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,

2000. 1–29. Print.
Anne-Fausto Sterling challenges the notion of the two sexes, male and female, genders man and woman, and sexualities, heterosexuality and homosexuality, and forces the reader to look beyond the black and white.

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.

Print.
Gayle Rubin talks about how the trafficking of woman is a result of the sex/gender system and explains the nature of woman’s oppression. She uses different examples to discuss the foundations behind woman’s oppression, talking about Marx, Engels, psychoanalysis and the Freudian perspective, and Levi-Strauss. She uses all those examples to show how the sex/gender system needs to change and goes on to explain how the sex/gender system has been historically integrated into society.

Tuana, Nancy. “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance.” Hypatia 19.1 (2004): 194–232. Wiley Online Library. Web.
Nancy Tuana explains how the female body is something that is not fully understood because science tends to overlook it or disregard it as insignificant compared to male bodies. She talks about how people focus on the knowledge they have instead of looking into the knowledge they don’t have, they don’t look beyond what is provided. She explains how power and knowledge are connected, and how certain information becomes invisible because of the dynamic of power. The information on the female body is lacking/becoming invisible because of the power male scientist hold since they have a lot of control on what information is being put out.