PHL 605 Lecture 7: Simone de Beauvoir Lecture
15 Aug 2015
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1929: meets sartre; life long relationship, sometimes open. The second sex, 1949: man"/ woman" are not symmetrical terms, woman" is de ned as the second sex". -i. e. , understood in relation to the rst sex", man: man" = standard human being, man" is subject (social point of reference, society: "man" is taken for granted, woman" = (dangerous) mystery that must be unravelled. E. g. , freud: woman is a dark continent : woman" is (man"s) other, men have obsessed over this question, what is woman?". What motivates this question: the question implies that there is something essential about women or a xed identity, but no one has a xed identity, patriarchal attitude: If we (i. e. , men) know what woman is then we can better control her. Woman is femininity", woman is her womb", etc. One is not born [a woman], but rather becomes a woman .
