The Second Sex
38% recommend52% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
Foundational feminist philosophy that reshapes how readers think about women and gender. Dense with philosophical and historical reference, it suits those ready for serious theory.
Common criticism: Critics object to its views on motherhood and male privilege, calling them dated or theoretically flawed.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…difficult to understand the historical effect of women being cut out of the academy, and otherwise ignored, unless you read some accounts of it. Simone de'Beauvoir's "memoirs of a beautiful daughter" and "the second sex" may explain much to you.
on “Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls” ↗Whenever thinking of gender equality, I like to go back to Beauvoir. plato.stanford.edu's page [1] is fantastic, here's an extract: "Before The Second Sex, the sexed/gendered body was not an object of phenomenological investigation. Beauvoir changed that. Her argument for sexual equality takes two directions. First, it exposes the ways that masculine ideology…
on “Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads” ↗…always struggled to understand Sartre's popularity even among other philosophers I respect. I agree completely. It is completely rankling when considering how he is compared to Simone de Beauvoir. Her "Second Sex" is considered a feminist work—and for good reason—but it surpasses any of what Sarte wrote as a philosophical work. While he did build on the backs of others, his ideas remain small compared to his contemporaries.
on “How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free” ↗The first book that changed my life was "The Second Sex" by Simone De Beauvoir. Is not an easy book to read, with many philosophical and historical references, but it really shaped me. It changed my perception of women and also my awareness as a man. Another…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Here's a fascinating interview with de Beauvoir around 25 years after writing her seminal work The Second Sex, where she explains why feminism is necessary: https://youtu.be/g6eDMaDWquI Well worth watching. Most of what she says still rings true today.
on “Simone de Beauvoir and the art of loss” ↗…Nietzsche. I'm saying Simone de Beauvoir criticized Nietzsche in a manner I found interesting enough to remark upon. "This Simone person" pretty much invented second wave feminism with her book "The Second Sex", and is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. Her work changed the course of history. So yes, she's definitely up to something.
on “The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do” ↗herval, a handful of numbers can't show anything conclusively. Volume one of Simone de B's epic "Second Sex" covers your points in depth. Worth reading - some of its 1953 English translation is online at : http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir...
on “A different take on sexism in IT” ↗…as well and one that I would perhaps recommend to children though I'd recommend Borges or Camus or Kafka first. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vindication-Rights-Woman-Penguin-Cla... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Sex-Vintage-classics/dp/00997... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Great-Ideas-Suffering-World/... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecce-Homo-Becomes-Penguin-Classics/d... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-Treatise-Great-Virtues-Philoso...…
on “Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?” ↗I love to quote Beauvoir's plato page [1], which is particularly well written I find (emph mine), and relates very well to what you've just brought up: "Before The Second Sex, the sexed/gendered body was not an object of phenomenological investigation. Beauvoir changed that. Her argument for sexual equality takes two directions. First, it exposes the ways that masculine ideology…
on “Meet Q, a Genderless Voice” ↗…and polemist (he has controversial views on immigration and such, but is right on other topics), speaks about this in great detail in his book "The First Sex" (a reference to Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex") He explains how capitalism has taken the "useful idiots" of feminism and used them to first turn women into workers (hence doubling the amount of consumers as it created a population with a newfound…
on “When Factory Jobs Vanish, Men Become Less Desirable Partners” ↗…“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.” ― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
on “Sweden Has a 70 Percent Tax Rate and It Is Fine” ↗Interesting that The Second Sex is included in this list, given that its author believed that women are generally too stupid to choose what's best for them in life. > No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children.…
on “Ask HN: Are books worth it?” ↗…is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.“ > “ ... women are generally too stupid to choose what’s best for them in life.” Those are your words, not Simone de Beauvoirs. I haven’t read “The Second Sex” yet but I have read “The Ethics of Ambiguity” by her. I would bet a dollar though that Beauvoir considers stupidity an individual human trait generously distributed across all genders. Here are some…
on “Ask HN: Are books worth it?” ↗…to say is: - Culture is not always the reason something happens - Culture is not used as an explanation when something happens related to some countries. I think this point is valid. I'm reading 'The Second Sex' and Simone de Beauvoir talks about how machism is a way to turn the women into the _Other_, to put men into the center, as something neutral. I think it's the same thing with culturalism; it's not that…
on “Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes” ↗…recessive gender. “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.” (35) It is like an asymmetrical comparison, but masculine and feminine aren’t asymmetrical. De Beauvoir defines women as the “Second sex” because women are defined in relation to men. Aristotle referred that women are “female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.” De Beauvoir also points out that St. Thomas referred to the woman as…
on “Kristen Stewart co-authors AI paper” ↗