Customer Reviews

Second Sex

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I, a young white man, read Second Sex last week. Although it contained almost nothing that I had not read before, it did what was necessary to my head. It somehow made the position of woman as the Other imaginable by me. Reading it, I imagined what it would be like for me to live in a society that had been dominated by women for more than three thousand years, a society where almost all the most renowned people, heroes, and religious icons were women. A society where the United States of America had had nothing but women presidents and every state was predominantly represented by women, though males account for half the population. Where the predominant forms of music for the last fifty years have all treated men as an interesting and occasionally useful, but often annoying or even maddening objects, and us men run around in skimpy calvin klein-style underwear on MTV while hip-hop women constantly call us "dogs" in their raps and the classic rock section of the local used music store overflows with female lyrics that question what is more important in life, men, cars, or booze? and blame us men for breaking their poor girl hearts and for being warlocks, (...), or idiots (while the woman rock stars collect millions of dollars and boy groupies run around ready to have sex with any security guard to get a shot to have sex with the famous women).

A society where families are dominated by mothers and their husbands live in fear of having their allowance terminated, and have to do menial chores around the house to try to feel, or at least look, useful. Where a boy child realizes before he is 10 that he is a failure and, at best, a second-rate human being (if not an object)(...) A society that is obsessed by the symbol of the womb--in which musical instruments, spaceships, means of transportation, weapons, religious ornaments, political regalia, and thousands of other things are designed to resemble the shape of a womb. A society in which men are scared, brutally scared, of walking around alone at night because almost any woman can physically overpower them and rape them with a sex toy. In which the most famous and influential philosophers of all time, the ones that get taught in university classes and whose books are actually bought and read and that influence the intelligensia, are all women, mostly women who loathe and/or misunderstand men and write things such as "What is the cure for all of a man's problems? Impregnating a woman" but despite such stupidities are adored by female thinkers.

And so on...

So that's why I rated this 5 stars. It did something to me, which is the most important quality in a book for someone who's read thousands.

The Second Sex is an excellent philosophical work on woman; the English translation is not. Terms are translated poorly, such as "l'experience vecue" (the lived experience similar to Husserl's life-world) being translated as "Woman's Life Today" (a slam), "en-soi" and "pour-soi" being translated interchangeably as in-itself and for-itself (they cannot be used interchangeably-they are not synonyms), etc. In fact, while the original work was published in two volumes, the English translation fits into one...because the translator cut some three-hundred pages that he felt were "boring." The original French is lucid, direct, and quite beautiful. The reason that the book sounds so "dated" in English is because the man who translated it was. (He was a zoology emeritus with no background in philosophy). Thus, a lot is lost in the translation, and, since the publisher will not commence with a new translation for the sake of accuracy while the poor one sells so well (think dollar-signs), one could probably learn French and read the original writings first. "The Second Sex" (or rather "Le Deuxieme Sexe") is a good opening forum into what it is to be the Other, and the philosophical ramifications are just as relevant today as when the book was written.

I recently finished THE SECOND SEX by Simone de Beauvoir, which I had been "reading on" for more than a year. I adopted a system of reading chapters of it between other books after starting out great guns the summer of 2004, reading 200 pages and realizing that if I didn't do something to break it up, I would never finish it.

That is not to say that THE SECOND SEX is not a great book. It is. It's valuable. It's interesting. It's educational, not just about views of women in the first part of this century in Western culture, but also about the logical and writerly process that de Beauvoir uses to address such a massive topic: The topic of Woman; the topic, really of Woman as Other.

But there are issues with the translation that can't be ignored. If memory serves me, Parshley had trouble getting de Beauvoir to help him with his translation. Questions he directed to her went unanswered for months, so he not only translated the book, but cut large sections (yes, this 732-page version is abridged!) that he thought were not important, or were redundant. Parshley also was not a philosopher, but was a zoologist, and as such did not understand the depth of such existential and philosophical terms as "immanence." Once the translation was finished and published, de Beauvoir was furious with the results. Though Parshley can hardly be blamed given the situation in which he was working, it does make one wonder how much what one is reading resembles de Beauvoir's original ideas and objectives.

Considering her objectives, this leads me to one of my favorite quotes about THE SECOND SEX. Nelson Algren, the Chicago writer who was the longtime lover of de Beauvoir (with whom she traveled when she wrote America Day by Day; he was also the writer of The Man with the Golden Arm), said that when the book came out, there was much brou-haha, especially when 22,000 copies were sold in France the first week after it was published. Algren noted that de Beauvoir was the most reviled and the most beloved woman in Paris, and it was clear: "She meant it."

The book is quite logically organized, which makes it easy to pick up and put down (and to read bits of between other works). Part I: Destiny includes chapters on biology, psychoanalysis and historical materialism. The other parts of the book are: history, myths, the formative years, sitautions, justifications and toward liberation. De Beauvoir uses examples from myth, literature and doctor's case files to illustrate her positions. And her positions are more and less relevant today than they were in the 1940s when she wrote the book. The chapter on lesbians seesm less relevant, since she bases her understandings of the homosexual orientation on situational and envrionmental factors. However, I found her chapter on motherhood to be extremely cogent, as she deals with the issues of expectations of self-realization through children, the disappointments and the isolation of mothers, and the societal expectations of mothers of both girls and boys. And de Beauvoir notices the logical conflict between a society that lauds motherhood for women, but denies them a public voice and equal public standing. This is a typical style of argument for de Beauvoir, and I find her insight, her wisdom, her logic and her organization in this book to be impressive.

De Beauvoir writes, "One is not born a woman; one becomes one." I think it can be argued that she is not saying that female humans are born the same as male humans, because we all know, or are ourselves, people who were born with strong tradtional male or female traits inherently. Rather, after reading this large and complete work, I think she is saying that women are not born second-class citizens, they become them, through societal shaping, political pressure and self-monitoring. They become the Other because they start to believe they are. While I think we have made strides since THE SECOND SEX was written, reading this book nearly 70 years after it was written is a little upsetting: some of the saddest aspects of the life of the Other for women still ring true.

I am staggered that the two "Spotlight Reviews" of this book revolve around the book being "dated." Maybe it's just where I'm from. Maybe things are radically different elsewhere in the country and the world, but most of Beauvoir's words still ring true, perhaps not to the same degree as it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but true nonetheless. We, as a society, have progressed, but perhaps not so far as some would have us believe. With all due respect to those who think differently, I must disagree. Beauvoir's book may be dated, but it is far from "impenetrable" (interesting choice of term, isn't it?) and is still applicable to the state of women as a gender today.

Simone De Beauvoir's book is the starting-point for any study of feminist theory. As part of the existentialist school of thought, the book explores why woman is the Other in society. While a few sections of this book are horribly dated (e.g. Part II - History), De Beauvoir's mamoth work initiates almost every debate waged within feminist thought up to the present day. She tackles burning debates concerning woman's biology, motherhood, prostitution and more. She also is the first to discuss the many myths surrounding women which doom them to immanence - the object through whom the subject (man) fulfills himself.

This book started an era in feminism called The Second Wave and represents the turn towards psychology and sociology from the political principles of liberty, justice and equality around which First Wave feminists argued.

The book painstakinlgy traces the causes of much of women's psychological and behavioural evolution over millenia. de Beauvoir, is more concerned about appraising the situation correctly rather than apologizing for it, and this makes the analysis very objective and in some respects also inconoclastic because she demolishes both good and bad stereotypes of women -- from Montherlant's misogyny, to Caudwell's celebration of feminity.

At the same time, she does not pretentiously portray women as something they are not -- quite the same as men, far superior in everything, always in the right etc. This makes the book wonderful reading for its rich well researched, well argued insights and objectivity, although it is a tad apologetic at times and somewhat unilateral in its presentation of men as just the nameless, faceless,'other' of women.

Again many Second Wave feminists have largely concentrated on either the cosmetic-beauty imperialism, or some other aspect and not the entire yoke than bogs women. This is by far the most comprehnsive and well-rounded statement of both the feminine situation and the feminist position.

As you read reviews of this book, be aware that there are two translations into English, and Amazon (as I write this) displays reviews of the old (H.M. Parshley) translation on the page for the new (Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier) translation. Some of these reviews echo a common opinion that the Parshley translation is bad.

The new translation won't be released until April 2010, and you can see the date of each review just after the review title.

I've suggested in feedback to Amazon that it treat translations as more different than editions, for instance saying something like, "This review is about a different translation," and putting "[new translation]" in the title of the "edition."

That said, I give the book, even in the old translation, five stars. Some people project this book onto the mere-equality end of the modern spectrum of equality feminism vs. specialness feminism, but it doesn't fit there. The problem of being a woman goes beyond solving by political equality, and it comes from a problematic specialness.

_The Second Sex_ is one of those rare basic books. Here is an important point that doesn't fit previous (or later) categories, but it's too coherent to be rejected; the mind has to expand to try to fit it. This is also one of those books that relit for me that sense that being a human is worthwhile and grand, since, here is one of us, look at Simone de Beauvoir.

This is a VERY long book; but it is worth every page!

There was so much to learn I had to read it a second time; I'm still not sure I got it all.

This is a MUST read for every young woman(it's best if you're young, but this is must reading for EVERY woman)...... and you men out there; read it, you might learn something!! And as a straight man, I can say it's a GREAT book..... be you a man or a woman.

Bill Berecki

I wish I was aware of this insightful study on women when I was in high school or even junior high--it might have saved me some adolescent grief!

Anyone who wishes to better understand women would benefit from reading this. Simone de Beauvoir's thinking and writing is lucid--she explains things exceptionally well. There are a few literary and philosophical references that are over my head because I'm not familiar with a certain author, nor do I have a philosophy background, but that is a minor distraction.

Some have complained that this work is dated. To my mind, it is only dated from the time she wrote it. Sure, some things have improved for women in the last 60 years in varying degrees, but it's not enough. If it were, why are there still such grave problems related to gender inequality around the world today, in the 21st century: domestic violence, violence against women with impunity, spread of AIDS, poverty, pay inequality, sexual harrassment on the job, etc.? The issues she raised are as relevant today as when she wrote them.

She clearly describes and explains contradictions that women feel in love, marriage, and work. She writes of the ways in which women's frustrations with men--and vice versa, manifests in destructive ways in relationships, and how women's anxiety about work due to parental and societal expectation hinder progress, etc. Much of what she wrote I could certainly relate to!

Her historical, biological, mythical, and literary chapters in the beginning of the book provid much food for thought and helps me to understand how many ideas about women came about. Every chapter in the book seems to flow seamlessly into the next. Whatever thoughts or doubts I had growing up and have now--she has helped to clarify, from the standpoint of societal views and expectations.

I am deeply passionate about women's issues and I LOVE this work. I intend to read it again more than a few times...there is so much to learn and digest!

This book is a real masterpiece by a great writer who manages to create a lucid,
systematic, clear portrait of women's history and situation. It touches both the practical
side of women's condition and the more subtle sociological and psychological issues that
explain the whys and hows of their condition. It is not an "agry" book againts males, but a
very balanced analysis that puts the blame for discrimination both on the arrogance and hypocrisy
of the dominating male gender and on the passive acceptance that women often offer in exchange
for indulgence and "adoration". I wish I could say that this book is now old and outdated, but having lived
both isn the US and Italy, I must say that its content is very much actual and relevant today in
both countries. Don't think this book is hard to read. It will be hard only if you are one of those
persons wwo have lost the ability and habit of thinking (too much TV maybe?) This book WILL make
you think. Remember that this is no boring essay but some arid sociologist but the work
of a great artist and as such will touch on philosophy, and on a deep view of human character,
desires and aspirations. Another very strong point of this book is the beautiful writing style
of Simone, so if you have even a basic grasp of French try by all means to read in its original language.