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The second sex by Simone de Beauvoir
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The second sex (original 1949; edition 1993)

by Simone de Beauvoir, H. M. Parshley

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4,533312,506 (3.96)65
The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life. ( )
  Zohrab | Mar 18, 2008 |
English (30)  Portuguese (1)  All languages (31)
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Powerful and well argued book. ( )
  brakketh | Apr 1, 2023 |
A surprisingly modern work, which is in many ways unfortunate. I was surprised by how well the scientific perspective in Part 1 held up. The section on Myth is exceptional, and, even now, is instrumental to understanding contemporary politics. Unfortunately, the latter half of the work contained in Volume II ("Lived Experience") is outdated, if not in substance then in style. Beauvoir makes concessions for the sake of argument which would be considered too great by current standards. She would do well to provide an update to these chapters, though I suspect she may not get around to it. ( )
  Joe.Olipo | Nov 26, 2022 |
I read this back when I was a teenager in the 50's when life as a woman was becoming visible in a disturbing way. I am more observer than participator but also a victim. I was very aware of my female place in the order of things and often despaired and the unfairness, the inequity, the vulnerability and the sheer workhorse aspect of being a woman, wife, mother and later office worker who put in the same hours for half the pay and came home to a second and third job. This book lingered and perhaps opened my eyes too far and tainted my experience of life but it was true in every aspect. With Roe vs Wade being overturned within the month, guaranteed, I am reminded of those years of terror of pregnancy and back alley abortions. Then having to fight my doctor for a tubal litigation after two abortions, one child given up for adoption and now raising two...I was thirty and he refused. I did manage to work around him and got my wish but it was another example of my having no control over or decision making over my own body. So here I am rereading and despairing once more for womankind. We accomplished so much, we fought and came so far but the machine is working to take us back in time, take away all our gains and put the next generation in chains again. ( )
  Karen74Leigh | Aug 16, 2022 |
I was drawn to this book by a single sentence:
One day I wanted to explain myself to myself... And it struck me with a sort of surprise that the first thing I had to say was 'I am a woman.'
De Beauvoir presents the idea that women have been set up over the centuries as the ultimate "Other". Otherness is the idea that people need to define something or someone as not the self to be able to define the self. On an individual level, everyone outside your own head is Other, but, De Beauvoir claims, the ideal of femininity has been set up as a societal Other.

De Beauvoir claims that society defines normal as masculine. That was certainly true when she wrote this book in the 1940's, and I think it is largely true today. Strength, power, rationality are all defined by society as masculine and good, while weakness, emotion, and intuition are defined as feminine and bad. I was uncomfortable at first with labeling the first set of attributes masculine and the second feminine, but I realized that De Beauvoir is considering societal archetypes that (annoyingly) still hold. It is still considered odd for a woman to desire power or a man to be emotional.

The book discusses how these ideals are embedded in society. De Beauvoir's fundamental argument is that traits such as rationality can and should be shared by all humans, but the structure of society has withheld them from women. I agree with her general argument, but I sometimes was annoyed with De Beauvoir's presentation. Her justification consists mostly of examples strung together to paint the worst picture of femininity. The examples are too specific to be generally convincing. She seems to largely draw her case from psychological literature that discusses particularly neurotic women; it is relatively rare that she discusses the case of the average woman.

De Beauvoir also seems to hate women and idealize the world of men. She wants women to acquire masculine traits and lose feminine traits. She seems to imply men have the perfect life. For example, she discusses the limitations of the home in providing a fulfilling career for women and makes the assumption that most men are fulfilled by their jobs. In general, she writes as if men have no problems. Yet I am sure there are enough cases in the psychological literature that a book can be written that makes just as sorry a case for the sad plight of men as De Beauvoir makes for women.

Going off topic a bit, I am always annoyed at those strains of feminism that assume the feminine is less valuable than the masculine. We have gotten to a point where it is generally acceptable for a woman to have so called masculine traits, but it is still unacceptable for men to have feminine traits. Focusing on the feminine plight was a logical place to start; the masculine traits are the ones associated with the power to repress and abuse others, and women needed to escape from that. However, the problems facing women now, from home/work balancing to wanting to wear skirts and still be taken seriously, are largely related to balancing of feminine and masculine. Men and women need to come to respect feminine qualities and recognize them in everyone. In short, all of these masculine and feminine qualities about need to lose their gender and be recognized as human.
  eri_kars | Jul 10, 2022 |
In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir attempts to define the mystery that is a woman, and she does an incredible job of that. Beauvoir goes over the history of women in the ideas that they represent and how they are represented in society. We are shown in various forms the dichotomy that woman seems to represent. A woman can be either Eve or the Virgin Mary, and for that, she is alternately repulsed and glorified. We put her on a pedestal while enslaving her to our whims at the same time. She can be a representation of life itself or of death. Some writers remember that she is made of flesh and call it disgusting that she has the necessities that it entails. In that sense, it was uncomfortable reading. On the other hand, it was really fascinating and engrossing.

The book is slightly outdated in the sense that it was written in 1949 and translated into English in 1953. So it missed the Feminist Revolution of the 1970s. However, Beauvoir lived to the ripe time of 1986 and in that she might have had some opinions on it. Also, I have heard that the translation that I have obtained is not that good, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. It is easy enough to understand her position and thesis without a completely faithful translation. Although it would be interesting to read it in the original French, it would probably take really long since I would have to know French. ( )
  Floyd3345 | Jun 15, 2019 |
I've given up on this. The biology and development of culture that start the book as a base for the rest of it are just so outdated that I can't stand it.
  MarthaJeanne | Apr 25, 2016 |
I read this book back in 2012. I have used this book as a reference in essays for my English and Sociology classes when I was an undergraduate student in Education. It is insightful on many accounts since it tells about how things used to be - and some continue to be - for women. Back when I picked it up, I was quite into feminism and all for sticking it to the man etc... The more I learned about De Beauvoir, the less I was impressed by her. I am no fan of her unhealthy relationship with Sartre, too à-la-Osho for my taste. But that is besides the point. Back to this book, some passages were a bit like a rant, so I skimmed through and felt annoyed. This quote is one that I absolutely love:
'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.'
( )
  pathogenik | Feb 18, 2016 |
FINALLY, I finished it. This book seemed to take forever and I'm so glad I finished it. I was pretty much skim reading it by the end of it.
It was a really interesting book and that's why I gave it 4/5 stars. The writing was really good and I was really captivated in the subject. It seemed to ramble on but I think that is just because it had so much to cover. I'm not really one for non-fiction so that is why to took me so long to read and why it felt tedious.
Overall, really interesting book. ( )
  ebethiepaige | Oct 20, 2015 |
FINALLY, I finished it. This book seemed to take forever and I'm so glad I finished it. I was pretty much skim reading it by the end of it.
It was a really interesting book and that's why I gave it 4/5 stars. The writing was really good and I was really captivated in the subject. It seemed to ramble on but I think that is just because it had so much to cover. I'm not really one for non-fiction so that is why to took me so long to read and why it felt tedious.
Overall, really interesting book. ( )
  ebethiepaige | Oct 17, 2015 |
FINALLY, I finished it. This book seemed to take forever and I'm so glad I finished it. I was pretty much skim reading it by the end of it.
It was a really interesting book and that's why I gave it 4/5 stars. The writing was really good and I was really captivated in the subject. It seemed to ramble on but I think that is just because it had so much to cover. I'm not really one for non-fiction so that is why to took me so long to read and why it felt tedious.
Overall, really interesting book. ( )
  bethie-paige | Jan 29, 2014 |
A powerful and groundbreaking book on feminism. To me it's main value lies in defining the relationship between biology and social norms, and how biology definitely influences social norms but in no way excuses them. ( )
  Beholderess | Dec 17, 2013 |
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: ‘virtue’, as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of ‘that which depends on us’.


My life has led me to develop a love for thought, a love heavily dependent on the context of reality and my personal view of such, a love that has been, is, and will continue to grow through heavy doses of words both spoken and printed. I will admit to being biased towards the printed, as well as to being biased in many things as a result of characteristics both physical and mental; the fault of nature and nurture, neither one of which I can help very much. My method of coping with having a love for thinking, while being aware of the inherent inaccuracies of said thinking, is a rabid interest in argument, debate if you will, on many fronts that concern me.

Being a woman concerns me. With that, let us begin.

I am a white middle class female undergraduate who has spent all twenty-two years of her life in the United States. I did not read this book for a class. I do not in any way claim that this book speaks on all women’s issues, or deem women’s issues more important than those of any other oppressed group, whether via race, sexuality, financial security, et al. I simply don’t have the firsthand experience with other issues that, I believe, would accredit me to speak on them to such length. Account for the inherent biases as you see fit.

Females are biologically different from males in the interest of propagation of the species, resulting in imposed monthly cycles that involve a whole host of painful and bloody side effects, as well as the inconvenient and sometimes dangerous states of pregnancy and giving birth. Females also have a more difficult time of building up muscle mass and other aspects lending to physical movement, due to the consequences of puberty and resulting chemical development.

The bearing of maternity upon the individual life, regulated naturally in animals by the oestrus cycle and the seasons, is not definitely prescribed in woman - society alone is the arbiter. The bondage of woman to the species is more or less rigorous according to the number of births demanded by society and the degree of hygienic care provided for pregnancy and childbirth. Thus, while it is true that in the higher animals the individual existence is asserted more imperiously by the male than by the female, in the human species individual 'possibilities' depend upon the economic and social situation.

We are now acquainted with the dramatic conflict that harrows the adolescent girl at puberty: she cannot become 'grown-up' without accepting her femininity; and she knows already that her sex condemns her to a mutilated and fixed existence, which she faces at this time under the form of an impure sickness and a vague sense of guilt. Her inferiority was sensed at first merely as a deprivation; but the lack of a penis has now become defilement and transgression. So she goes onward towards the future, wounded, shameful, culpable.


In the United States, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, which declares that: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. This occurred 144 years after the US declared independence, 137 years after the US was recognized as independent, and 132 years after the Constitution itself was ratified.

In masculine hands logic is often a form of violence, a sly kind of tyranny: the husband, if older and better educated than his wife, assumes on the basis of this superiority to give no weight at all to her opinions when he does not share them; he tirelessly proves to her that he is right. For her part, she becomes obstinate and refuses to see anything in her husband's arguments; he simply sticks to his own notions. And so a deep misunderstanding comes between them. He makes no effort to comprehend the feelings and reactions she is not clever enough to justify, though they are deeply rooted in her; she does not grasp what is vital behind the pedantic logic with which her husband overwhelms her.


On June 20, 2013, many news organizations issued articles discussing a report released by the World Health Organization titled Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. The results? One in three women has faced intimate partner violence or sexual violence. 40% of women killed worldwide were slain by the partner.

And therein lies the wondrous hope that man has often put in woman: he hopes to fulfill himself as a being by carnally possessing a being, but at the same time confirming his sense of freedom through the docility of a free person. No man would consent to be a woman, but every man wants women to exist.

Man has no need of the unconditional devotion he claims, nor of the idolatrous love that flatters his vanity; he accepts them only on condition that he need not satisfy the reciprocal demands these attitudes imply. He preaches to woman that she should give—and her gifts bore him to distraction; she is left in embarrassment with her useless offerings, her empty life. On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself—on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself. The innumerable martyrs to love bear witness against the injustice of a fate that offers a sterile hell as ultimate salvation.


There is currently in the US a widespread political machination in many states aiming towards the eradication of legalized abortion, in essence granting living women less rights to their bodies than dead individuals who in life chose not to donate their bodies to science.

...modern woman is everywhere permitted to regard her body as capital for exploitation.

The fact is that a true human privilege is based upon the anatomical privilege only in virtue of the total situation.

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.

...the distortion begins when the religion of Maternity proclaims that all mothers are saintly. For while maternal devotion may be perfectly genuine, this, in fact, is rarely the case. Maternity is usually a strange mixture of narcissism, altruism, idle day-dreaming, sincerity, bad faith, devotion and cynicism.


Also current in the US is the discussion of rape culture and slut shaming in light of the events of the Steubenville High School Rape Case, where media outlets offered biased coverage that sympathized with the rapists and rarely focused on the victim.

As a matter of fact, the privileged position of man comes from the integration of his biologically aggressive role with his social function as leader or master; it is on account of this social function that the physiological differences take on all their significance. Because man is ruler in the world, he holds that the violence of his desires is a sign of his sovereignty; a man of great erotic capacity is said to be strong, potent - epithets that imply activity and transcendence. But, on the other hand, woman being only an object, she will be described as warm or frigid, which is to say that she will never manifest other than passive qualities.

It is a mistake to seek in fantasies the key to concrete behaviour; for fantasies are created and cherished as fantasies. The little girl who dreams of violation with mingled horror and acquiescence does not really wish to be violated and if such a thing should happen it would be a hateful calamity.

Masculine desire is as much an offence as it is a compliment; in so far as she feels herself responsible for her charm, or feels she is exerting it of her own accord, she is much pleased with her conquests, but to the extent that her face, her figure, her flesh are facts she must bear with, she wants to hide them from this independent stranger who lusts after them.

Man encourages these allurements by demanding to be lured: afterwards he is annoyed and reproachful. But he feels only indifference and hostility for the artless, guileless young girl...she is obliged to offer man the myth of her submission, because he insists on domination, and her compliance would only be perverted from the start.


In the US, prostitution, the ‘business or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment’, is illegal.

The Cinderella myth flourishes especially in prosperous countries like America. How should the men there spend their surplus money if not upon a woman? Orson Welles, among others, has embodied in 'Citizen Kane' that imperial and false generosity: it is to glorify his own power that Kane chooses to shower his gifts upon an obscure singer and to impose her upon the public as a great queen of song. When the hero of another film, 'The Razor's Edge', returns from India equipped with absolute wisdom, the only thing he finds to do with it is to redeem a prostitute.

One remarkable fact among others is that the married woman had her place in society but enjoyed no rights therein; whereas the unmarried female, honest woman or prostitute, had all the legal capacities of a man, but up to this century was more or less excluded from social life.

Sewers are necessary to guarantee the wholesomeness of palaces, according to the Fathers of the Church. And it has often been remarked that the necessity exists of sacrificing one part of the female sex in order to save the other and prevent worse troubles. One of the arguments in support of slavery, advanced by the American supporters of the institution, was that the Southern whites, being all freed from servile duties, could maintain the most democratic and refined relations among themselves; in the same way, a caste of 'shameless women' allows the 'honest woman' to be treated with the most chivalrous respect. The prostitute is a scapegoat; man vents his turpitude upon her, and he rejects her. Whether she is put legally under police supervision or works illegally in secret, she is in any case treated as a pariah.


The Equal Pay Act was signed into law in the US in 1963. The male-female income difference in the US was in 2010 at a female-to-male earnings ratio of 0.81, medium income in full-time year-round workers being $42,800 for men compared to $34,700 for women.

When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman, his theme is the principle of abstract equality, and he does not base his attitude upon such inequality as may exist. But when he is in conflict with her, the situation is reversed: his theme will be the existing inequality, and he will even take it as justification for denying abstract equality.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present.


The history of literature is dominated by male writers. Since 1901 when the first annual Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded, out of the 109 individuals that have received it, twelve were female. More women have been awarded the Nobel in this field than any other, save for the Nobel Peace Prize, of which fifteen of the 101 recipients were female.

When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he often betrays also the gap between his world view and his egotistical dreams.

…the categories in which men think of the world are established from their point of view, as absolute: they misconceive reciprocity, here as everywhere. A mystery for man, woman is considered to be mysterious in essence.

And while her lover fondly believes he is pursuing the Ideal, he is actually the plaything of nature, who employs all this mystification for the ends of reproduction.

'Pendants have for two thousand years reiterated the notion that women have a more lively spirit, men more solidity; that women have more delicacy in their ideas and men greater power of attention. A Paris idler who once took a walk in the Versailles Gardens concluded that, judging from all he saw, the trees grow ready trimmed.'

–Stendhal


Feminism is, well. You tell me. I have to say, though, bra-burning and unshaven legs seem empty condemnations in comparison to rape and domestic abuse.

The truth is that just as—biologically—males and females are never victims of one another but both victims of the species, so man and wife together undergo the oppression of an institution they did not create. If it is asserted that men oppress women, the husband is indignant; he feels that he is the one who is oppressed—and he is; but the fact is that it is the masculine code, it is the society developed by the males and in their interest, that has established woman’s situation in a form that is at present a source of torment for both sexes.

It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.


I thought about keeping a list of how many authors/philosophers/lauded historical people I’d have to completely boycott due to misogyny. That action makes as much sense as completely boycotting those who favor feminism. Think about it.

Alternative Title: Woman Fucks/Fucking Terrifies Man - A Treatise ( )
2 vote Korrick | Sep 12, 2013 |
I chose to read one of the most influential, and what I consider most important books, in feminism history, The Second Sex. I originally had read excerpts from the book in its native language, French, and was angry at the observations de Beauvoir made. I realize now I was upset because the observations and explanations were true. Simone de Beauvoir essentially states that men oppress women by defining them as the Other and occupying the role of Self. It is in this definition that women lose their individuality and are seen as objects and inessential. The Second Sex is divided into two books. The first being "Facts and Myths" and the second "Woman's Life Today". Throughout the book de Beauvoir analyzes history, mythical representations of women, female development, roles women inhabit, and female dependency, all through the lenses of biology and psychoanalysis. This book is pretty lengthy and at times difficult to follow, but overall incredible. For me, it's a book that has shaped my view of feminism and allowed me to view my identity as a woman completely different. ~Kallie B.
  muwomenscenter | May 31, 2013 |
I read it when I was ten, just because it was on my mother's shelf, and of course at that age you find everything very thought-provoking, but I think I wouldn't like it now.

Hm, don't remember right now how Adrian Mole liked it. =)
  Lucy_Skywalker | Apr 24, 2013 |
Very incisive stuff. Although some of the biological tracts are slightly outdated, the attacks on past social thinking and psychoanalytic theory are very prescient. Societal influences as a role on psychology. Women as the 'great other', submitted to contradictory insults and demeaning conditions.

A very powerful and scathing book. ( )
  HadriantheBlind | Mar 30, 2013 |
Delving into every aspect of female history, biology, psychology and sexuality, The Second Sex must have made quite a stir when it was first released over 50 years ago. Over the course of those years, many theories proposed in the book have either become verified fact or have been completely disproven.

To a reader discovering this book for the first time today, it is nothing more than a mix of common sense and misleading data. The words, though, get into your psyche. While reading I could feel myself getting worked up, wanting to stand up, be counted, rebel against, well, men.

Simone de Beauvoir seemed to be fighting for absolute sameness between men and women and that's where she lost me. While she admits that men and women differ biologically, she rather convincingly tried to reason that someone was to blame for that difference. That men were stealing womens power because women were forced to carry and raise the children they had. It doesn't even make sense as I write it here, so maybe I lost the true meaning in the never-ending cry of it's-not-our-fault-that-we've-been-held-down.

She pointed out that women are forced to bow down to men because they have been raised that way. Inversely, shouldn't she also accept that men take control of women because that is the way they were raised to behave? The message to rise against biology and psychology and to change the system is a very important one, but blaming the entire male gender for womens fear of standing up for herself is prejudice. If I was a man, I would be horrendously offended.

As a women, I see the value of the kind of passion about our gender. The Second Sex is powerful and compelling and often times inaccurate. It's to be expected based on the multitude of changes garnered by the feminist movement over the last 50 years. The book makes you think and that is always a good thing. ( )
1 vote TequilaReader | Feb 27, 2010 |
The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life. ( )
  Zohrab | Mar 18, 2008 |
A life changing book for me. Read and discussed it for my Soc III class at school, and the strength and passion of De Beauvoir's arguments led to my signing up for a feminist theories class the following semester. Fascinating, compelling, and definitely deserving of Great Books stature. ( )
1 vote Katie_Lou | Feb 20, 2008 |
a defining book, worth reading again and again, and aging very well ( )
  experimentalis | Jan 9, 2008 |
Great book but a bad translation. The historian who originally translated TSS into English obviously knew less about existentialism than I (and I know very little). He also cut out quite a bit of information about women in history (which is mentioned in the introduction to the Vintage edition). Never fear, though; I have it on good authority from a de Beauvoir scholar that a new translation is in the works and should be out in a few years. The people who are working on it are knowledgeable in philosophy as well as women's history. I do highly recommend this book and for the time being, this edition is all we have (unless you can read French), but get ready to throw away your current copy for a more complete and accurate translation of The Second Sex sometime soon. ( )
3 vote sweetmarie9 | Nov 20, 2007 |
very interesting
( )
  sadiebooks | Aug 5, 2007 |
Full of wisdom. A great place to start in learning about the history of feminism.
  maxbuehler | Jun 14, 2007 |
Reading after what amounts to a dare. Slow going.
2 vote ben_a | Dec 3, 2006 |
In this book Simone de Beauvoir said women made up the "second sex," as in "second-class citizens," and were little more than "human incubators" if they chose to give birth.

We know that the starting point of Beauvoir's writing of The Second Sex was her decision to write about her own life. With that personal standpoint, the formulas of existentialism may have looked inadequate indeed. Her first step for The Second Sex was research. Such a choice was an acknowledgment of her commitment to the "facts" of facticity, beyond the general assertion of the existence of facticity in the for-itself, as much if not more than to the more expected existentialist stress on the freedom of the for-itself. An empirical study steeped in Hegelian-existentialistphenomenological-structuralist theory, The Second Sex was written because Beauvoir chose to tell her own life story. In this work, she progressed from heroic assertions of freedom and vague acknowledgments of facticity to the actual details from which freedom and facticity are present for a whole gender. Thus she could progress to the study of facticity and freedom as they were embodied in one human life: "I was born at four o'clock in the morning on the 9th of January 1908 in a room fitted with white-enamelled furniture and overlooking the boulevard Raspail," she matter-of-factly begins.

As The Second Sex was a study necessary as a preface to her own autobiography, her call for a different kind of female autobiography at the end of The Second Sex can be seen as a preface to her own autobiography, one of a specific kind; in which truth, in all of its mystery, will be "unveiled," and meaning will be discovered.
  antimuzak | Sep 10, 2006 |
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