Simone De Beauvoir - a critique of historical Western philosophy
As we saw in the posts on the Western history of gender, philosophers largely viewed women as flawed humans, but classified men as practically divine and supremely logical beings operating beyond their mortal coils.
Simone De Beauvoir challenged the ways that primarily-male Western philosophers characterized gender, specifically their restrictive definitions of femininity. In addition to her critiques, one of her many now-mainstream contributions is the differentiation of sex and gender.
In her challenge, Beauvoir criticized the basis for the then-current Western theories of gender:
Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularizes it.1
(De Beauvoir, The second sex, pp2014)
The receipts
Beauvoir supports her claims by referencing the works of classical philosophers, demonstrating the ways that masculine superiority has impacted large schools of thought:
- Aristotle, a famous philosopher who continues to have influence in modern philosophy, stated that “the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities, […] we should regard women’s nature as suffering from natural defectiveness.”1 (De Beauvoir, The second sex, pp2014)
- Saint Thomas, who influenced the Catholic church, declared that women were an “incomplete man,” and an “incidental” being.1 (De Beauvoir, The second sex, pp2014)
- Many interpretations of Genesis II, where the creation of Eve from Adam’s redundant and extraneous rib-bone is taken to symbolize reliance and submission.
Beauvoir concludes that ancient philosophers defined men as the default, and women as merely an object in relation to men; not as an individual.
Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being.1
(De Beauvoir, The second sex, pp2014)
What is femininity?
Recognizing that femininity has been historically defined as distinctly not masculine is important to understanding our modern ideas of femininity, and gender in general, as an identifying trait.
If our definition for a gender is the lack of another identifier, we run into issues of categorization.
- What does it mean to be a woman if womanhood is simply not-manhood?
- What about men who do not conform to the hegemonic ideas of masculinity?
- What does it mean to identify as a man, and subsequently as a non-man?
These historical ideas about gender don’t help us to understand people’s experiences.