The Second Sex

suffrage, and was mainly fixated on legal and political affairs. In particular, the resistance to chattel marriage, advocacy of equal contract, and property claims for women. The influential works of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan with The Second Sex and The Feminine Mystique, sought to explain issues in relation to women and gender disparity. Total authority belonged to men; women couldn 't do anything independently for themselves. Men were categorized as more dominant, while women were…

In Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, de Beauvoir argues that women have historically been treated as inferiors and secondary to men. Her book is strongly emerging with the second wave of feminism that calls for basic equalities in some social issues such as the rights of women in voting and inheriting. Further, the second wave highlights the struggle of women in sexuality, abortion, domestic violence, and business field.…

In Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, her existentialist view point is heavily felt throughout this historical study of women. Often viewed as a radical, Beauvoir sets out to explore the many beliefs or definitions in regards to femininity. She proposes that women are oppressed by men through men’s depiction of women as the “other” or the object. Man is the subject, the self, the one, the absolute, the positive, the creator and the possessor of transcendence. Women are demoted as particular,…

Simone de Beauvoir begins the opening of Volume II in her book The Second Sex with the line “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (de Beauvoir, 1949/2010, p. 283) In this line, she summarizes her viewpoint that femininity is a societal construct. By this, she means that it is not a biological, psychological, or more importantly, intellectual one, but that it is rather formed by society. Specifically, that an individual is qualified to subjectivity regardless of their gender and that…

Within a few chapters in The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir, she uses the terms "immanence" and "transcendence". These two terms have very opposite meanings. Immanence is a term used to define women and transcendence is used to describe the male gender. These terms define the situations that men and women are involved in. In one of the chapters Beauvoir goes into depth about three kinds of illusions that women construct that demonstrate transcendence within the home or within their domestic…

writes heavily on the destructive state of self pushed upon women. Her most famous text, The Second Sex, provides an immense amount of evidence supporting the idea that individual embodiment affects our subjectivity, particularly focusing on that of a woman’s. Despite Simone de Beauvoir’s transgression in demonstrating sex as a binary term, the principle of subjectivity as embodiment laid the groundwork of sex-gender distinction for following feminists,…

The effects of handling and sex differences in rats on anxiety was tested using an elevated plus maze. This experiment was conducted to determine the impact of handling and sex on the level of anxiety in 60 day old rats. 24 rats were separated into groups based on sex and whether or not they were handled. The effects of handling on anxiety was determined by placing the rats in an elevated plus maze for 5 minutes and observing how they explored. This study showed that handling had an impact on…

adolescents GPA. While having siblings has both a negative and positive impact on an adolescent GPA; the negative has a greater impact on younger siblings while the positive is mostly prominent in older siblings. Many have pondered whether same-sex siblings and mixed-sex siblings have the same impact or they differ. Which also comes in mind, whether gender or ethnicity plays a role in the impact on an adolescents GPA while having siblings. Research that has been conducted to disclose this event…

professional sports, the Olympic games, and other elite sporting events alike will be open to a whole new category of competition. As new competition arises, there will have to be measures placed to regulate these events. It is argued by Müller (2016) that sex is an arbitrary measure of who should be competing against each other in sports. Elite sporting agencies such as the IOC have no leniency when it comes to male and female competition. They are strictly prohibited from competing against…

Prairie voles are known for forming long-lasting bonds with a single mate. Because of this feature, it is important to understand how the sex of the social partner could affect a vole’s drinking behavior when two animals are housed together. Hostetler and colleagues (2012) focused on the effect of a partner’s sex on the relationship between social interaction and alcohol consumption in this species. One experiment focused on the effect of social housing on alcohol consumption in male-female…