Le Deuxieme Sexe aka The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir sits at number eleven on the Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde%27s_100_Books_of_the_Century 9 out of 10

 Le Deuxieme Sexe aka The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir sits at number eleven on the Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde%27s_100_Books_of_the_Century

 9 out of 10 

 

This reader has had a surprise on looking at the first lines of this massive opus –many say an opus magnum, which Le Monde places in the company of the La Recherche du Temps Perdu – the greatest chef d’oeuvre known by the under signed – The Outsider, ahead of Lolita, Brave New World and other more admired masterpieces, at least honored in the male world, and before 1949, when this philosophical essay of 1071 or 978 pages, depending on which edition you are looking at, was published.

 

One is captivated by the style, shocked by the information found within, shamed (in this particular case) for the retrograde background – which involved some pretty vile and ludicrous concepts, such as in my home, the rooster will sing, not the hen, in other words there was a male chauvinist society here [ not that it is gone now] and the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ would have it that man is the boss and the woman has to listen and obey, keeping to her tasks and accepting whatever the master decides and imposes on her…well, more or less – penitent for the many mistakes and malign acts and statements, thinking of penitence – for some time at least and come to think of it, I had just mentioned asking the wild, sonorous, alcoholic, brutal neighbors about where they get their wood from, seeing that the price of gas had exploded, we have a fireplace and wood should be a cheaper add on, if not a replacement, and she said no and then when arguing about the said advantages, she said ‘du-te naibii’ aka go to hell, ending thus the wish to better himself, which this reader briefly entertained while under the spell of de Beauvoir.

Well, there is the second part – this is just covering the about 500 pages of the first installment, I am not sure, in part because I have listed to the audiobook, which you can find on…YouTube, and if it does not come up at your search and you are interested, give a sign and we use my link, which I will find somewhere – and that could have yet more influence, maybe life changing and I decide to become a feminist, just as exploited as I am by the Second Sex residing in this abode, who thinks that the retort to almost anything is ‘fuck you’, and then I take her goddamn dog out – true, the old brute spends time inside, and if he pisses himself, or worse, there would be poor me to endure the stink, so there is self interest in that.

 

Simone de Beauvoir does not come across as the one this First Sex would want to listen to, to tell him what is what – he would much rather have Chili Palmer, especially in the shape and form of John Travolta, from Get Shorty http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/get-shorty-by-elmore-leonard-aka.html tell him the way it is – and that is in large part because she seems a rather unlikeable character, lacking charm and beauty – here of course we have on display exactly the repugnant, disgusting male traits of the chauvinist pig, looking for exterior beaute, instead of appreciating the luminous, dazzling mind – and that is clearly because of weakness, feeling threatened, judging women on superficial criteria…

 

We could mention the fact that she seemed to be very left wing, embracing communist ideas – which for someone living close to the Soviet union, then Russia, and now, looking at what Putin is doing in the Ukraine (first, and then if it works for the Short Despot, he will see about Poland, our lands and more) back near USSR again it is anathema, blasphemy and the cardinal sin – which is not acceptable for those who feel like me, and might explain why, after the initial exultation, the concentration petered out.

Then there is her association with Jean Paul Sartre – the chap who embraced the Soviets, even after it became clear what they were all about, the details of the famine, the tens of millions of dead at the hands of Stalin would come out and sorry, but that puts the French thinker into the most contemptible category and he is placed in the company of the Intellectuals analyzed in a magnificent book by Paul Johnson http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html - and that would be another detail to make Simone de Beauvoir rather unwelcome among the authors favored by yours truly…

 

Nevertheless, The Second Sex does prove to be fundamental – there is the age problem, in that things have changed for women, dramatically in the civilized world, since the book was published , however, they have remained the same as millennia ago in quite a few places- in that we learn what a woman is, what the major male thinkers have said about the Second Sex "There is a good principle that created order, light and man and a bad principle that created chaos, darkness and woman" – that would be Pythagoras

Looking at history, laws, Christian doctrine and rules, Simone de Beauvoir arrives at the obvious conclusion that women have been treated as slaves, inferior to men – although it is the fact that they are kept in servitude, in an inferior position that affects their education, their status and not vice versa, it is not because they are in any way less worthy than men that they have been limited to their low position…

 

The Economist has had a cover and a lead article on the subject some years ago, when the woman was portrayed as the future ‘ruler’ – they did not say that, I am just trying to decipher for your benefit, or better said, this is mangled and distorted by weak memory and misunderstanding of the plot – there will be an increasing prominence for women and less need for the male that is anyway doing much worse in schools and in an age when muscle power does not really count for much – though de Beauvoir looks at this aspect and rightly writes about the fact that women were made to carry things and they have been much like the lionesses, those that hunt, while the male lion just comes to enjoy the meal…you could do well to read the opus magnum Quarantine by Jim Crace http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/quarantine-by-jim-crace-from-1000.html - and the future might need more of the skills of women.

Take this war in Ukraine, started by a…male, what else: it is inconceivable that a woman leader would start some catastrophe like that – well, if she is a republican from the US, say a moron like MTG, then yes, it is possible – for it is the males that think in those violent terms and they have all that ‘manhood’ to prove, or compensate for lack thereof, in the recent case, it is also a Napoleon complex and more troubling mental issues…