Women

de Beauvoir’s Second Sex came in as a radical wave to stir prevalent conception of women around the world. The central argument of The Second Sex is how women were never considered the primary sex but always relegated to being men’s Other. 

She challenges subjugation and othering of women along with superficial parameters on which feminists argued equality. As discovered by Beauvoir, men and maleness take over the attribute of neutralness. Hence anything that is not male will be considered as the other. 

She calls women’s being as incidental and inessential as opposed to essential. In a series of scathing comments, she attacks philosophers like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, who represent female nature as that afflicted with natural defectiveness and thereby deprecating her to an incidental being.

She argues and rejects the conventional view where a woman’s body is considered as an hindrance, and her identity is only formed against masculine protest. 

Beauvoir showcases how men have always been privileged with a feeling of collectiveness and shared experiences which has always lacked in women’s movements. She calls women’s issues more universal than isolated. For her, women live dispersed among men and they attach themselves more to fathers and husbands than other women. 

She presupposes that differences between men and women emerged with the emergence of private property, which led to the conception of master and slave hierarchy, where men started acquiring property. She outlines necessary changes that would emancipate women and recover her Selfhood. Firstly, she argues that women have to be a part of the production process. She was in forefront for changes in social structures regarding legalizing abortion, contraception, education, and most importantly having financial independence from men.