The Arena of Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir and the History of Feminism

This chapter aims to clarify the (generational) battle for feminism and also attempts to present the generational dimension of the phenomenon of feminism in a different way. In feminism and by feminism, Simone de Beauvoir became a feminist and The Second Sex a feminist tract: On ne na'it pas feministe, on le devient. The history of The Second Sex teaches that, in thinking about feminism, the dimensions of (national) location and generation should always be taken into consideration. The Second Sex begins with the statement that the equality between men and women achieved by first-wave feminism is merely equality. Adrienne Rich believes that feminism will provide the impulse for restoring reciprocity between women. In contrast to de Beauvoir and early second-wave feminists, who mainly denounced their predecessors and therefore effectively gagged them once again, difference thinkers wish to surmount rivalry between women by imagining a more affirmative inter-female relationship, thereby eroding patriarchy.