An Uneven Hand

Reading Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known book The Second Sex is a plunge into an extremely well developed position on sexual status and equality, but in some cases she takes her stance to an extreme in her defense of women, both animal and human.

Simone demonstrates a good deal of respect for the sexual dimorphism present in nature, and in many cases, Simone argues that both sexes are equal. As she claims, a termite female “that lays an egg every second until she is sterile […] is no less a slave than the dwarf male attached to her abdomen that fertilizes the eggs as they are expelled.” (The Second Sex 32) The female is on equal footing with the male – both are laboring mindlessly in the interest of perpetuating the species. This trend holds as we rise among the ranks of animals to creatures such as entoniscids and edriolydnus. Even though in some cases “the dwarf male […] is solely devoted to reproduction[, in] all these cases the female is just as enslaved as the male: she is a slave to the species”. (The Second Sex 32) The male suffers, but no more than the female, who must focus on the grander goal of perpetuating the species. A few pages later in the reading, however, the roles are reversed when Simone speaks of higher animals – animals more like humans. “Coitus is a rapid operation that does not reduce the male’s vitality. He manifests almost no paternal instinct. He very often abandons the female after mating. When he remains near her, as the head of a family group […] he does so in a nurturing and protective role vis-à-vis the whole community.” (The Second Sex 37) The text seems to be clear on the point that this is a negative point against the male – the previous sentences suggest his separation from the worries of reproduction. This is very clearly a reversal of roles from the previous situation – there, the male had no purpose other than reproduction while the female worked for the survival of the species, while here the male has little to do with reproduction, and his role is in context of the survival of the whole species. Despite this, Simone takes sides unevenly, setting them as equal in one context and unequal in another.

In the case of humans, Simone takes a stronger stand, arguing that women, when gripped in the midst of their reproductive cycle, “seem possessed by outside forces” (The Second Sex 38). Simone references how the female body forms and unforms embryos every month and other ways in which the body acts independently of the control of the brain as her proof, establishing them as “much more complex” (The Second Sex 39) than men. This point, however, is noticeably reminiscent of when, a few pages earlier, the book refers to “Aggressiveness [as] one of the characteristics of the male in heat.” (The Second Sex 37) The male’s aggression is, as the text states, not able to be explained by competition, since there are even numbers of males and females. The aggressiveness must therefore be linked to the male’s own hormonal levels, and cannot be attributed to his own control.

Though Simone argues for a valid cause, the way in which she over-emphasizes females as victims of the system weakens her position greatly while simultaneously setting up females as victims. Simone’s exaggeration lessens her argument – presenting any one side as different from the other will merely aggravate the problem of sexual disparity for time to come.