Who was Simone de Beauvoir and what was her reason for writing The Second Sex?
Do you find her arguments convincing? Are her points still valid or has the world changed dramatically since de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex? Obviously, the reader can do a biographical search themselves if they are interested but the following suffices for the briefest of answers: “Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, published in French in 1949, sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, Beauvoir accepts the precept that existence precedes essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the concept of The Other. It is the (social) construction of Woman as the quintessential Other that Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women’s oppression.” Wikipedia To start with, I think it is fair to say that at the time of the Supreme Court case, Bradwell v. Illinois in 1873, De Beauvoir was right. In that case, Myra Bradwell was asking to be allowed to practice law in Illinois. The Supreme Court ruled that she couldn’t
