... notion of femininity. "If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through "the eternal feminine, " and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman? " This quotation, from the Introduction, points out the inadequacy of defining woman either by her biological operations ... bodily functions, and woman's functions involving reproduction and childcare. De Beauvoir also points out that an existential viewpoint allows an understanding of how history has enabled woman's oppressi...

• Word Count: 920
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... say that men make women: they do not make their body but their spiritual domination. At the beginning in the text, Simone de Beauvoir explains in the introduction with how much hesitation she undertook to write a book "about a woman". However, she still wrote the same kind as other feministic works, but hers is more classical. The Second Sex can be read in ... are not in conflict but they are in relationship. We can say men not equal to not-women; or there is no existence of subject and object between men and women because everything men distinguish. Similar to the relationship between ...

• Word Count: 561
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School