"Goodnight. This is probably the first time she has seen Simone de Beauvoir. Like Jean-Paul Sartre, her life partner, she had so far refused to appear on television.” This is how the journalist Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber introduced who was already a renowned writer and philosopher on April 6, 1975, before conducting what would be her first television interview on the Questionnaire program.
More than 25 years had passed since the intellectual made a name for herself and showed that she was much more than the companion of the already renowned Jean-Paul Sartre with the publication of The Second Sex, an essay on the social role of women and their liberation which quickly became a benchmark of feminism. The work was published in 1949 by the prestigious Gallimard publishing house and in just one week it had sold more than 22,000 copies.
Deeply linked to existentialism and social determinism, the work investigated the identity of women from various angles (sociology, psychology, history, anthropology or biology itself) to determine that the role she had ended up assuming was completely artificial. beyond her own biological conditions that allowed her to be a mother. Everything else was absolutely cultural and therefore mutable. One sentence ended up summarizing everything: women, as is socially understood, are not born, but made.
Therefore, the concept of femininity was nothing more than a social instrument of societies that throughout history had been overwhelmingly patriarchal, and that led to submission to men. Thus it had been until now and thus it continued to be, as the author argued throughout the more than a thousand pages of the work to conclude that the only path was liberation.
The book had a long journey that went beyond the literary and philosophical career of its author, who along with Sartre became a benchmark for communist militancy in the West after World War II. In 1954 she achieved literary recognition by receiving the Goncourt Prize for her work Los Mandarines. Shortly before the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (the current Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) decided, in 1956, to include various parts of The Second Sex on its list of prohibited books, thus multiplying interest in the work.
Oblivious or not to the controversy, De Beauvoir published her own autobiography in 1958, Memoirs of a formal young woman, where she stressed the limitations linked to the education of many young women of her generation. A new twist in her relentless fight against patriarchy and in favor of the liberation of men and women from all topics and cultural elements about inherited gender roles.
A strong defender of Djamila Boupacha, an activist of the Algerian National Liberation Front who was detained and raped by the French military before the independence of the Maghreb country, she once again became the focus of all eyes of French society when she led the “343 Manifesto” in 1971. for the freedom of abortion”, better known as the “Manifesto of the 343 sluts for abortion” as a result of a cartoon by Cabu (murdered in the Islamist attack against the satirical weekly) that asked the politicians who had made all those sluts pregnant. women.
In a context in which abortion was criminalized in France and in which the last woman convicted of this crime, Marie-Louise Giraud, had been guillotined in 1943, the self-incrimination of more than 300 women, including figures of the stature of Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Sagan, Jeanne Moreau or Marguerite Duras caused a stir and was the beginning of an intense debate that ended with the Veil law of 1974 that decriminalized the interruption of pregnancy.
Even so, Simone de Beauvoir had not yet personally addressed through the screens a country that knew perfectly well who she was and recognized her decisive influence on French society, whether or not they shared her postulates. She did it with these statements that we collect slightly excerpted, in which she synthesizes some arguments that gave way to mass feminism and she reflects on the reception of her work.
“The formula that sums up my thinking is that we are not born a woman, but rather we become one. And what it means is very simple, it is that being a woman is not something natural, it is the result of a story. There is no biological, psychological destiny that defines women as such. It is a complex story that leads to there.
”First, the history of civilization, which leads to the current state. And second, for each woman in particular, it is the story of her life, it is the story of her childhood, what determines her as a woman, what creates in her something that is not at all a datum, an essence, that creates in her she what has sometimes been called the eternal feminine, femininity.
“And the deeper the psychological studies on children go, the more clearly we see that the little baby girl is really made to become a woman. There is an excellent book on this that an Italian woman, Helena Belotti, has just written, called In Favor of Girls, which shows how already, long before the child is really aware, we inscribe on her body. In the way of sucking him, carrying him, rocking him... what is inscribed in her body is what may later appear as a destiny.
”Biological differences play a role, but the importance given to them, the importance with which these differences are taken, comes from the social context in which they are situated. Of course it is very important that a woman can be pregnant, have children, while a man cannot, and that makes a big difference between the two.
”But it is not this difference that is the basis of the difference in status and the state of exploitation and oppression to which women are subjected. It is in a certain way a pretext around which the condition of woman is built. But this is not what determines her condition.
”This oppression of men over women dates back to the dawn of time. There was a moment in the night of time when physical strength counted enormously, the strongest took over rights, power, to also have economic pre-eminence, to be the ones who could always eat.
”It has been very visible in China, for example, when there was a lot of poverty and men, instead of killing each other, killed little girls and prevented women from participating in production so that the man really had everything in his hand. .
“It's always been that way, and I don't have time to tell the whole story of women here, but it's pretty obvious that, from time to time, there has always been a will on the part of men to take power. I will cite just one example: in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, women had a lot of power as doctors.
“They knew many remedies, herbs, remedies that were good women's remedies and sometimes very valuable. But the men took away the medicine. All persecutions against witches have been essentially based on this desire of men to distance women from medicine and the power it gave them.
“Later on, in the 18th and 19th centuries, we still see laws made by men that strictly prohibit women from practicing medicine under penalty of imprisonment and fines. If it was not following certain schools in which, in addition, they were not accepted. So women at that time were relegated to the role of Florence Nightingale, the role of the nurse, the role of the helper, the assistant.
”There are some interesting works on this, where we see how there is a will, since we can speak of a will, on the part of men to take medicine away from women. I think if we were to take other areas we would find exactly the same processes. There is, then, a will that is now perhaps no longer to snatch away, but in any case it is a will that is still there. There are obstacles everywhere when women want to access certain qualifications or certain powers.
”In my own condition as an intellectual I was lucky not to have to compete with men, since teaching is open to both men and women. I had classmates at the Sorbonne University and elsewhere who treated me as an intellectual equal and so I didn't feel it.
“And since I didn't want to get married or have children, I didn't lead the life of a housewife, which is the most oppressive for women, and thus I avoided the servitude of her feminine condition. Later, when I began to look around me, to think, I saw the truth about the feminine condition. And I discovered a lot when writing The Second Sex.
”It was a theoretical work much more than a militant work. And I'm very glad, by the way, that later it inspired activists, because now this book is playing an activist role. But at the time, it wasn't conceived of like that at all.
”There were women who protested, who shouted, who wrote, in England, for example. But it was not a cry of rebellion that was heard, that was picked up by others. I think it's because, in general, women are not feminists either. Some cried out in rebellion, but their cries were not heard by other women.
“Surely there are many reasons to explain this rather passive and resigned attitude that held them back, that produced complaints and resentments, but rarely led to open rebellion. To begin with, as she said before, there is the way in which women are molded from childhood. These structures that are instilled in them are very difficult to completely eradicate later on.
“A certain aggressiveness is encouraged much more in the way of raising a small boy, something that is not done with a girl. When the child grows up and begins to try, for example, to be independent or cheeky, or to play pranks, he will be encouraged, because he will be found amusing. On the contrary, a girl will be silenced.
”In the same way, about the little boy's penis, we know that many nannies and mothers throughout history and even today, play with it, turn it into a little character, so that at two or three years , a child almost gets used to showing it. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to hide, to show nothing.
”Many women are so ingrained in this feminine model that they think that a woman who is not like them is a monster. His concern is that her daughters are feminine. So yes, it's the women. But under pressure, of course, from men. It is because men as a whole have taught women as a whole to act this way: dependent, passive, submissive, modest…
”On economic dependence, it must be said that men have taken over the professions, especially the most interesting ones. By contrast, at the lower end, of course, difficult work, such as farm work, is done by both women and men.
”But in the upper echelons, men have tried to persuade women not to be financially independent, but to depend on a husband and just do what is very important for the current civilization: housework.
”One of the keys to the situation imposed on women is this unpaid, unpaid forced labour, which barely allows them to be kept more or less in luxury or more or less poorly by their husbands. But this work does not produce any profit. Contribution made by this work is not acknowledged.
"This is very important. I don't know the exact figures, but I think the statistics showed in 1955 that during the year, in France, for 45 billion hours of paid work, there was something like 46 billion hours of domestic work. Therefore, unpaid work.
“If women stood up and rebelled, if they refused to do housework or had men do it for them, if it stopped being undeclared work, like a life sentence, it would revolutionize our entire society.
”Since The Second Sex I have received many letters from women with whom I have continued to correspond. A case that is quite frequent is that of a woman who writes to me when she is 30 years old, that she was happily married at 20, that she enjoyed taking care of the house and raising her children, that she was happy. And then, at 30, things go wrong with her husband, he leaves her or she can't take it anymore.
“Suddenly she has nothing, she has no job, and her children become more of a burden than a pleasure because she has to raise them alone, which is a considerable task. She often comes to bitterly regret the fact that she has not looked for a job and is even still married.
“And it takes a lot of energy for a woman to rebuild her life when she is alone, for example, in her 40s or 50s, without her children, who have grown up and married, or a husband to support her. She is not part of society in any way that she might care for herself.
”Many men were outraged by the publication of the work. Even men who I thought were leftist, liberal, egalitarian, were upset by this book. The history of communism and women is a complicated history.
”The communists consider women's problems secondary, that the conflict between the sexes is secondary to the class conflict, which is primary. They have softened their position, but in general they see women's issues as subordinate to class issues. They say that if there is a revolution and society changes, things will automatically change for women.
”Neither in the USSR, nor in Czechoslovakia, nor in any socialist country, nor in the Communist Party, nor in the trade unions, nor even in the most progressive leftist movements today, is the fate of women different. And so I decided to become what I call a feminist in a very active way. An active feminist is coming here to talk about feminism to all the women who want to listen to me.
”I realized that there was a specifically feminist struggle, that the struggle against patriarchal values should not be confused with the struggle against capitalist values. These two fights must be fought together. It is not possible to radically change the situation of women without radically changing society in terms of class. But it is illusory to think that the class struggle alone would be enough to sustain the struggle of women.
”It is a fight that has to be carried out by women. Therefore, movements that are often ridiculed like the Women's Liberation Movement are absolutely necessary in today's society. In communist countries, I don't think women are capable of creating women's liberation movements. But if they could, it would be very helpful. I think this move is useful in many ways.
“For starters, one of her ideas is for women to get together and talk. What they go through at home often breeds acrimony and resentment. Because housewives aren't always sweet little angels. Despite everything, they feel the injustice. Instead of enduring this injustice, futilely complaining alone, it is better for women to talk to each other about their problems.
”Only among themselves, not with men, can they find solutions. It would save them a lot of bitterness. It would also help them to understand their situation, to think about it. And then, surely they will all end up wanting to join together to change it.
The times and politics may begin to raise equality, but many times the things that are given to women are simply bones to gnaw, a mystification. In fact, it is one more way of subduing them by making them believe that things are being done, although in reality nothing is being done.
”It is not only a way of assimilating the women's revolt, but of counteracting it, suppressing it, pretending that it does not have to exist. On the contrary, we feminists –and I say us because, as I said, I am one more– we refuse to be subjugated, we want to continue the fight.
”And we want it to be fought, for the moment, at least, by women and for women, and not through institutions. We cannot expect a government that is for order, the current established order, to satisfy women who are demanding a change in status that would topple that order.
”On abortion, there is something that we feminists can be proud of. The foxes, as we were sometimes called. We signed a manifesto in which we said that all women, known and unknown, had had abortions.
”After that, the Bobigny trial mobilized public opinion. There were many demonstrations in the streets for the legalization of abortion. In fact, it was something that broke down class barriers, it is a topic that interests working class women as well as upper class women. I think we were able to put a lot of pressure on a traditional, conservative and orderly government.
”Women took on an excellent workhorse with abortion, and they were willing to fight for it. An essential part of the history of feminism begins in 1968. Because 1968 gave people the idea that they had to take matters into their own hands. The women also decided to take matters into their own hands without resorting to or perhaps lobbying for laws or decrees. But even more so, fighting in entirely new ways.
”Another result of 1968 was that many women became involved in leftist groups. And they saw that even among their comrades who were supposed to be political equals, they were still treated as women. Men made speeches, women typed them. The men discussed politics, the women served coffee.
”And that made them realize that even in the most democratic and egalitarian organizations, women were still treated as women. So, they said, let us unite as women and drive change to change our status by leading our own fight.
”Because the left, like any current, is dominated by men. And men are not interested in ending their own privileges. The privileged want to keep their privileges, that's normal. They are privileged in the Communist Party, in the Socialist Party or in any other. They act like men and not like progressives.
