and argues that women have historically been seen as lacking qualities and inferior to men. While women can give birth, their bodies have also been seen as prisons. The document notes that true equality between genders has never existed and that women need freedom of expression equal to men in order to be considered independent.

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    This document summarizes and comments on ideas about feminism from Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex. It discusses how de Beauvoir asks what it means to be a woman and argues that women have historically been seen as lacking qualities and inferior to men. While women can give birth, their bodies have also been seen as prisons. The document notes that true equality between genders has never existed and that women need freedom of expression equal to men in order to be considered independent.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    40 views4 pages

    Tutoveanu Andreea-Miruna, Critical Essay

    Uploaded by

    AndreeaMiruna
    This document summarizes and comments on ideas about feminism from Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex. It discusses how de Beauvoir asks what it means to be a woman and argues that women have historically been seen as lacking qualities and inferior to men. While women can give birth, their bodies have also been seen as prisons. The document notes that true equality between genders has never existed and that women need freedom of expression equal to men in order to be considered independent.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Tutoveanu Andreea-Miruna

    First year, Group 1


    Main concepts in contemporary critical theory
    Seminar instructor – Ph.D. Ștefănescu Bogdan
    22. 5. 2018

    Ideas about feminism with respect to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second


    Sex

    Along the time, society have created sort of a bell jar around the idea that
    both males and females should be equal. We hear more and more about
    women trying to break this glass in order to make people aware of a great
    power they hold in their hands. But is the man of XXI century prepared to
    listen to these women raising their voices like they never did before?

    I believe that the majority of us is familiar with the fact that it is enough
    for an idea to embrace a name and a face in order to become a religion. And,
    as all the religions in this world were created by males, females have also
    decided to ‘give birth’ to a cult – but one which only has to do with them –
    called feminism.

    ꞌFeminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have
    equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic
    and social equality of the sexism.ꞌ This thesis seemed uncomplicated for lots
    of heroines which managed to change the standards imposed by society.

    It all started with The French Revolution, when Olympe de Gouges –


    inspired and in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
    Citizen – wrote the famous document Declaration of the Rights of Woman
    and of the Female Citizen (original: Déclaration des droits de la femme et
    citoyenne, 1791). But even though the paper declared the women’s
    humanist principles and equality before the law for the first time in history,
    the concept did not receive a favorable feedback. Only after two years,
    women in New Zeeland have the opportunity to vote in a parliamentary
    election – fact that happens with the two great powers United Kingdom and
    United States of America just after the First World War. Now, a hundred
    years later, we still cannot say that at least one country in the world have
    achieved the gender equality. This proves that the population have grown
    with the mistaken idea that women should have special rights which are
    hard to obtain, instead of just being equal with men.

    In The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir asks herself and all the other
    females who read her essay a question born from the flame of
    existentialism – ꞌwhat is a woman?ꞌ. Not only a human being who has ꞌno
    past, no history, no religionꞌ of its own but also a voice that need to be heard
    more than anything in this nowaday society that harasses and profits off of
    her insecurities. Not only a ꞌsexual beingꞌ and ꞌabsolute sex, no lessꞌ but also
    a person who should feel free to be both sensitive and strong. However,
    when it comes to this feeling of power Simone also suggests that women
    need men’s presence in order to feel, in turn, strong – ꞌIf they belong to the
    bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with men of that class, not with proletarian
    women; if they are white, their allegiance is to white men, not to Negro
    womenꞌ. Related to this is the fact that females will never be independent
    as long as they only get what men ꞌare willing to grantꞌ.

    De Beauvoir writes about woman in a way that makes women feel blessed
    and damned at the same time. Females should feel significant because they
    have ovaries and the uterus so they can give birth. Bound up with this we
    should all think that if our first ꞌhomeꞌ was a woman we should never forget
    and disrespect one. On the other hand a female ꞌshouldꞌ feel inferior to a
    man as she suffers from a ꞌlack of qualitiesꞌ because her body is nothing but
    ꞌa hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to itꞌ forever
    compared with the manꞌs non-peculiarity. It would seem that an equality in
    gender have never existed.

    Talking about fields like art, literature, philosophy, psychology, science


    females themselves are weak too because they never wrote great books,
    very few of them made huge discoveries or invented brilliant things. They
    need a sort of freedom of expression which we only find in men’s workings.
    ꞌIt is when we compare the woman of achievement with the few rare male
    artists who deserve to be called ‘great men’ that she seems mediocre .ꞌ This
    supports the idea that they could not or were not confident enough to be
    objective and only when they become like that can we say that women
    gained liberty.
    Women should be involved in the decisions that would affect their lives. It
    is their obligation to be aware of what it has been given to them. ꞌThat is, in
    libertyꞌ.
    Sources

     Reader- Contemporary Critical Theories/ 4.4.1 Simone de Beauvoir: from


    The Second Sex, p. 174-176
     Watson, Emma. ꞌEmma Watson to United Nations: I’m a feministꞌ
    youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9SUAcNlVQ4&t=116s
     Malala. ꞌMalala: Feminism Is Not Complicatedꞌ youtube,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfxLLyM8iGI&t=50s
     ꞌDeclaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizenꞌ,
    wikipedia,
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Woman_an
    d_of_the_Female_Citizen

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