Chapter Summary: The Second Sex

Beauvoir, Simone de, Constance Borde, and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. “Introduction.” The Second Sex. 1st American ed. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2010. xix–xxxv. Print.

Beauvoir explains how woman essentially become woman and how gender is something that is born from cultural norms while sex is identified with biology. Beauvoir also goes on to explain how woman are being subjugating politically, economically and socially as a class and are considered the “other” towards men. Men are the ones who rule/majority and therefore are considered the “one” while females are the subordinate/minority and are the “other”. Beauvoir explains how woman have become the other and how their dependence on men needs to change.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “Dualing Dualisms.” Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction Ofsexuality. 1st ed. New York, NY: Basic Books,

She uses examples to prove her point that there is no fixed two sides to sex and gender. She shows the negatives of thinking about sex and gender as being one or the other and explains to the reader that they should look at the grey area in between the black and white, see beyond society’s norms.

Nicholson, Linda. “Interpreting Gender.” Signs 20.1 (1994): 79–105. JSTOR. Web.

Linda Nicholson explains how she rejects the foundational feminist theory that is centered on biology. She explains how in order to interpret gender you need to go beyond biological differences since sex and the body are just as socially constructed as gender.. She goes on to talk about how what it means to be a woman changes and shifts with different cultures.

Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna R. Reiter. Monthly Review Press, 1975. 157–210.