Anti Pleasure

Well here’s a lovely topic that I haven’t mentioned in here yet, feminism! Do you honestly still think women have the same rights as men nowadays? I don’t think so. Sure there are women in the military, women run their own business, room for women to do small tasks in any kind of labour job. But you may think it’s funny with all those tedious jokes from Family Guy about women being abused (you know what I’m talking about!) and you can just sit there and laugh, fair enough I say. Sure it’s a lot easier for North Americans to say “I’m a woman, I’m proud, I’m free!” but think about the REST of the world and what strife those women have to face.

I think this will be a broad topic because I want to talk about a famous (and personal favorite) feminist Simone de Beauvoir. If you’re interested in women’s rights at all, read her best book “The Second Sex” which has been translated from French to English. In this book she talks about how women are seen as the “OTHER” sex, giving a false aura of mystery to women. She said that men used this as an excuse to not understand women and their problems, not help and this stereotyping had always been done in societies by a group higher than to the group of lower hierarchy. She wrote that this also happened with other identities such as race, class and religion.

She wrote that this also happened on the basis of other 

“It was nowhere more true than with sex in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.” Beauvoir Stated

My question is, why has it taken us so long to rule out these stereotypes in women? It has taken ages for us to forget that not every woman wants to be a house wife and let the father deal with financial standings or maybe a woman doesn’t WANT a family these days. I just can’t wrap my ahead around the fact that women were just considered human beings in the 1920s! Ridiculous if you ask me.  It just seems funny, we are the sex that produces children, so why have the men always been in control, because they are physically stronger? And that’s how it should always be?  Don’t worry I am not a man hater lol I never would be, it does sicken me though that we’ve come so far, but we’re so far behind in our morals we believe in today. 

Anyway, back to Simone and her book “The Second Sex”, the book was first published in French in 1949 and it is basically where she thought woman stood at the time and also has to do with female existentialism. She believed one is not born a woman, but becomes one. This is where it comes into women being the “other” sex from the Hegelian concept.  

In the book she argues that women throughout history have been defined as the “other” sex, an aberration from the “normal” male sex.  (Force of Circumstance) Beauvoir believed that your identity is based on your gender. So the book gives you a radical view on understanding gender!

I could go on for hours about this, but I think some more feminist ramblings will be talked about soon.

I just thought I’d mention her because she was one of my favorite writers. She is one of the first females to introduce the second wave of feminism. A whole new way of philosophy. So, more for another day. Of course.

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