French Philosopher, Founder of Existentialist Feminism
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French philosopher who kept a lifelong open partnership with Sartre, the two nourishing each other’s thought inseparably. Her chief work The Second Sex systematically used the framework of existentialist philosophy to analyze the situation of women in patriarchal society, proposing the core thesis that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" — that the whole set of "feminine" norms (gender) socially and culturally constructed for women, apart from biological sex, is in essence the product of a patriarchal society defining women as the "Other" existing relative to the male "subject." This work systematically founded the theoretical school of existentialist feminism, profoundly shaped the theoretical construction of the later second-wave feminist movement, and is one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century.
In The Second Sex Beauvoir proposed this later widely circulated core thesis, holding that femininity is not an inborn biological essence but a social product "made" through a whole later process of construction — family upbringing, social custom, cultural narrative; this analytical framework distinguishing "gender" from "biological sex" thereafter became one of the most basic and important theoretical tools in the entire field of gender studies.
Beauvoir maintained with Sartre an open partnership of more than fifty years on the principle that "a necessary love can allow contingent loves"; the two never married yet always kept a deep intellectual exchange and mutual support, and this in-its-time controversial relationship was itself, in a sense, a personal practice of her existentialist-feminist stance that "a woman should freely choose her own path in life rather than be bound by traditional marital norms."
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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