SOCY 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Existence Precedes Essence, Kate Millett, Simone De Beauvoir
15 Jun 2018
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Week 7
February 27, 2017
Simone De Beauvoir:
- Often seen as the founder of existentialism
- “existence precedes essence”
- She wrote: The second Sex
o She wanted to answer the question: “what is a woman?”
o Men and women are not opposite poles – man is positive and neutral. In some
senses, women represent the opposite (negative sometimes)
o “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
o Sex and gender – she is the first person to really establish that sex and gender are
two different things.
o She draws upon the idea of biology is not destiny
- Sex and Biology:
o X and XY chromosomes – a binary opposition?
o The “intersexual body”
o Percentage of male and female characteristics varies widely
o Inner lives differ
o “Sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even
five categories.”
o Iven spectrum of chromosomally based elements of sex “the boundaries
separating masculine and feminine seem harder that ever to define*”
o Judith Butler – sex as a “discursive formation”
o An apparent “natural coherence” between the biological bases of “sex” and what
“sex is”
o The discursive formation stems from and reinforces “stylized acts over time”
o Gender is a fairly complex discourse—it is not a thing but rather a script.
o A socially constructed perception appears to be rooted in something natural and
unchanging
o Gender performance changes of the course of a person’s life
o Gender roles are not tied to biologically based criteria
Betty Friedan
- “the problem that has no name”
- She writes: Feminine mystique – blind veneration and reverence of femininity --- a
mystery that cannot be known
- Private versus public – “hidden in the household”
- One of the first people to focus on domestic life and labour
Kate Millett
- Patriarchy – the rule of fathers
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