5. De Beauvoir places heavy emphasis on the ‘myths’ surrounding woman’s status in society. What is her conception of such myths? Do such myths still exist? Should they?
The placement of Simone de Beauvoir right here within the CC curriculum is particularly useful because her work, particularly The Second Sex, treads along the crossroads of a variety of intellectual traditions, creating chances for dialogue within the realms of phenomenology, existentialism, materialism, and feminist political thought. It is this combinatorial gesture that solidifies her critique of the 'myths' surrounding women in society.
She writes that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," in reference to the fact that the signifier of woman comes with a heavy burden of often essentialist characteristics that place them in a place of subservience. In writing that women are not born with these traits, she means to destabilize the biological essentialism central to the philosophy of Hegel, instead suggesting that women have been cast in a permanent position of inferiority by men conflating an entire gender with certain identity-related differences. In other words, by situating woman as Other, men create themselves as subjects, and deny women their right to self-determination as human beings. Thus, these myths should not exist, but they clearly still do as a result of the deep material and psychological underpinnings of female subservience.
She insists that existence precedes essence, a fundamental tenet of existentialism, and comments on the changes of consciousness that woman acquires as Other, speaking in a thread of phenomenology—all while making the text an inherently political, specifically feminist, one as well. Thus, she serves as a good meeting ground, or even a conjunction, between Sartre (and others usually relegated to 'philosophy') and more modern radical thinkers to follow.
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