Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex is a masterpiece of feminist criticism and philosophy. An incendiary take on the place of women in post-war French society, it helped define major trends in feminist thought for the rest of the 20th century, and its influence is still felt today. The book’s success owes much to Beauvoir’s brilliant writing style and passion, but both are rooted in the clarity of her critical thinking skills. She builds a strong argument against the silent assumptions that continually demoted (and still demote) women to “second place” in a society dominated by men. Beauvoir also demonstrates the central skills of reasoning at their best: presenting a persuasive case, organising her thoughts, and supporting her conclusions. Above all, though, The Second Sex is a masterclass in analysis. Treating the structures of contemporary society and culture as a series of arguments that tend continuously to demote women, Beauvoir is able to isolate and describe the implicit assumptions that underpin male domination. Her demolition of these assumptions provides the crucial ammunition for her argument that women are in no way the “second” sex, but are in every way the equal of men.

Extensive social science research, particularly by anthropologists, has explored women?s reproductive lives, their use of reproductive technologies, and their experiences as mothers and nurturers of children. Meanwhile, few if any volumes have explored men?s reproductive concerns or contributions to women?s reproductive health: Men are clearly viewed as the?second sex? in reproduction. This volume argues that the marginalization of men is an oversight of considerable proportions, and thereby seeks to break the silence surrounding men?s thoughts, experiences, and feelings about their reproductive lives. It sheds new light on male reproduction from a cross-cultural, global perspective, focusing not only upon men in Europe and America but also those in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Both heterosexual and homosexual, married and unmarried men are featured in this volume, which assesses concerns ranging from masculinity and sexuality to childbirth and fatherhood. Thus, men are brought back into the equation, as reproductive partners, progenitors, fathers, nurturers, and decision-makers.

This collection offers insights into the transnational and translingual implications of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), a text that has served as foundational for feminisms worldwide since its publication in 1949. Little scholarly attention has been devoted to how the original French-language source text made its way into languages other than English. This is a shocking omission, given that many (but by no means all) other translations were based on the 1953 English translation by Howard M. Parshley, which has been widely criticized by Beauvoir scholars for its omissions and careless attention to its philosophical implications. This volume seeks to fill this gap in scholarship with an innovative collection of essays that interrogate the ways that Beauvoir’s essay has shifted in meaning and significance as it has travelled across the globe. This volume brings together for the first time scholars from Translation Studies, Literary Studies and Philosophical Studies, and over half of it is dedicated to non-Western European engagements with Le Deuxième Sexe (including chapters on the Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hungarian and Polish translations). As such, this collection will be essential to any scholar of Beauvoir’s philosophy and its contributions to feminist discourses.

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, the book that arguably stands as the stepping stone for all other feminists' work. As a work of post-WWII, The Second Sex stirred up controversary as women in France and America had just earned their right to vote and men who fought on the front returned home to reclaim the jobs that had been filled by women. Moreover, the fight for liberation and equality for women continues to impact politics and philosophy even today. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of de Beauvoir’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NATALIE HAYNES When this book was first published in 1949 it was to outrage and scandal. Never before had the case for female liberty been so forcefully and successfully argued. De Beauvoir’s belief that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman’ switched on light bulbs in the heads of a generation of women and began a fight for greater equality and economic independence. These pages contain the key passages of the book that changed perceptions of women forever. TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE BORDE AND SHEILA MALOVANY-CHEVALLIER ANNOTATED AND INTRODUCED BY MARTINE REID

Not the Second Sex is about some of the women I had met around the world in the last thirty years. These women had instilled a firm belief in me that women are in fact not the second sex and that a man appears to be superior only because they allow him to be so. Laila “All that investment is only for removing the dress and become naked at the end of the day in front of a man,” Krishna said to Laila, a gorgeous fashion model in Mumbai, when she was bolstering about the efforts she had to take to dress and make up. Annie “Given a choice, a woman will always choose a man with whom she would be happy rather than comfortable. A man never understands that.” Rachel “Author Rebecca West said, ‘I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” Maitreyi Maitreyi asked Yajnavalkya her husband, the great intellect and renowned sage, “If you leave me with all your wealth to seek the Brahman, what shall I do with that by which I cannot become an immortal?.”

This book reveals how France reinvented itself in the aftermath of World War Two. After foreign military interventions, the French political and intellectual elites embraced regime change and launched an urgent programme of nation building. They rebuilt French national identity with whatever material was available, and created a vibrant new cultural and intellectual life. The cost to subordinated groups, however, especially women, still casts a long shadow over French values and attitudes. In this, perhaps, there are lessons and implications for other countries, struggling to rebuild themselves after conflict.

Women's filmmaking in France has been a source of both delight and despair. On the one hand, the numbers are impressive – over 250 feature-length films were made by over 100 women directors in France in the 1980s and 1990s. On the other hand, despite the heritage of French feminism, French women directors characteristically disclaim their gender as a significant factor in their filmmaking. This incisive study provides an informative, critical guide to this major body of work, exploring the boundaries between personal films (intimate psychological dramas relating to key stages in life) and genre films (which demonstrate women's ability to appropriate and rework popular genres). It analyzes the effects of postfeminism, women's desire to enter the mainstream, and the impact of a new generation of filmmakers, enabling readers to take stock of the wealth and diversity of women's contribution to French cinema during the 1980s and 1990s.

Acknowledged by many feminists as the single most important theoretical work of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) nevertheless occupies an anomalous place in the feminist 'canon'. Yet it has had an undeniable impact, not only on the development of critiques of sexual politics but on twentieth-century western thinking about the concept of 'woman' in general.This collection of six new essays by scholars from the disciplines of French, English literature, history, cultural criticism, feminist theory and philosophy makes a valuable contribution to the task of re-reading and reassessing this enormously influential text for a new generation of feminist readers, and also for cultural theorists, for whom the question of 'the feminine' is at the centre of key debates in philosophy and postmodernity.The contributors provide a significantly new rethinking of the place of The Second Sex in cultural history and of women and representation, the role of 'fictions' and the problem of ethical agency in the work of the leading intellectual woman of this age.