Have you read Simone de Beauvoir‘s, The Second Sex?

I have always found resonance in my thoughts as a woman in Simone de Beauvoir‘s words. Though I’m yet to finish reading her book, The Second Sex, the more progress I make on it, the more I realise how something she had written many, many years ago is still valid today.

Now, I’m not even remotely qualified to analyse her writing and add my thoughts on it. But I can surely share with you some quotes from her book which I think are very pertinent.

Without further ado therefore here is a list of some of my favourite quotes from Simone de Beauvoir‘s The Second Sex.

“Enforced maternity brings into the world wretched infants, whom their parents will be unable to support and who will become the victims of public care or ‘child martyrs’. It must be pointed out that our society, so concerned to defend the rights of the embryo, shows no interest in the children once they are born.”

“It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.” 

“Doomed to procreation and secondary tasks, stripped of her practical importance and her mystical prestige, a woman becomes no more than a servant.” 

“Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also contains 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.” 

“Economically, men and women almost form two castes; all things being equal, the former have better jobs, higher wages, and greater chances to succeed than their new female competitors; they occupy many more places in industry, in politics, and so forth, and they hold the most important positions.” 

“Misogynists have often reproached intellectual women for ‘letting themselves go’; but they also preach to them: if you want to be our equals, stop wearing makeup and polishing your nails. This advice is absurd. Precisely because the idea of femininity is artificially defined by customs and fashion, it is imposed on every woman from the outside. The individual is not free to shape the idea of femininity at will.” 

“The feminine body is expected to be flesh, but discreetly so.”

Now, these are just some from a book a lot of which still remains unexplored by me. But while contemplating the recent assault on women’s rights, I found myself looking towards Simone’s words to construct my thoughts. I hope they made as much sense to you as they always do to me.

Before leaving, do tell me which of the quotes above speaks to you the most?

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