FEMINISIM: BEAUVOIR’S “THE SECOND SEX”De Beauvoir’s explanation o f the second sex was why women are exploited is based on woman’s being. What are the means of existence of a woman? She explains that girls growing up are taught by the society on how to be a woman as an objective or a passive. That a woman is confined to a particular role that includes limiting a freedom. De Beauvoir says that a woman defines as other. This idea is passed from generation to generation.
She uses the concept of immanence which means restricted and the transcendence means go beyond, to further explanation of women’s situation. These two concepts have been identified as a body and consciousness respectively. We are all symbolize consciousness this is condition for the possible freedom. Every human being are both immanent and transcendent. But some social practices imprison in immanence the one that is unable to achieve a freedom. While the other are working to a meaningful life to reach their future or ambition.
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Women’s are in the immanence that they are no longer aware that they have free choice to do. De Beauvoir said that man declares himself as the one or self and the women is other. The man needs the women for its identity, the man is in relation to women for its prescribed. Women are living to a model of eternal feminine, they become the way they are expected to become. The immanence are trapped to the transcendent. De Beauvoir’s famous line ‘one is not born a woman but becomes a woman’ to the book of The Second Sex describes the life of woman from birth to adulthood. Which she describes through the paper doll girls which to prepare them into the future role into adolescence, where girls realize that the freedom to them is nearly impossible. According to De Beauvoir all women are trying to play the feminine role.
She discusses three types of women who play the role, which is the prostitute, the narcissist and the mystic. The prostitute who is an absolute object herself to satisfies her needs both money and pleasure receives from a man. The narcissist who unable freely to achieve her goals and becomes herself an object. The mystic who to lose herself to God rather to seek the freedom. The main point for de Beauvoir was the women are only live to pleasure a man, the women who wait for his man to come home from work. The women are useless and doesn’t have the free will to do what she wants.
De Beauvoir suggest a strategy to a women to take a other path, which is woman should go to work, woman pursue her career and woman strive to transform the society to socialist society.Ref:https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/The_Second_Sex