The Second Sex

The Second Sex delves into the concept of feminism by looking at historical facts and biases, and explains how being a woman implies being subjugated to a man and making yourself smaller so that you can fit in today’s world, but also how women everywhere should react to the system and change it.

Throughout time, many things have always differentiated men and women. It ranges from natural inclinations, biological and psychological traits, and many other aspects that make each gender unique. However, humanity evolved in a way that emphasized men as the prevalent gender, the workforce, and the absolute power. And they left women in the shadows.

In the modern era, we know a lot about the evolution of the gender gap. Freud stated that women have “penis envy” which derives from the lack of male genitalia that they once might’ve had. As such, they desire penetration and subjugation as a result of their mutilation. Freud’s theory, like many others, starts from the premise that men are the prototype.

All research leads to one common factor: women are complimentary to men. They’re “The Other”. Just as a master can’t rule without a slave, an antithesis couldn’t exist without a thesis, the female is the other gender, and the male is the primary one. History also depicts women as passive and static, whereas men are outgoing, generating resources, active, creative, and so on.

If you go back in time, you’ll see how women often ruled early societies. Or that females had a special place in the world as they were life-givers and thus, almost sacred. As society evolved and expanded, the sense of property started to play a major role in the lives of people. Most societies these days are patriarchal, meaning that men primarily ruled them. We’ve reached this point gradually, through laws and ideologies that serve a man’s purpose in life. For example, laws of private property favored the inheritance of assets in one family. Men are running the bloodline and carry its name, so the power naturally shifts towards them. Greek mythology referred to goddesses as passive receivers, while Zeus was an active life-giver. Moreover, as slavery became prominent, women were no longer seen as necessary for childbearing. They were pushed out, while men took care of the work matters and became the initiators and perpetrators of all new ideas. Needless to say, societies slowly shifted their focus on men, leaving women behind to take care of day-to-day issues. Even worse, women were transformed into assets, with laws allowing them to be shared by men from the same family. When the man died, she had to marry her eldest male relative of her husband, to keep the property…