Thoughts on this book...

Thoughts on this book. A few pages in and it seems like a lot her error comes from not wanting to believe that a lot of woman's submission and weakness comes from biology rather than culture. I'm getting a vibe her that she's just going to write her frustrations about the state of women and not offer any real solutions to elevate them.

I had to read excerpts and a lot of her logic comes from false assumptions of human biology. For example she states that there are no sexual differences with prepubescent children, but doesn't indicate what kind of proof she has to offer or what she qualifies as a difference (because it's self evident that the genitals are different although I don't recall her mentioning it).
A lot of later feminist thought comes from the denial of science so if that doesn't interest you, I'd drop it.

>a few pages in
>bias confirmed i guess i can go post on /polbooks/ kek!
Die

>le /r9k/ expert on female subjectivity

DE ROASTVIOR BTFO

I didn't finish it, but I liked what I read. I disagree completely with OP, she does talk about biological differences, for instance about the difference in urinating standing or crouched in boys and girls. But she always does so connecting it to how society took and approached these differences, as well has to how people growing up to those differences experienced it psychologically.

I don't know which part you are talking about since it's been quite a long time since I read it, but I think it's well developped and quite clearly explained that what she qualifies as difference is in difference perceived and construced culturally. Children might have different genitals, but (specially in her time and even more before) they are dressed similarly and treated similarly in several degrees in which adolescents and adults are not.

It's also quite cynical of you to cite that as a scientific inaccuraccy, I mean, do you think Simone "didn't know kids have different genitals"? You not only think she is dumb, you think she is kid Goku or Patrick Star. That is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever read, as if it isn't more probable that you have a gap in your understanding of what she was talking about than a person with a brain not knowing boys and girls are different down there.

>biological determinism

You're misunderstanding the post, in the excerpts I had read she disregarded real biological differences in favour of what wasn't there. That's to say that instead of focusing on possible hormonal differences between children she'll comment on the absence of the major differences we observe after puberty. It's a biased view.

Note that I said she didn't mention differences, not that she was unaware of them. To say she didn't mention the different genitals doesn't mean one thinks she's unaware of it. Were you aware of this before writing a pointless condescending paragraph?

A review from good reads

This book could be structured as:
Vol.1.Pt.1.: Simone pretends to be an authority on biological psychiatry, psychoanalysis and history.
Vol.1.Pt.2: Simone notes innumerable instances, as if it were not somehow already apparent, that history has always kept woman in a subordinate socioeconomic position within the family.
Vol.1.Pt.3.: Simone uses fiction to support her views on how real women feel in real situations.
Vol.2.Pt.1-3: Simone uses psychiatric case studies and anecdotes to describe the psychological development of girls as they grow up. Best part of the book.
Vol.2.Pt.4: She states that she thinks that a woman's identity should be independent of her relation to man.

In this review I'm going to omit my personal feelings and experiences and try and argue that this book receives more attention than it deserves and is most likely not worth your full attention (you can skim-read it, sure).

a. Genre issues
I believe the book is a polemic. To me this not a work of ethical philosophy, sociocultural theory, psychoanalytic theory or history, because it posed no constructive system of behaviour, no original insight to dystopian or utopian ideals regarding gender, no original explanation of instinctive drives behind behaviours, and no extensively cited or statistically weighted accounts of previous standards of civilization. A strong polemic to me requires a clear goal, structure and discarding of counterarguments, which I think were undeniably absent from Volume One, and anticlimactically emerged at the end of Volume Two.

b. Excessive & Unconstructive Quotations
First, it is no exaggeration that at least a third of the book are direct quotes other books. Even if she wrote the remaining two thirds brilliantly, the majority of it should be based on interpreting the work of others and so this text should be seen as a critique/review/meta-analysis of other feminist works before it. This is the main reason I think this book is highly rated generally: readers appreciate someone bringing citations of works classed as feminist together that they will never have to read so they can sample the best of them and perhaps recognize their names in the future perhaps so as to sound progressive.

Second, school teaches us PQD: make a point, cite evidence perhaps in the form of a quotation, and then develop what this means to the specific question. This book is almost entirely PQPQPQ ad nauseam. Evidence of this comes from the fact that when you ask people to tell you what is exceptional about this book they will blindly repeat "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". I'd like to tell you that she was the first to insinuate this, or to say that she develops this any further, but I simply can't.

Third, I think her quoted sources provide greater insight and constructive views, I just find that Wollstonecraft's Vindication may be dated but had a clearer goal, Woolf's A Room With A View was more honest and unifying for heterosexuals, and Plath's works have more detailed and realistic representations of heterosexual bitterness and disgust.

c. Playing Teacher
One of the general issues I have with the book is that her haughtiness is more than obnoxious—it obfuscates deficiencies of evidence. While I surprisingly commend her criticisms of Freud on female psychology (better than some I saw in Horney's work), I think she is being dishonest in trying to make counterarguments in these fields in which she is clearly not specialized. The semi-colons don't come across as logical affirmations, but as passive aggressive backhands. She assumes with the authority of a psychiatrist that the female psychiatric patient anecdotes (which make up most of her evidence) are accurate, and in no way involve misguidedly or disproportionately projecting female suffering onto man. This book demonstrates that citing more sources and adding more pages does not add weight to your argument if you are not using them appropriately, even if you insist this is the case. She rambles for points which add nothing to her argument and weakly dismisses highly relevant counterarguments, such as suicide gender ratios in economically developed countries.

d. Pseudo-separatism
I just don't see how this book can benefit societal relations, when it promotes only resentment, and between socioeconomic/class heterosexual subgroups: careerist women vs. family women, careerist women vs. men, women vs. feminist men. I'm more forgiving and perhaps empathizing of explicitly separatist feminism, because this book seems to be on the fence about what it concretely wants from and to do with men. I'm also a bit disappointed that she seems to try to distance the book from feminist agenda in the introduction, while clearly being 'a greatest hits for first-wave feminism' if there ever was one.

Does she offer any reasonable ways for women to go about elevating them-self?


>for instance about the difference in urinating standing or crouched in boys and girls.

This isn't exactly what I had in mean. I meant stuff like hormones, woman's psychology is different than men's by birth. That should be very obvious even to someone that has little knowledge of science.

What I am finding most insightful so far is her take on misogyny: where she discusses how loser men seek refuge in the fact that they are at least not women for instance.

The female gender has been constructed over time because the receptive partner in fucking must be belittled and disempowered for reasons i dont understand. It happens to men who get it in the ass as well. Women who disregard this totally arbitrary construct laid out for their personality are treated as aberrations.

>spotted the commie cuck
women are inferior and fags are degenerate.

dude just find a new boyfriend

Okay i mean i understand that you feel that way but at the same time i dont care how you feel and i am certain that irl i could beat your fucking ass.

>The female gender has been constructed over time because the receptive partner in fucking must be belittled and disempowered for reasons i dont understand.

Societies have always held maternity as something noble for women. Even the Christians, the most misogynistic religion of all, went out of the way to elevate Mary to super-human status: the Catholics believe she was without sin or vice and has an active part in the redemption of the world.

A women being the receptive partner only became dirty when feminists tarnished the idea of maternity.

>It happens to men who get it in the ass as well.
In societies that permitted homosexuality there were always conditions which allowed men to be on the receiving end of sex and not be shamed. For instance when they are young and receiving it from a mentor. The only societies to regard getted fucked in the ass as shameful at all times were the ones that saw homosexuality as shameful at all times.

>Women who disregard this totally arbitrary construct laid out for their personality are treated as aberrations.

With war and disease you need women to have children constantly and early just to avoid having your population be stable. That's why it was always the noble women that ever did anything interesting in history, they only needed to produce one heir and could pass 75% of the duties off to servents.

Nowadays though there are plenty of men that want a more interesting woman. Totally submissive and docile women are boring as fuck.

op, you're retarded

what a worthless fucking post jesus christ

more constructive than the original desu senpai

The Sex Which Was Not One is pretty good but you aren't going to like that either judging by your post

I feel like almost everything in this review from part A onward could be said of any hard phil written by anyone in Sartre's circle ("hard phil" as in "not a novel/novella").

she was without sin or vice SPECIFICALLY because
1)She became a mother without any fucking and stood virgin before, during, and after giving birth lel. This is called the doctrine of the virgin birth.
2) She was conceived without original sin, meaning she was free of the sin that comes with the fucking that is necesary for the conception of any human. This is called doctrine of the immaculate conception.

so no dicks for virgin mary. shocking

You stupid faggot, a woman can be good wife material and an interesting person.

I never said those were mutually exclusive.

Women who aren't reasonably submissive and docile aren't good wife material, i thought that implication was clear.

A good wife is a good mother. So that's child-rearing, maternal instincts directed at the child. If you have that everything else is permissible.

feminism denies biology

which is why its mostly bs. i mean, give them equal wages, but dont hire one when shes going to take off for pregnancy or lack of endurance

>t. Veeky Forums, discord, twitter expert on lonely male subjectivity

VOIGENZ BTFO'D KYS KYS KYS VIRGIN LE /r9k/ IS GONNA COMMIT FEMALE GENOCIDE IV WE DON'T GET THEM ALL TO SUICIDE IN-GROUP

>I didn't finish it
Oh, it shows. Her writing is mostly dismissive of biological reality