-
The Second Sex
by Simone de
Beauvoir (1949)
Book One: Facts and
Myths, Part I: Destiny
Chapter 1, The
Data of Biology
WOMAN? Very simple, say
the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an
ovary;
she
is
a
female
–
this
word
is
sufficient
to
define
her.
In
the
mouth
of
a
man
the
epithet female has the sound of an
insult, yet he is not ashamed of his animal
nature;
on the contrary, he is proud if
someone says of him: ‘He is a male!’ The term
‘female’
is derogatory not because it
emphasises woman’s ani
mality, but
because it imprisons
her in her sex;
and if this sex seems to man to be contemptible
and inimical even in
harmless
dumb
animals,
it
is
evidently because
of the
uneasy hostility
stirred up in
him
by
woman.
Nevertheless
he
wishes
to
find
in
biology
a
justification
for
this
sentiment.
The
word
female
brings
up
in
his
mind
a
saraband
of
imagery
–
a
vast,
round
ovum engulfs and castrates the agile spermatozoan;
the monstrous and swollen
termite queen
rules over the enslaved males; the female praying
mantis and the spider,
satiated with
love, crush and devour their partners; the bitch
in heat runs through the
alleys,
trailing
behind
her
a
wake
of
depraved
odours;
the
she-
monkey
presents
posterior
immodestly and then steals away with hypocritical
coquetry; and the most
superb wild
beasts
–
the tigress, the
lioness, the panther
–
bed
down slavishly under
the
imperial
embrace
of
the
male.
Females
sluggish,
eager,
artful,
stupid,
callous,
lustful, ferocious, abased
–
man projects them all at
once upon woman. And the fact is
that
she is a female. But if we are willing to stop
thinking in platitudes, two questions
are
immediately
posed:
what
does
the
female
denote
in
the
animal
kingdom?
And
what
particular kind of female is manifest in woman?
Males
and
females
are
two
types
of
individuals
which
are
differentiated
within
a
species for the function
of reproduction; they can be defined only
correlatively. But
first it must be
noted that even the division of a species into two
sexes is not always
clear-cut.
In nature it is not universally
manifested. To speak only of animals, it is well
known
that among the microscopic one-
celled forms
–
infusoria,
amoebae, sporozoans, and
the
like
–
multiplication
is
fundamentally
distinct
from
sexuality.
Each
cell
divides
and subdivides by itself. In many-
celled animals or metazoans reproduction may take
place
asexually,
either
by
schizogenesis
–
that
is,
by
fission
or
cutting
into
two
or
more parts which become
new individuals
–
or by
blastogenesis
–
that is, by
buds that
separate
and
form
new
individuals.
The
phenomena
of
budding
observed
in
the
fresh-
water
hydra
and
other
coelenterates,
in
sponges,
worms,
and
tunicates,
are
well-known
examples.
In
cases
of
parthenogenesis
the
egg
of
the
virgin
female
develops
into an embryo
without
fertilisation by
the
male,
which thus
may
play no
role at all. In the
honey-bee copulation takes place, but the eggs may
or may not be
fertilised
at
the
time
of
laying.
The
unfertilised
eggs
undergo
development
and
produce
the
drones
(males);
in
the
aphids
males
are
absent
during
a
series
of
generations in which the
eggs are unfertilised and produce females.
Parthenogenesis
has been induced
artificially in the sea urchin, the starfish, the
frog, and other species.
Among the one-
celled animals (Protozoa), however, two cells may
fuse, forming what