Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." This sentence alone has had a deep influence on feminist theory. Who wrote it? Simone de Beauvoir, a french existentialist, a philosopher, the writer of Second Sex, the classic work of feminism.   

In this classic, Beauvoir seeks to find the answer to how did women gain the role of the other, or in different words, why is there inequality between the sexes? Is there psychological, biological, historical explanations for her conditions? Why has these conditions been accepted by women or generations of women? Is it nature or nurture? As we go through this journey we will stumble on the concept of the other, to historical materialism and Freud, to the idea that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,  the first time that the idea of sex-gender distinction was formulated.     

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”