The opposite sex

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Title page of the original edition of the first volume

The opposite sex is a socio-historical philosophical work by the French philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir , published in France in 1949 under the title Le Deuxième Sexe (“The Second Sex”) in two volumes, Les faits et les mythes (“The facts and the myths ") And L'expérience vécue (" The lived experience ") appeared. The first German edition was first printed in one volume in 1951 by Rowohlt Verlag .

The book is considered to be a crucial basic work of the second wave of feminism , as it placed the category of gender at the center of a social-scientific investigation for the first time and consistently differentiated between biological gender and cultural or social character of gender. It thus laid the foundations for women's and gender research and gender studies .

On the list of 100 books of the century by Le Monde there is in eleventh place.

History and content

As early as 1948, Simone de Beauvoir had a longer excerpt pre-printed in the magazine Les Temps Modernes , which examines the male myths of the weak, mentally limited and otherwise decorative female sex. A second preprint followed in May 1949, this time about the sexual initialization of women. With cool scientific observation, Beauvoir describes how the man always remains an autonomous subject and ruler of the situation, even in the sexual act, even when he projects his desire onto "the other".

The book draws on numerous works of cultural and social history, which Beauvoir reinterprets from a feminist perspective. Simone de Beauvoir had no feminist, ie no explicit political reasons for dealing with "women", but philosophical , phenomenological and existentialist reasons . In the preface she writes: “I hesitated for a long time to write a book about women. The subject is annoying, especially for the women; besides, it's not new. A lot of ink has already flowed into the controversy over feminism, at the moment it is almost over ”.

Beauvoir succeeded in discovering female perspectives and previously tacitly ignored worlds of experience and made them part of the scientific and political discourse . Even in the non-academic public, the approach became broad and z. Sometimes discussed controversially. The book had a decisive influence on feminism in the 20th century, especially the debates in the student movement . In this work she advocates the thesis that the oppression of women is socially conditioned. For them there is no “ essence ” of any kind .

She also says in this work that women were made "the opposite sex" by men. In Beauvoir's existentialist terminology, this means that the man posits himself as the absolute, the essential, the subject, while the woman is assigned the role of the other, the object. It is always defined depending on the man. That is why she has to struggle with stronger conflicts than the man. If she wants to do justice to her “ femininity ”, she has to be content with a passive role, but this contradicts her wish to design herself as a free subject through activity.

Beauvoir presents an extremely complex analysis of the situation of women. It discusses biological, psychoanalytic and historical “facts and myths” (the title of the first part) and the “lived experience” of women. Strongly influenced by the methodology of the existentialist phenomenology of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty , she assumes that no scientific consideration can explain the "woman", but that only individual experience is decisive.

The opposite sex appeared between two waves of women's movements (the "historic" one up to the First World War and the "new" one from 1970) and follows the tradition of feminists such as Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) or Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), to which Beauvoir also refers. But it goes far beyond that. Beauvoir's comprehensive cultural-historical and sociological treatise on the situation of women in a male-dominated world is the most radical and visionary contribution to the emancipation of women in the 20th century. It is essentially a dialectical-materialistic study of the existence of women. It does not explain the woman as a mysterious being, but from the point of view of her social and economic situation. The enslavement of women and their liberation are the consequences of their economic dependence and economic emancipation.

Pioneering achievement of the plant

The pioneering achievement of the work lies primarily in the fact that for the first time the category gender was placed at the center of a social-scientific investigation and a consistent distinction was made between biological gender and cultural or social character of gender. It thus laid the foundations for women's and gender research and gender studies .

The focus of the reception was initially the USA , where it stimulated social science engagement with the gender category . Kate Millett does not refer to it as a regular source in retrospect, but as "revelation". However, since the work was often not cited, the multiplier effect remained implicit for a long time. As a result, it seemed for a long time that women's and gender studies had originated in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s. The intense reception in the USA, in turn, had an impact on France and, with some delay, on other countries such as Germany . In Germany, too, the pioneering effect of the work was not noticed for a long time.

The work is also a source of ideas and a benchmark for a number of aspects of women's and gender studies that have subsequently developed:

By removing the taboo from science, the book exposed hidden problems, thereby making them discourse-capable and thus negotiable.

Key quote

The first sentence at the beginning of the second volume became a key quote in the work. After a brief introduction, Beauvoir first describes childhood in the formation section and begins it as follows:

“ On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, économique ne définit la figure que revêt au sein de la société la femelle humaine; c'est l'ensemble de la civilization qui élabore ce produit intermédiaire entre le mâle et le castrat qu'on qualifie de féminin. Seule la médiation d'autrui peut constituer un individu comme un Autre . En tant qu'il existe pour soi, l'enfant ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement différencié. "

“ You are not born a woman, you become one. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the shape that the female human being takes on in the womb of society. The whole of civilization forms this intermediate product between the man and the castrato, who is called woman. Only the mediation of another can present the individual as another. "

The first sentence is so well known and widespread that it is often no longer provided with a source reference and the translation with its implications usually remains unreflected.

The translations of the 1951 edition and the new edition from 1992 are identical, but there are different translations, each with a slightly different interpretation. For example, the Beauvoir expert and Romance scholar Ingrid Galster understood growing up as “ conditioning ” and therefore preferred the following translation of her own: “You are not born a woman: You are made into it.” She justifies this with the following book text, in particular with Section “Non-mysterious instincts make girls passive, flirtatious, or maternal; rather, this vocation is addressed to them from an early age. ”As a rule, however, socialization or the development of a gender habitus is not viewed as a passive but rather as an active process of mutual interdependence, which is why the translation“ one is made into it ”is rejected.

effect

From the moment it was published, the book met with admiration, but also with rejection, led to hostility and massive personal insults ("priceless pseudo-scholarship of this young lady", "educated idiot").

The work was radical in its question and way ahead of its time. The opposite sex was received worldwide and became one of the most politically effective key texts of the second women's movement as well as a major work of feminist theories. Influential feminists in the early 1970s women's movement, such as Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone , made explicit use of Beauvoir's The Other Sex . The Vatican had the book in its list of prohibited books .

After the death of Simone de Beauvoir on April 14, 1986, the American feminist Kate Millett wrote : “Beauvoir was repeatedly exposed to violent hostility. In addition to the expected criticism from the bourgeois-conservative camp, she also fought with the left because she was convinced (especially in later years) that the oppression of women would not automatically dissolve in communism. "

She has also been criticized by feminists. Her descriptions of the female body and her “demystification” of motherhood were mostly at the center of criticism.

Beauvoir influenced and initiated many of the later discussions in feminism and paved the way for what later became known as gender studies .

“Who would have written a book that would change the fate of all people? It will take time to fully appreciate what impact the opposite sex has had on social history, on private life, everyday consciousness and perception. "

- Kate Millett

From the 1970s onwards, especially from a feminist point of view, reception was increasingly linked to a more critical view of Beauvoir's interpretations. This is mainly related to the theoretical tensions between difference and equality feminism . However, it is undisputed that the book, which is generally considered to be Beauvoir's main work, is a classic of the women's movement .

In Germany, Alice Schwarzer , among others, invokes Simone de Beauvoir's ideas.

Editions in German translation

  • The opposite sex. Woman's Customs and Sex . Translated into German by Eva Rechel-Mertens (Volume 1) and Fritz Montfort (Volume 2). Rowohlt, Hamburg 1951; Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, ISBN 3-499-16621-6
  • The opposite sex. An interpretation of the woman . Special edition shortened and edited by Marianne Langewiesche . Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek 1960 (Rowohlt's German Encyclopedia, Vol. 99)
  • The opposite sex. Woman's Customs and Sex . Translated from the French by Uli Aumüller and Grete Osterwald . Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek 1992; New edition ibid. 2000, ISBN 3-499-22785-1

literature

  • Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann : Simone de Beauvoir and “The opposite sex”. dtv , Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-24648-4
  • Focus issue Cinquante ans apres 'Le Deuxieme Sexe'. Beauvoir en debats. (50 years after “The opposite sex.” Debates about Beauvoir) by Zs. “Lendemains. Journal for comparative French research. Revue. Études comparées sur la France “, 94. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1999 ISBN 3-86057-964-9 ISSN  0170-3803
  • Ingrid Galster (Ed.): Le Deuxième Sexe de Simone de Beauvoir. Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-84050-304-2
  • Ursula Konnertz: Simone de Beauvoir: The opposite sex. Woman's Customs and Sex . In: Martina Löw, Bettina Mathes (Ed.): Key works in gender research . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2005, ISBN 978-3-322-80446-4 , pp. 26–58
  • Sophie Beese: The (second) opposite sex. The changing discourse “woman”. Simone de Beauvoir's 'Le deuxième sexe' in first and new German translation. TranSouth. Work on the theory and practice of translation and interpreting, 77. Frank & Timme , Berlin 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Ingrid Galster: Relire Beauvoir. The opposite sex sixty years later. In: Ingrid Galster: Simone Beauvoir and feminism. Hamburg 2015, pp. 56–78.
  2. ↑ Birgit Regraf: Construction of gender . In: Brigitte Aulenbacher, Michael Meuser, Birgit Riegraf (ed.): Sociological gender research. An introduction . Wiesbaden 2010, p. 55-77 .
  3. ↑ Lieselotte Steinbrügge: A myth is visited. Le deuxième sexe by Simone de Beauvoir under the microscope of gender research. Retrieved February 27, 2019 (17/2005).
  4. ↑ Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe, Tome 2 . Gallimard, Paris 1949, p. 15 .
  5. ↑ Simone de Beauvoir: The opposite sex. Woman's Customs and Sex . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1951, p. 265 .
  6. ↑ Karin Klenke: Consuming beauty: body, beauty and gender in Tanah Karo, North Sumatra . Göttingen 2011, p. 9 .
  7. ↑ Margarete Stokowski: Classics of Feminism: Simone, where are you? December 31, 2013, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Gerhard Danzer: Who are we? In Search of the Human Formula: Anthropology in the 20th Century. Springer, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-16992-2 , p. 160 .
  9. ↑ Brigitte Rauschenbach (2008): Equality, Difference, Freedom? Changes in consciousness in feminism after 1968 ( Memento of the original from January 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 238 kB). In: gender politik online , requested on April 14, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.fu-berlin.de
  10. ↑ Alice Schwarzer: Simone de Beauvoir: companions in conversation . Cologne 2007.
  11. ↑ The articles are in different languages; here reviews in short form
  12. ↑ A myth is visited. Le deuxième sexe by Simone de Beauvoir under the microscope of gender research . Review in querelles-net