Jestin Thomas CMI

Paper: One is not Born a Woman or a Man: A Study on Simone de Beauvoir

Abstract

Generally for existentialists, everything what we are is the result of our choices. Simone de Beauvoir, although an avowed life-long existentialist, posits limits to this central existentialist idea of self-creation and self-definition, and presents an ambiguous picture of human freedom, in which women struggle against the apparent disadvantages of the female body. Man is seen as the superhero; woman is the subordinate. Man is seen as the absolute and essential; woman is inessential and incomplete. Man is always the subject; woman is always the object. Philosophically, the subject is what has identity. It exists independently, apart from context. It simply is because it is. On the other hand, the object is dependent on the subject. The object is the observed; the subject is the observer. The subject takes action; the object is acted upon.

A person's sex is considered physiologically while gender identity is described in terms of human behaviour, which involve the characteristics and the classification of being a man or a woman. It is with this in mind that Beavouir states ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’. Beauvoir describes that it is not her physical state that conducts her destiny as a woman; rather she is constructed a ‘woman’ by society.

Even though socialisation has a big effect on how we act as male or female, it cannot wholly determine or override what essentially is in our genes. We are pre-determined to a degree, to act in different ways as we have different hormones, different physical attributes inclining us towards different roles. However, as we have evolved, society has magnified these distinctions whereby the sexes are encouraged to display differences more obviously than genetically determined. The quarrel will go on as long as men and women fail to recognize each other equal in dignity. This is neither to feminize or masculinize but to humanize our understanding.

Jestin Thomas CMI, a research scholar at the Faculty of Philosophy, DVK, is an ordained pries belonging to t he Carmelites of Mary Immaculate. He holds baccalaureates in Philosophy (2006), English (2010), and Theology (2013).