I must say that I have been quite moved by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. There are a lot of points made in the work that provoke discourse for both that time of its original publication and even now. I thought the presenters picked out several good quotes for classroom discussion, and more than likely I will be writing my final paper on some aspect of this piece. For now I will just take a look at one aspect for this post...
“The emancipated woman, on the contrary, wants to be active, a taker, and refuses the passivity man means to impose on her. The ‘modern’ woman accepts masculine values: she prides herself on thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal.”
There is a lot I would like to explore by using Beauvoir as a basis and involving more modern responses and theories on gender equality.
“The emancipated woman, on the contrary, wants to be active, a taker, and refuses the passivity man means to impose on her. The ‘modern’ woman accepts masculine values: she prides herself on thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal.”
I believe in this quote that she gives a goal for women to reach for. She does not denote exactly how to get emancipation, but she suggests how one acts who does claim her freedom. What she suggests is a set of roles and traits currently unattributed to women of that time. I think it is personally alright for Beauvoir to state them as 'masculine' values because at that time such was the classification, so it was to help the people of that time understand what she was suggesting. Even if they had wanted these roles they have denied them to please their 'superiors', to be in their proper place receiving the care and assistance they desire. Indeed it would need to be many women who choose to take a stand and grasp a hold of more power...and this simply meant at this time, to be more similar in mannerism so the gap wouldn't be so wide in appearance.
The statement was quite bold at the time to suggest women to step into roles that were assigned typically to men, but nowadays it's a reminder that even though things have improved it wasn't so long ago that there is this gap. There are still reminders of such a gap, and this leads me to believe motivating works points like Beauvoir claims, should not be brushed aside...but instead resurfaced in order to examine how things are and to refocus what the goal of gender equality is. It may be that gender equality is not exactly what our culture wants, but to find out we must beg to the question to understand how much progress has been made and if people think more needs to be done.
Although gender equality is an ideal theory, is it really possible? If it's possible, is it really attainable within our lifetime? What obstacles make this progress slow, or halt it all together?
The opportunity for real gender equality in our culture does not appear that far off but it should be glaringly obvious that men are still viewed as the absolute and women the inessential. After writing that, it feels controversial because I think that women are in fact making strides towards liberating themselves as the other but when I think of the typical CEO of a company, I’m sorry but I cannot help but envision a man. I feel that the gender equality that Beauvoir is seeking also confronts a problem because many women are happy in their roles as the other and do not need to escape their role as the inferior, the slave, or the other (whatever you wish to call it). For many women, I don’t think they want change no matter how badly Beauvoir says that they need it. For this reason I think that Beauvoir’s lust for women to break their current “oppressive” bond with men is somewhat unrealistic since not enough women truly feel deprived. Not yet, anyways. Like I said in the first sentence, eventually women will be entirely free to choose their own path in this life, I just do not think we are completely there yet.
ReplyDeleteNote: speaking as a man, it is not easy to address gender inequality. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t is how I feel when talking about it.