An Overview:

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist best known for her book ‘The Second Sex’ (1949), a classic of contemporary feminist literature, as well as her numerous other works of academic and non-academic writing. She was born in Paris in 1908, and was a prominent figure in the ‘Second Wave of Feminism’ movement, which focused on issues relating to equality and discrimination, whereas the ‘First Wave’ aimed to promoted equal contract and property rights for women, opposing ownership of married women by their husbands and petitioning for the right to vote.

Video Summary:

• The book investigates popular definitions of femininity, and she concluded that those definitions had been used to suppress women throughout the ages.
• She believes the perspectives of individuals are socially and culturally produced, not set in place from birth, and therefore femininity is a construct that has been learned through socialisation to keep men dominant.
• She states that women had been taught to firstly serve men, and secondly to see validation from others to determine their worth, with her third point being that, due to their historical lack of rights, women have had far less influence on how society is shaped.
• She compares women to lifeless dolls, who are dressed up and objectified, ready for their owner’s beckon call.
• She also said that even if a woman remained unmarried, they would still be held to male standards by industries like fashion, food, and beauty.
• To achieve liberation, de Beauvoir said that women must recognise this cycle, and escape their context in order to determine their own destiny.
• Ultimately, she suggest that one is not born a woman, but becomes one.

Examples of how The Handmaid’s Tale reveals that religion can be used to reduce women’s rights:

• The Government of Gilead is twists the words of the Bible – ‘Blessed be the silent’ – Which teach suppression and references the 16th century Protestant Reformation. The quote ‘We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read’ mirrors how the Bible was, up until this point in history, never translated into the common tongue for the lower classes to read, forcing them to instead listen to the Church for moral wisdom. This ‘wisdom’ could be manipulated and twisted for their own gain by conveying whatever message the Church was, at that time, trying to preach, at no risk of being corrected. This reflects how, if women in Gilead were able to read the true passages of the Bible, they would find how the government has perverted the Christian beliefs to serve themselves and likely revolt.
• They use the traditional nature of Bible, a book written millennia ago, to suggest that the social norms of society should be the same as they were and not change, thus reinforcing the patriarchy.
• Religion in the novel is used to excuse heinous crimes such as the rape and dehumanisation of an entire population on religious grounds, citing the parable of Rachel and Leah.