The Second Sex and the 20th Century Feminist Movement

Many books were written during the second wave of feminism in the United States. "The Feminine Mystique" (The Feminine Mystique), "Sexual Politics" (Sexual Politics), and "The Dialectic of Sex" (The Dialectic of Sex), bestsellers appear one after another, each work is exploring , how certain customs, laws, and centuries of ideologies jointly led to the phenomenon that occurred in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s: labor and status were divided along gender lines, with women concentrated in low-paying jobs, or Engaging in unpaid voluntary work, taking on housework and childcare responsibilities, they are almost out of reach of the middle and upper classes in the police sector and most industrial and technical occupations. They can only copy materials and make coffee for men in these fields. Every decade or so, publishers reissue these works with a new introduction, and critics recommend them. But readers will find out once they try to pick out a book to read. Core positions in these works have now become so thoroughly integrated into mainstream culture that they have become self-evident, while others have been revised by subsequent generations of feminists. All in all, they seem to be trapped in their own time. “After a few chapters, I began to feel that the book was generally boring and outdated,” historian Stephanie Coontz wrote when she first read The Feminine Mystique as an adult. “The book was an oversimplification of women’s history as I knew it,” she continued, noting that Betty Friedan (author of “The Feminine Mystique”) “generalized women that seemed too influenced by her own Drawn from white middle-class experience, I believe that the prescriptions in this book for improving women's lives are completely irrelevant to working-class and African-American women. The above quote is from Koontz’s book A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Woman at the Dawn of the 1960s, in which she talks about herself The negative impression upon first reading of The Feminine Mystique suggests that readers who want to understand this feminist classic may need to read (or write) a book that provides a historical interpretation of it. , I once asked Vivian Gornick, a writer very active in the second-wave feminist movement, in an interview what she thought of these works today. Gornick shrugged without regret. Said, "Oh, these books are so unreadable now." "You know, like that kind of writing that's so intense that it's not even a work." ” However, Gornick also once wrote that millions of people read these works, saw the truth in them, and took action: they either committed suicide, made changes in their own lives, or both. , these actions combined to bring society closer to the principle of equality, whether they can be considered works or not, these classic books of the second wave of feminism played their role in Beauvoir's painting: Karl Stevens invented the subject. The writer was neither a feminist nor an American. In 1949, the 41-year-old Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex in France. A few years later, English translations of the book began. At the time of writing, Beauvoir, a socialist who looked to Dan, Kate Millett, and Shulamith Firestone as models, did not realize that there should be a movement specifically focused on women's rights. This was a political movement. This was a dormant period for feminism, and activism on behalf of women seemed to be a thing of the past rather than heading towards the future; earlier in the 20th century, French women had gained greater access to education: they could attend the French Beauvoir was the ninth woman to pass the examination in philosophy, and in 1944, women gained the right to vote. The momentum was promising, but the philosopher Beauvoir was troubled by certain problems.

She said in the introduction to "The Second Sex", ""The situation of women is that although they are free and autonomous beings like everyone else, in the real world she is forced by men to stand in the position of the other. superior. ” Beauvoir invoked the time-honored philosophical concept of the other, developed by Hegel and Husserl and then elaborated by her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre: the other as something external to the self A consciousness of which the painful discovery is central to the constitution of the self in its full sense, in which accidents of all kinds may occur. 1943) explores the existence of the other in a love triangle that ends in murder. In Being and Nothingness (1943) and the play The Interval (1944), Sartre emphasizes being under the gaze of others. That kind of shame, helplessly subject to the interpretation of oneself by others. Beauvoir discussed this problem in social groups in "The Second Sex". In the introduction of this book, he pointed out that any two people with different backgrounds. Both may appear to be strangers to each other, but generally speaking, both people know that they are strangers to each other. ""Strangeness"" or ""difference"" is, or should be, a concept of mutuality. But there may also be groups whose strangeness is fixed in their societies, Beauvoir continues. Examples she gives include European Jews, American blacks, and other well-known minority groups. Permanently excluded from their respective social self-definition, the dominant majority questions and denies the self of the minority group, and over time this questioning even creeps into the consciousness of the minority group members themselves, They then become the eternal Other. Beauvoir believes that women are another type of Other. Although she does not belong to a minority group anywhere, women in Western society are usually imagined as masculine. A deviation, and this deviation is not in a better direction. Women's demands for self are usually questioned and denied. Beauvoir takes a firm and decisive stance in "The Second Sex". A very in-depth discussion. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir shows how hundreds of years of laws, customs, and myths have repeatedly expressed the idea that women are less good, less real, and even less than men. Not human enough. Across all areas of Western thought (she discusses biology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, etc.), there is a history of patriarchy and a clearly visible set of blind spots that serve it. The most fascinating thing is that Beauvoir spends 500 pages to prove in novel-like details how the dominant male culture exerts an influence on the inner life of women. This influence starts from the very beginning of women's development. A stage begins that makes even women themselves feel that they are not good enough, not true enough. Starting from the existential principle that every human consciousness seeks to project itself outside and act in this world, Beauvoir believes, 20 The human consciousness in French women's bodies has been continuously limited, starting from childhood attempts at projection and action, and has been suppressed into a consciousness that identifies with the perspective of others rather than oneself, observing the self from the outside. This view is very close to the "double consciousness" proposed by W. E. B. Du Bois. In "The Soul of Black Folk", Du Bois expressed it as "" always through him to look at one’s self with the gaze of a reader.” "The Souls of Black Folk" was published 45 years before "The Second Sex". Beauvoir's work was the first attempt to show how women were affected by awareness of their inferior status and deviation from the norm. Thinkers including Mary Wollstonecraft, J. S. Mill, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had discussed women's rights in the past, but Beauvoir did more than just applaud these discussions: she The profound philosophical, psychological and historical investigation of alterity opens up a new path of thinking. With the publication of The Second Sex, modern feminist theory and tactics were born. Beauvoir was born in a bourgeois family in Paris and was sent to a convent school as a child. As he grew up, he gradually developed a strong interest in philosophical research.

Her ambition was sparked after seeing a picture in a magazine of Leontine Zanta, the first French woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy. In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1954), she once recalled that Zanta in the photo ""is sitting at the desk, with a serious posture and a thoughtful look on her face." Beauvoir is an excellent person. student, but she struggled to get along in her parents' narrow Parisian social circle ("It's hard for me to even pretend to smile"), and she didn't have an inheritance. Her parents reluctantly accepted her ambitions At that time, the most prestigious school in Paris, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, was not open to women, so Beauvoir had to study mathematics and literature at two other universities, while also preparing for the entrance examination to the Sorbonne, and finally graduated here. She began studying philosophy at university. At the Sorbonne, she joined a study group that included Paul Nizan, who later became the novelist, and Rene Mathieu, who later became the Director-General of UNESCO. (René Maheu), and a charismatic and famous philosopher named Jean-Paul Sartre. One evening, *** invited Beauvoir to Sartre's residence to tutor them in Leibniz. (She had written a paper on Leibniz) The meeting became legendary and was the beginning of a fifty-year relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre that even today seems very modern. But it was maintained in a rational way, with almost no rebellious spirit. Sartre had been engaged before, but at this time he had decided not to marry for life. Beauvoir also had his own doubts about marriage (marriage "" made a "One's family responsibilities double"). About three months after the two first met, beside the fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, Beauvoir and Sartre reached an agreement on the future direction of their partnership. The relationship will be a primary partnership, but each will be able to partner with other people for a period of two years, after which they will extend the terms of the agreement. You can even imagine the two shaking hands. Beauvoir's success in the qualification examination is another legend. Not only did she pass the exam when she took it for the first time at the age of 21 (she became the youngest person to pass it). ) and ranked second that year. The first place was Sartre, but this was the second time that Sartre took the test in "Becoming a Wave". According to a new biography of Beauvoir, one of the judges thought Beauvoir was "a true philosopher," and others initially favored her. But in the end they decided that Sartre was "a true philosopher." "Ecole Normale", so he should be the first. Later, the two were assigned to teach in national secondary schools in different cities. Beauvoir went to Marseille and Rouen, and Sartre went to Le Havre. Of course, In the end, both of them successfully found positions in Paris. They rented rooms in the same apartment in Montparnasse, spent most of their time together, and often worked together, most often at La Dome and La Rotonde. Two nearby cafes. They read and edit each other's work. Beauvoir also had long-term and serious relationships with three other men, as well as short-term relationships with women, and Sartre had his own various affairs and long-term relationships, although by agreement the two were not interested in each other. To be honest, the two were each other's most important companions until Sartre's death in 1980. Around the two men, a network of friends, exes and protégés formed. Beauvoir's colleague from Rouen and Beauvoir's first biographer, Deirdre Blair, the novelist and critic Colette Audry attempted to reconstruct the story of Beauvoir's life. The wonderful scene of the dialogue between Te and Beauvoir, ""I simply cannot describe the scene when I was with these two people. The interaction between the two was so intense that it sometimes made other people present feel sad that they did not have such a relationship." Beauvoir's brother-in-law said, ""The constant dialogue between the two and the way they shared everything made them They mirror each other so closely that no one can tear them apart. ” During the writing period of The Second Sex, when people mentioned Beauvoir, they almost simultaneously mentioned Sartre (although not vice versa).

They were a radiant and charming couple, well-known among Parisian intellectuals and warmly welcomed by American intellectuals. By this time she had published "The Uninvited Guest" and a short philosophical work "The Ethics of Ambiguity"; Sartre had already published "Being and Nothingness", in which Sartre He first outlined his existential philosophy, as well as the play "The Interval" and the novel "Nausea". In press accounts of the two, Sartre was the philosophical genius and she the devoted apprentice who popularized his ideas. This image of fairness has its authenticity and is partly caused by gender bias; however, Beauvoir herself has more or less endorsed this view, which confuses her feminist admirers. In her memoirs and in many interviews after the publication of The Second Sex, she stated that Sartre was the philosophical genius and that she was not a true philosopher, but a novelist. Beauvoir and Sartre met in Paris in 1970. In the 1990s, their correspondence and diaries were published after their deaths. People gradually realized that perhaps Beauvoir had more influence on Sartre's thought than she thought. That said, it's bigger than others think. Scholars wonder why Beauvoir abandoned her ambitions and downplayed her influence on Sartre in her popular memoirs. In Becoming Beauvoir, Kirkpatrick delves deeply into the differences between Beauvoir's diaries and memoirs, offering a simple justification for her self-deprecation: ""Although in her youth she considered being a writer a career , but she lacked confidence... The relationship between the two that was accepted by the public and passed down to later generations reflects Sartre's confidence and her self-doubt. A different interpretation is offered by Margaret A. Simons, co-editor of the English translation of Beauvoir's Diary, the latest volume in the series, "Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume 2," 1928-29" has recently been published. Simons believes that Beauvoir's downplaying of her own ambitions and influence was a deliberate sacrifice to preserve the legacy of The Second Sex. She did not intend for readers to He believed that he wrote this book out of a sense of bitterness and failure; when many critics talk about this book, they immediately think of the so-called female resentment that Beauvoir wrote between 1946 and 1949. The research and writing of "The Second Sex" was not originally intended to be a large essay, but an autobiographical essay about what it meant to be a woman. In her twenties, she did not see women's lower status in law and society as a problem, and her friend Audley recalled that she was almost crazy in her belief that her life was as free as Sartre's. , even so, she gradually realized that the way of freedom between the two was different, or that they felt different. When Sartre had not written his first work and was only working as a teacher, he felt that he was a teacher. A failure, Beauvoir, on the other hand, was "dizzy with joy" at having a teaching position. "To him, passing the qualification examination and getting a teaching position seemed a matter of course," she later wrote. " "In my opinion, I have firmly chosen this path, rather than just accepting my fate. For Sartre, a career that destroyed his freedom is still liberating for me.” Readers can even conclude without hesitation that this reflects a certain difference in mood and mentality: Sartre is more liberated than Beauvoir. More ambitious. But that was not the case. For a woman of her time in France, Beauvoir's becoming a teacher of philosophy had marked the realization of an unattainable ambition for her personally. What it means to be a woman, the book begins to take on a political dimension, as Beauvoir's contemporaries looked at who was in elite professions and concluded that men were generally more ambitious than women, of course. It's also possible that women are stronger in most ways than women. What Beauvoir hopes to prove in this book of more than 800 pages is that this conclusion may not be correct throughout The Second Sex. The category "female" disappeared and then reappeared. She said the category disappeared because when you look at the natural world, there is no given, coherent role for women, not even a physiological definition. .

In terms of inherent femininity, preparing your partner's dinner is no different than killing and eating him, it all just depends on the kind of creature you are. Indeed, if we look at the definitions of femininity and justifications for male dominance, we find that the claims are varied and contradictory. Conservatives exclaimed that "women are becoming less like women, women have fallen," Beauvoir wrote, while others told themselves that even in the more egalitarian Soviet Union, "women are still women." . Beauvoir pointed out that different perspectives will lead to different judgments. Femininity is either the eternal and inescapable essence of women, or it means that if women no longer practice it day after day, To achieve perfection, this quality is on the verge of extinction. How can both claims be true at the same time? However, the category of woman must mean something, otherwise why (until 1965) were wives not allowed? Open a bank account and women can't study at the Ecole Normale de Paris? Beauvoir reconstructs "woman" as a category, but the primary meaning of this category is social. Perhaps there is no stable definition of femininity, But Beauvoir believed that femininity had always been defined as the opposite of masculinity *** Excess or frigidity, cunning or ignorance, selflessness or selfishness, whatever contrary qualities women were ascribed to, even if recognized as such. The good qualities ultimately serve to argue why men should have bank accounts and high school diplomas, but women should not. In the conclusion of The Second Sex, Beauvoir quotes a little-known 17th-century philosopher. In the words of the poet Poulain de la Barre: "Anything a man writes about a woman is questionable, because the man is both a judge and a litigant." Beauvoir used it in his analysis in the mid-20th century In this view, her readers should have at least a general understanding of the main concepts of Marx and Freud, and Beauvoir discusses these two men in detail in the book, as well as Engels. The idea (whether you like it or not) that promoting the idea of ??male superiority is a matter of great stakes for men, as a class interest, even among scientific men who respect reason, and they do it again and again The finding that women are inferior to men may also be unconsciously driven by an age-old idea that has a stronger resonance in The Second Sex: men are not impartial when it comes to evaluating women's abilities; Beauvoir's analysis clears away any remaining notions of male authority over women as sacred and natural in her readers' minds: in fact, this is simply the story of one social group dominating another. The second volume of "Practical Experience" discusses the entire life stage of women from childhood to old age. This part of the writing is particularly intimate. In the chapter called "Childhood", she writes, "Before the age of three or four, girls are very young." It’s no different from a boy’s attitude…Boys, like their sisters, expect to be liked, to get smiles, to be admired.” Soon, however, boys are pushed toward emotional independence, a process that may look, feel It sounds very cruel: but especially for boys, they gradually refuse to give him kisses and tenderness; as for the little girl, they continue to caress her and allow her to live next to her mother, with her father holding her on his knees and stroking her hair. . But if a boy initially seems less favored than his sisters, this is because great expectations are placed on him. "At the same time, the fate of girls takes a turn for the worse: If her friendships, her studies, her games, and her reading pull her out of her mother's circle, she will understand that the ruler of the world is not women, but women. It was the man... The father's life revolved around a mysterious prestige: the moments he spent at home, the rooms in which he worked, the objects around him, his concerns, his hobbies, all had a sacred quality... Usually he was outside It is through him that this home communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, vast, difficult, and wonderful world. Of course, the above picture is of an educated, professional person. Daughters of their fathers. As many critics have pointed out, Beauvoir does not fully discuss what it is like for the daughters of fathers who are not privileged or who are trapped in the hardships of worldly life. . This is one of the shortcomings of her research path that does not set a specific direction.

Beauvoir had to conjure up the category of "female" again in "Actual Experience", this time from within, involving a large amount of content that cannot be fixed. Personal experience, the experience of friends, the understanding of French and American women interviews and a handful of sociological surveys of European women serve as Beauvoir's sources. In these chapters, the ordinary women she outlines actually change: sometimes working class, often middle class, sometimes middle class. A lesbian, sometimes a wife, or a professional woman. This “ordinary woman” is an unspecified Catholic, white French woman. Her methodology is also not recognized by social scientists. , the authority of her writing comes from the reader's acceptance of the following point of view: although there is no woman, the category of women still carries enough rich gay social experience. In this regard, Beauvoir's discussion is rich Persuasive. For many readers, she does, but The Second Sex is not just about women, it is also about men in a very intimate way. When analyzing the sexual enlightenment of young women, she compared it with that of young men: The man explores his vagina with his sexual organs, hands, mouth and whole body, but he is still at the center of this activity, as in general , the subject faces the objects it perceives and the tools it operates; he throws himself into the other without losing his autonomy; for him, the female body is a prey, and he grasps his senses in her and controls everything. the qualities demanded by the object; doubtless he cannot take them for himself: at least he seizes them; tenderness, kissing bring half a failure: but this failure itself is a passion and a When analyzing the wife, she also discussed the husband: The husband "shapes" his wife not only erotically, but also spiritually and intellectually; he educates her, makes her feel awe, teaches her Indoctrination. A daydream in which a husband usually enjoys immersing himself is that of fertilizing things according to his own will, shaping them and inserting their essence into them: the woman is in the most ideal sense the clay in his hands, making herself passive. The ground was sculpted by him, yielding to resistance, allowing men's activities to continue. Had men been so calmly examined by any female writer before? Beauvoir mentioned that her friend Camus "screamed". , 'You've turned French men into a joke! ’” On the face of it, this is an odd comment. After all, if Beauvoir does nothing in this book, it’s demeaning men. By contrast, Virginia Woolf did poke fun at men in A Room of One's Own, portraying her fictional Professor von X, a misogynist and intellectual who The author of "On the Psychological, Moral and Physical Inferiority of Women" has a large chin and very small eyes. His expression " " shows that he is working with some excitement. He puts pen to paper. Stabbing, as if you were killing some pest while writing. Firestone, Millette, and Andrea are also often mean-spirited when discussing sexual behavior. But here, Beauvoir is neither sarcastic nor slanderous. Her primary goal is to arouse Women want to understand their relationship with men from a more complete historical and philosophical perspective. However, her other goal is secondary but equally sincere: to awaken men to understand this relationship in the struggle against all injustices. , men and women should fight side by side, and there is nothing in The Second Sex that contradicts this idea. If Beauvoir does make men the object of ridicule, it is not because of the way she writes. The mere existence of this book is proof that men, like women, are potential targets of intellectual inquiry, scientific examination, and psychological speculation. The Second Sex is a surprise attack on male objectification, but it does much more than that. Many of the chapters in this book were first published in Beauvoir and Sa***. Issues of the journal Le Moderne were sold out. Beauvoir received letters of praise, mostly from female readers, as well as overwhelming criticism from both the left and the right. A columnist from "Luo" summarized the book as, ""Women are reduced to the level of others, and they are irritated by their own weakness complex.

"Toril Moi once pointed out in "Simone de Beauvoir: Making an Intellectual Woman" that people at that time criticized "The Second Sex" with particularly strong irony. A writer in Le Spirit criticized the book's "bitter tone," and Kirkpatrick noted that the philosopher Jean Guitton believed that the book "conveys in every line its author's misery." "The pain of life". In 1949, Beauvoir's lover Nelson Algren went to Paris to see her. During this period, he was surprised to find that people began to look at Beauvoir while sitting in a cafe. Looking and pointing, and obviously not out of good intentions, "You have a group of best enemies," he said to her. Beauvoir also mentioned in his memory that he also received many threatening letters: I accept it. I received all kinds of letters, signed or unsigned, containing aphorisms, hymns, satirical poems, curses, and words of admonishment... People expressed to me that they were willing to help me cure my frigidity and ease my** * desires; they used the most obscene words to promise me enlightenment. No amount of polite description could conceal the vulgar and harassing nature of this behavior. More than twenty years after The Second Sex came out, a women's political movement took place. For many young activists at the time, the book and Beauvoir herself were already a thing of the past, but the French radical women's liberation group MLF still invited Beauvoir to join its movement in 1970. She accepted the invitation. Paris, 1971, Women's Liberation*** "The situation of women in France has not really changed in the past two decades," she said in the interview. "Even among the left-wing and revolutionary groups in France. In the organization, the wave of equality that I once thought was inevitable has not yet arrived. Women will always be engaged in the most menial and boring jobs, serving behind the scenes, while men will always be in front of the stage. Although she still does not believe that there is an essential feminine quality that distinguishes women from men, she does believe that women, whatever their nature, need to organize for themselves. Analysis alone is not enough; Beauvoir Wa now issued a call: "Don't bet on the future, take action now without further ado." ” *Note: The quotations from "The Second Sex" appearing in this article are excerpted from "The Second Sex" published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2011, translator Zheng Kru. The books discussed in this article are as follows: Being Beauvoir: A Life by KateKirkpatrick, Bloom ** * ury Academic, 476 pp., $28.00 Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume 2, 1928–29 by Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Barbara Klaw, Sylvie Le Bon deBeauvoir, Margaret A. Simons, and Marybeth Timmermann, and translated from the Frenchby Barbara Klaw, University of Illinois Press, 374 pp., $48.00 Elaine Blair is a member of the editorial board of The New York Review of Books. She has written for The New York Review of Books, The Nation, and The American Scholar, among other publications . (This article is selected from the November 7, 2019 issue of The New York Review of Books, translated and introduced by "Oriental History Review" with permission.) Special statement: This article was uploaded and published by the author of the self-media platform "NetEase Account" and represents only the author's views. NetEase only provides an information release platform (Editor: Wang Shuang_BNJ10766)