This insightful and courageous tome is no shallow women’s lib manual…
Published in the aftermath of World War II, it’s a penetrating examination of the very real existential problems faced by half the human race. As such it’s required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the total situation of a woman’s life.
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“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.”
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De Beauvoir’s exploration of womanhood is not a cheap and disingenuous feminism. You’ll find no easy answers here, but plenty of difficult questions. No matter who you are on the sex and gender spectrum, her radical honesty will challenge you to reconsider your personhood and inspire you to rise above so many insidious religious, political, and socioeconomic forces opposed to your self-actualization.
The Second Sex is a call for the liberation of both ALL sexes and genders—an invitation that remains open and unfulfilled more than three generations after its publication.
I’m sorry, but I’d prefer to love in all my feminine weakness and glory. Feminism has nothing for me, and neither does Simone de Beauvoir.
I think if you were really sorry you would not have bothered to leave the comment, but gone on with your own kind of happiness without trying to make others feel bad about theirs.
So, you’re not sorry, and what else? Oh, yes: you find both the subject and the body of this post worthless. Are you “sorry” about putting that in too?
Since you invite debate (I personally find it an exercise more destructive than creative), I’ll add that my own life’s love record is chock full of feminine vulnerability. I find nothing in Beauvoir’s work which negates it.
Admit it: you haven’t even read what you’re being obnoxiously know-it-all about, have you?
Loosely guessing: bet you call yourself Christian, too, even while lying, complaining about the splinter in another’s eye while failing to remove the log from your own, and failing to practice loving acceptance of your fellow man. What would JC say? “Oh, dear!”
Thank you, Ana. Glad you are here.
Glad to BE here, my brother!
🌻