Simone De Beauvoir: The Eternal Battle Of The Sexes

As she concludes her book, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir claims, “The fact is that today neither men nor women are satisfied with each other.” As one of the most famous and provocative feminist writers, de Beauvoir sought to analyze the history of woman-kind as well as the reasons behind and the solutions to the inequality of the sexes. One of main controversial conclusions she offers is that women and men both share the blame for gender inequality. De Beauvoir argues that the “eternal battle of the sexes” is not the result of some physiological law. Rather, it can be attributed to historical development and the perpetuation of femininity. Using the examples of unequal male-female time exchange and the inequality found in traditional marriage, de Beauvoir claims that femininity disadvantages both men and women, causing both parties to become dissatisfied.
According to de Beauvoir, the cause of both male and female discontent is the presence of femininity in promoting feminism. She claims, “if the vicious circle is so hard to break, it is because the two sexes are each the victim at once of the other and of itself.” While women have been oppressed …show more content…
She poses that, “A man who is compelled to go on materially and morally supporting a woman whom he no longer loves feels he is victimized.” However, “if he abandons without resources the woman who has pledged her whole life to him, she will be quite as unjustly victimized.” Because the traditional marriage necessitates female reliance on her husband, both feel doomed to stay in the marriage despite the lack of love or happiness. If he leaves her, she would be left with no means of stability or survival and he would feel responsible. Here, de Beauvoir argues that the fault lies not in the characters of the people involved, but in the very arrangement of traditional

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Simone De Beauvoir: The Eternal Battle Of The Sexes

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