This morning I should be writing two abstracts, working on an annotated bibliography, marking essays, or completing my application for my new university. But I find myself on the couch reading the introduction to Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Last night I went and listened to the translators of the new edition speak. I sat in what felt like a gathering in an underground vault, bricks and chipped cement, at the Alliance Française, St Kilda. It was lovely to hear discussions of editing, translation, and the difficulty in working with Beauvoir’s all-too-frequent semi-colon. One translator believes Beauvoir’s grammar is reflective of her philosophical position, and that for this reason, a certain awkwardness needed to be maintained (as it wasn’t in the first translation). So I’m curious now to read it. My copy is the old translation, and I’ve only read parts, including the introduction. So this morning, because there’s a copy on the shelf of where I’m staying (which is great, but not great for my lack of discipline), I read the introduction in its new form. I read for semi-colons, but also in light of many statements made last night about the ongoing currency of this text.
Indeed, it’s a beautiful book and her writing, as always, is seductive. At many points I agree that this text is still relevant today, and needs to be returned to. Like when she says “every concrete human being is always uniquely situated” (p4). In writing about (and against) social science methodologies, this is something I keep finding and repeating, whether in the work of Haraway, Latour, Lyotard… it’s about challenging the metanarrative, or the tendency to make general claims about people, gender, or the social world. Though I don’t think Beauvoir stays ‘true’ to this sentiment, but rather gives a blend of general and specific claims. This perhaps beautifully reflects her belief in ambiguity. Though, without her stating that this is her political/literary goal, this claim might be a little too optimistic.
Elsewhere, I appreciate her (brief) reflection on the male body:
“Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes 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 particularises it” (p5).
Lovely. Yet, I have to question the subject of this sentence. There is ongoing ambiguity in Beauvoir’s reference to the sexed man (the male) or the general man (humans), but in this instance she refers to the former, which is disappointing. Because this implies that women don’t also fall into step with this logic. Might it be that all people are prone (at times) to disembody the male human and constitute his viewpoint as objectively detached from his bodily features and processes? Elsewhere Beauvoir speaks of women’s complicity in sexual divisions, but in this example, objectivity and its privilege is only arranged by men.
In addressing woman’s complicity, Beauvoir states that “she often derives satisfaction from her role as Other” (p10). This is important, I would say. As is the recognition (not available in this introduction) that woman can also find power and freedom in otherness. But here, otherness is constituted through social arrangements of superiority/inferiority.
In discussing inferiority, Beauvoir commonly draws comparisons between women, proletariats, Jews, and black Americans. At times she says these Other categories are analogous, but at other times she highlights the differences of these otherings/oppressions. What isn’t clear is how inferiority is determined. As she doesn’t unpack this, the politics underpinning her argument (against inferiority/difference/otherness) seem to be a politics of homogeneity. But what about the usefulness and potentialities of difference? How might a politics of difference be constructed beyond structures of inferiority/superiority?
Beauvoir suggests that inferiority is having “fewer possibilities”. But what does this mean? Might this suggest fewer possibilities to be (like) men? In turn, might we ask about the possibilities of men to be (like) women? Can we males be granted a possible femaleness? Mostly, no. Perhaps this question is rarely asked on the basis/assumption that men have no desire to be like women. And perhaps this is the problem. If femaleness is not desired, then surely we must ask “why not?” We can also look for exceptions or examples of when femaleness (whatever this means) is desired. We might also ask “What does/can femaleness do?” Because what’s unsatisfying here, in reading this text 60 years beyond its arrival, is its (re)constitution of ‘lack’ as central to the subject of woman.
Today we know that femaleness can be (indeed it is) active, desirable, and generated through active desiring. This is what we feel when reading and experiencing the works of Irigaray, Duras, Leduc, Kristeva, Beauvoir, Calle, Cixous, Breillat, Ozon, Solanas, Wittig, and so many Others (this list continues forever). These are just a few who demonstrate, celebrate, and critically challenge ideas of woman’s inferiority; actively, politically, playfully, and ingenuously. I guess they’ve all pored over (written and re-written) La Deuxième Sexe (most not having to wait for a better translation). It’s nice to see that this work has been extended and implanted elsewhere, across various disciplines, genres, and oceans. But I guess, for me, this is a reminder that this text is less a contemporary argument (as was stated by many people late night) than an historical document.
Let’s now talk about misogyny.
If we continue to see The Second Sex as a contemporary document about the emancipation of women, thus sustaining a cultural belief that women are still confined (and complicit) to otherness (that is, being and not generating otherness), then we must ignore 60 years of work, art, philosophy, and politics that has moved away from a uni-directional otherness. Yes, “alterity is the fundamental category of human thought” (p6), that is, otherness is the only way through which we formulate knowledge of self and world. Yet, otherness is plural, transient, and multi-directional. And so let’s think more about how otherness is constructed through misogyny (or misogynies) in a more plural sense.
In asking where misogyny comes from, why is it not commonly thought that it arises from male envy? that men hate women because they can’t be women? Perhaps because the questioning of misogyny is always filtered through a cultural misogyny (that none of us can avoid), and a sustained (sometimes unconscious) belief that nobody wants to be a woman. Valerie Solanas and Monique Wittig made such claims of male envy. Many people thought they were crazy. But incomprehensible is different to crazy.
So the question (my question today, but a question that has been asked many times, perhaps even by Beauvoir herself) is: Can misogyny be attributed to envy? That is, women’s envy of men, and crucially, men’s envy of women? How might filmmakers like Catherine Breillat be useful in understanding these dynamics? Surely it’s not enough to only consider misogyny (yes it’s bad, yes let’s move beyond it), but to push deeper into its foundations and dynamics, to trouble and unsettle it. In men and women, what are the mechanics of misogyny?
Beauvoir’s work provides some insight into this, in part if we consider her misogyny, which is probably more evident today than at the time it was written. Because now we have decades of women’s writing (écriture féminine and beyond) to contemplate, engage with, and build upon.
Perhaps one current value of The Second Sex is the political potential of ambiguity and contradiction, as beautifully demonstrated by Beauvoir. For example, after setting up the argument against a universal belief in women’s inferiority, she later states:
“To see clearly, one needs to get out of these ruts; these vague notions of superiority, inferiority and equality that have distorted all discussions must be discarded in order to start anew” (p15).
Indeed! But maybe those first three words need further translation, or a significant footnote that maps the distance between feminist politics then and now. Because why would anyone’s goal be to see clearly, if clarity, thus far, has been cruel to women and most others.
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