Simone de Beauvoirs feminist theory: what is woman?
A summary of the fundamental principles of this important feminist philosopher and writer.
In the mid-20th century, the Western world experienced an unprecedented political, social and ideological upheaval.
After women won the right to vote in many countries, a part of society wondered what was happening to those aspects of life in which men continued to dominate the female sex. This unease, which later gave rise to the second wave of feminism, had as one of its fruits the work of the philosopher Simone de Beauvoirin which this thinker tried to understand the nature of femininity.
We will now see what are the main characteristics of Simone de Beauvoir's feminist theory and how it has influenced psychology and philosophy.
Who was Simone de Beauvoir? Brief biography
Simone de Beauvoir was born in the year 1908 in the French capital, Paris. During her youth she studied philosophy at the Sorbonam first, and then at the École Normale Supérieure. In this second institution he met Jean-Paul Sartre, and at that time began a relationship with him.and at that time began an affectionate relationship that lasted a lifetime. Finally, he died in Paris in 1986.
Sartre's existentialist influences can be seen in The Second Sex, Beauvoir's best known work, although the application of this perspective to gender studies was totally original, as we shall see. On the other hand, in addition to developing an important theoretical body for feminism, this philosopher was also a novelist.
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Simone de Beauvoir's theory: its essential principles.
These are the main characteristics of Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical work:
Recognizes the masculine as the point of reference 2.
Beauvoir's starting point was the realization that all of humanity's cultural productions, from art to the use of language, have man as their central point of reference.
For example, when expressing the idea of "human being", the figure of man is used by default.or that of man and woman, but never that of woman. Another example would be that, many times, developing the feminine version of something consists of adding unequivocally feminine attributes to "neutral" models. For example, there are products with a "women's" version that are distinguished from the standard model by being pink, thus signaling that the standard model is actually the male one. The same would be true in politics: it is normal and expected that politicians are men.
2. The concept of "the Other
From the previous idea, Simone de Beauvoir develops the idea of "the Other", or rather, "the other". This category is used to express in a visual way the fact that the feminine gender moves along the periphery of the humanIt is an attribute that is not integrated into the former, but rather an extension of it, while the masculine is inseparable from the idea of the human as if they were synonymous.
3. A masculine saga of domination
Linked to the previous elements is the corroboration that history, to all intents and purposes, has been written by men, both literally and figuratively, has been written by men, both literally and symbolically.. Simone de Beauvoir sees in this a symptom of a phenomenon of domination and subjugation of women, and in turn the reason why women have been alienated from all aspects of life and symbolic production.
4. You are not born a woman, you become one.
Recapitulating, we will see that for Simone de Beauvoir the point of reference of the human is the man and that the feminine is, in any case, a specific attribute not comparable to the concept of the masculine, since it is defined according to its proximity or remoteness from this point of reference..
The conclusion she draws from this is that the feminine is, in itself, something that has been designed and defined by men and imposed on women. This is summed up in her famous phrase "you are not born a woman, you become one". In short, women are not so in a way that is alien to history and politics, but rather because of the dominance of men.but rather because of the dominance of the male gaze over "the Other".
5. For a non-alienated femininity
The theory that Simone de Beauvoir outlines in The Second Sex is not simply a description of what she considered to be reality; attached to it was a moral indication, of what should be done and is good.. Specifically, this philosopher pointed out the need for women to define their own identity outside the male gaze, without being coerced by the impositions of this moral and intellectual reference fed by centuries and centuries of domination.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)