What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenological description of the sexual difference.

Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference

“…2 2 I have argued for Beauvoir's phenomenological interests in my earlier work (Heinämaa 1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1997), but 1 develop my argument further here by focusing on Beauvoir's idea of philosophy. For other interpretations that indicate or explicate Beauvoir's phenomenological interests, see Simons (1983), Butler (1986), Kruks (1990), Vintges (1996), and Bergoffen (1997). …”

“…14 14 I have argued elsewhere that the accepted view that identifies Beauvoir's notion of becoming to the process of socialization is mistaken (Heinämaa 1996a, 1996b, 1997). …”

Women's intoxication as ‘dual licentiousness’: An exploration of gendered images of drinking and intoxication in Sweden

“…The division of humanity into two separate categories, women and men, is an important and basic cultural idea (Butler 1999;Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003). As pointed out by several gender theorists, this distinction not only refer to differences between women's and men's bodies but entails understandings, interpretations and images of what it means to be a woman or a man (e.g., Heinämaa 1997;Butler 1999). In the present context, ideas about gender relations based in evolutionary biology are treated as common sense understandings and as part of basic cultural ideas.…”

Navigating in the Landscape of Care: A Critical Reflection on Theory and Practise of Care and Ethics

“…As pointed out by Søren Holm this leaves the health care areas with the challenge of establishing stable and predictable actions. A health care ethics suitable for modern health care need not only answer Løgstrup’s questions of how should I act, but also to the question of how should we act [11]. These critiques are interrelated and well argued.…”

“…While unfolding her ethical understanding, Beauvoir [1] reluctantly had to realise that her intention of replacing the asymmetrical subject/object relation with a relation of symmetry, with inter-subjectivity, had to begin with the question: what is a woman, what is the meaning of the being a woman when she is not seen nor sees her self as a subject? [10, 15]. Beauvoir’s main point is that woman’s specific ethos, no less than a man’s, is constituted in a social context as well as in relation to others.…”