Section 1, Definitions

"The Second Sex, an Introduction", Simone de Beauvoir
What is a woman?

• Every female is not necessarily a woman
• If man represents both positive and neutral, woman is negative. Woman is the peculiar, she defines herself in relation to him and is never autonomous, she is essentially a sexual being, she is the Other.
• Woman has never formed a separate collective unit, as races and classes have., Women have not thought of themselves as "We" and thus have gained only what men have been willing to grant
• Women lack concrete means for organizing themselves, with no past, no history, no religion of their own, and are attached to men more firmly than to other women. She is united to him by a reciprocal need that is biological.
• Woman has always been man's dependent, the relationship is similar to master-slave. The need is equally urgent for both, but works in favor of the oppressor.
• To decline to be the Other for women would be to renounce the benefits of that position, material support and the moral justification of her existence provided by the man, in exchange for complicity, becoming the creature of another's will.

How did this idea of Woman begin?

• "equality in difference" like "separate but equal" results in extreme discrimination, the dominant class establishing the standards of the "truly feminine" as submissive. The vicious circle involves keeping the individual in an inferior position and thus basing the argument of inferiority on that position she holds
• A man may prove his virility by being arrogant, aggressive or scornful towards women, women are also considered competition
  
• A husband in cooperation with his wife maintains a theme of abstract equality, but when in conflict with her will use the perceived inequality (observed points of inferiority) as a means of denying the tenuous idea of equality. This leads to the man's argument that women are equals and have nothing to fight for, while at the same time believing women could never be equals to men

Whom should we survey on the equality of the sexes?

• The UN persistently maintains that the equality of sexes is becoming a reality, some women no longer find their femininity a hindrance, and many problems appear to be more pressing to women than those that concern her particularly
• "Happy" is not synonymous with "complacent" 'the drama of women lies between the fundamental aspirations of every subject-who always regards the self as essential-and the compulsions of a situation in which she is inessential' (Beauvoir 39)