Earlier this year, a couple of
friends of mine and I decided to start a book club. These are both coworkers, though one of them
retired at the end of last year. I think
that part of the inspiration for starting the club, in fact, was that this
particular friend knew that he would now have much more free time on his hands,
and so he could address himself to doing things that he had always wanted to
spend more time on, such as reading books of personal interest. In our inaugural meeting, we compiled a list
of candidate books. We wanted to read
something of substance, but not something that was too lengthy, since our plan
was to read and discuss one book a month.
The
Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, was one of my suggestions. This is one of those books, like Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations, which is often
quoted and cited as a landmark, foundational work in its particular field (The Wealth of Nations as a pioneering
work on economics; The Second Sex on
feminism), but which very few people – even people who claim to be well-versed
in the particular subject area – seem to have actually read. I had fallen under the mistaken impression
that The Second Sex (unlike The Wealth of Nations) was actually a
short book, because when I looked it up on Amazon.com, the length was reported
as only a little over a hundred pages.
It was only after I had persuaded my comrades to make this our first
book selection that I discovered that what I had actually been looking at
online was an abridged version of the book, and that the complete work was
actually over 800 pages long.
Nevertheless, we were reluctant to give up our collective first choice,
but realizing that reading such a tome in a month’s time would be an almost
insurmountable challenge (given that two of us still had full-time jobs), we
decided to lower our sites and settle for reading the abridged version of the
book, which included just the opening and closing chapters of the complete
work.
I should mention that our third
comrade added some immediate diversity to our fledgling group, because she is a
very young woman, perhaps still in her twenties. I anticipated that this diversity would add
suitable color to our discussion. But
when I arrived for our meeting, on a Sunday morning, at the home of our young
friend, I immediately saw that there would be even more color to the discussion
than I had hoped for. She had invited
two of her friends to join us, both fellow females, and both probably in their twenties
as well. Here were the makings of either
low comedy or high drama: the two of us middle-aged men and these three women –
all of whom were young enough to be our daughters – talking about a work on
feminism. Our host had laid out a
variety of drinks and hors d’oeuvres for us to enjoy: I poured myself a glass
of whiskey, straight, and prepared for the conversation.
As the person who had suggested our
book selection, it had fallen upon me to guide the discussion with a set of
questions about the book. Most of these
were fairly generic (“What arguments in Simone de Beauvoir’s book are still
relevant?” “Which are outdated?” “What was your greatest revelation in reading
the book?” and the like), and while we generally addressed them, the
conversation often branched off into the general subject of feminism. My first lesson that day dealt with the
concept of “microaggression” (a term not to be found in the book). One of the young women explained that this is
the subtle way that men try to oppress women and keep them in stereotyped roles
and modes of behavior. A prominent
example of this, she said, is when men talk over women when they are in the
middle of a sentence. The comedic effect
that this remark had upon me, and I suspect upon the other male member of our
group as well, is that for the remainder of the meeting he and I were
especially diligent about not speaking up unless we were certain that nobody
else – particularly any of the women – was talking. I must say that while I saw some substance to
this charge, when I reflected upon my own life experiences, I felt that I have
probably been a victim of this behavior myself at least as often as I have been
guilty of it. I remembered that while growing
up in my household, for example, it was usually difficult for me to get a word
in edgewise whenever I was talking with my sister. But another example that was presented was in
the workplace, in meetings, when the men present assume that the women in the
meeting will handle the more menial chores, such as taking notes. I saw substance in this charge as well, and
in fact my female coworker brought up a recent example when her boss, a woman,
was expected to do that very thing. I
weakly protested, however, that at least things have improved: I still remember a time, I said, when women
were expected to make coffee in the office.
(Of course, part of the reason that they have been relieved of this
burden might be because most offices now have single-cup automatic
coffeemakers.)
Continuing in this same vein, I
remarked that there has certainly been much improvement in the general
perception of women’s capabilities. When
I was a child, it was common for men to complain about women drivers, but
insurance companies have long since exposed the lie underlying this complaint,
since rates tend to be higher for male drivers, based upon their higher
accident rates. A generation ago (and
probably before any of the female members of our group were even born), a
commercial featuring a popular actor and actress touted the benefits of an
automatic camera. The actor in the
commercial declared that the camera was so simple to operate that even a woman
could use it. Now this was intended as a
joke (as evidenced in the actress’s exasperated but bemused reaction to his
remark), but the basis of the joke was
that there was a time well within the memory of most of the viewers of that
commercial when such a claim would have been made in all seriousness. I noted that, in fact, there seemed to have
been a retrogression that occurred in the 20th century, because in
the first half of that century, women commonly shared occupations with men:
Amelia Earhart, for example, made a name for herself piloting airplanes, and
many women took on assembly and other production jobs during World War II. But during the ensuing “baby boom” years,
when the majority of women returned to traditional homemaking roles and
abandoned these other occupations, a popular mindset eventually arose that they
were not in those occupations because they were incapable of performing
them. This, I think, was the toxic
mythology that had prompted Betty Friedan to write The Feminine Mystique in the 1960s.
Ironically, in recent years there seems to have been a complete reversal
of that phenomenon. There is much talk
of a “boy crisis”: referring to the fact that boys are not performing as well
as girls in grade school, and are not advancing on to higher education at the
same rate that they are. Law schools and
medical schools – institutions that once catered to a predominantly male
student body – now see more female students than male.
The discussion now turned to
women’s career and life choices, and whether they should be judged based upon
how “traditional” these choices are. One
of the female members of our group referred to a pair of existentialist expressions
that were used by Simone de Beauvoir: “good faith” and “bad faith”. A decision made in “good faith” is one that
was not the result of social coercion – either overt or subtle – or even social
conditioning, while one made in “bad faith” had been shaped by one or more of
these forces. Based on this criteria,
she said, if a woman freely chooses to be a housewife and homemaker, then that
woman is above reproach in her choice. I
was intrigued by this distinction, and wondered aloud if it applied as well to
popular female music entertainers, and their tendency in recent decades to use
sexually titillating costumes and dances in their performances. Is this a form of sexual exploitation, or, as
many of them seem to contend (along with their feminist fans), their own way of
expressing female empowerment? I
referred to the case of Brittany Spears, a female performer who started her
career when she was a blonde, innocent-looking child as a “mouseketeer”: one of
a group of entertainers in a wholesome kid’s program. But at a time in her life when she had barely
passed through puberty, she suddenly became a pop star, with a show that
featured her as a sexually voracious nymphet dancing in risqué clothing and
singing songs with suggestive lyrics. To
me, it seemed that she was acting out some middle-aged man’s pedophiliac sexual
fantasy (her manager’s or some record company executive’s, I suspected), rather
than making some sexually-charged statement of independence, and, based upon
news accounts about her, it does appear that she has had little control over
her career and the direction it has taken, or even the other personal details
of her life. Contrast this, however,
with other popular female entertainers, such as Madonna, or – more recently –
Beyonce and Lady Gaga, who do seem to have more control over their
careers. Their acts are just as sexually
provocative. Were Brittany Spears’
performances a tragic example of female exploitation, while very similar
performances by these other entertainers examples of female empowerment? The female members of our discussion group
contended that this was the case, and I found it difficult to disagree with them. After all, male musical entertainers with
sexually suggestive costumes and dances, such as Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley,
were never pitied as victims of sexual exploitation. I had to concede, as well, that one
definitely sees the same spectrum from good faith to bad faith in occupations
that are explicitly sexual in nature, such as porn stars and prostitutes. At the one extreme, there are many women that
have clearly been exploited in these occupations, and are victims. And yet, at the opposite extreme, there are
also many women who have entered these occupations voluntarily, have done so in
a manner in which they retain control of their careers and have even profited
from them handsomely, and, in many cases, even vociferously defend their
choices and oppose those who feel that these careers should be outlawed.
And yet, one apparent consequence
of the trend among popular female entertainers to package themselves in very
sexually expressive ways – whether as a result of “good faith” or “bad faith” –
is that there seems to be a tangible influence on young girls in our culture to
present themselves as objectified sexual beings, at least in certain
circumstances. What particularly comes
to mind is Halloween costumes. While
boys’ costumes run the gamut from monsters to super heroes, it seems that
nearly all girls’ costumes these days have a burlesque element to them, whether
it be a sexy nurse, or a sexy vampire, or a sexy heroine. It is hard for me to imagine that this has a
positive effect on how they perceive themselves and their future roles in the
world. Is a choice made in “good faith”
sufficient unto itself to justify that choice, or must consequences of the
choice upon others be taken into account?
Simone de Beauvoir discussed
Marxism and Freudianism in her work, and how each had fallen short in
addressing feminist issues. The other
male discussant in our group noted that the Marxist revolution in Russia had
conspicuously failed women. I commented
that I had read a book in my youth titled The
Dialectic of Sex, in which the author, a radical feminist named Shulamith
Firestone, contended that no Marxist revolution will ever be truly successful
unless it is a Marxist feminist
revolution. I added that Firestone went
so far as to aver that sexual oppression will never be completely eliminated
until all babies are produced in birthing machines. I had expected that this remark would produce
a round of laughter, and was shocked when, instead, I saw that all three of the
young women in our group were nodding earnestly in agreement. One of them even remarked that she is
irritated by the current rather militant stance that many mothers are now
taking about the right to breastfeed in public, because, she said, this is one
of the most conspicuous ways that a woman’s role in society tends to be
circumscribed, in the public consciousness, by her anatomy.
I put one final question to the
group for discussion: In spite of Simone
de Beauvoir’s iconic status as a feminist theorist, she has not been without
her critics. There are two particular
strains of criticism that have been leveled against her: the first that she is
actually a misogynist herself, and the second that her particular vision of
feminism was limited by her own particular circumstances: that of a white, bourgeois
woman living in an advanced European country.
Our group was unanimous in concluding that the charge of misogyny
against her was baseless, but the second criticism drew some support by one of our female discussants. She had
introduced me to another new term during our discussion, “intersectional
feminism”, and this represents an ideological realization that sexist oppression
takes different forms among different races, ethnic groups, economic classes,
political systems, and nations. The issues
of social justice – particularly those involving gender – that a white, middle
class woman is contending with will be markedly different from those of a black
woman living in the same country, or of a woman in India ,
or in Russia ,
or of destitute women in any country. It
is undoubtedly true that Simone de Beauvoir’s writing did not span the
conditions of every woman, in every culture and social strata. But I don’t think that any of the members of
our little group felt that this was a significant flaw in her book, or in her
thinking. Our reading of selected
passages of The Second Sex left us
feeling that its reputation is well-deserved and, in my case anyway, kindled a
desire in me to someday get through the rest of those 800 pages.
As I finished my whiskey, I was relieved that our discussion had never segued into either high drama
or low comedy. In fact, I was rather
impressed by the gentility of our conversation.
There were no mutual recriminations, or expressions of sarcasm, or
bemusement at the views expressed by others.
I can’t help but wonder if the timber of this conversation would have
been the same if this discussion had taken place back when I was the age of our
female members, a few decades ago.
Nevertheless, we selected, for our next reading, a book that would be
less inclined to separate us along such clearly defined lines: Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. And, too, we resolved to expand our group so
that there would be a broader spectrum of views, blurring the lines of
generation and gender. (The other male
member of our group, for example, said that he is going to try to persuade his wife to join us.) All in all, it was an enlightening
experience, and one that I am grateful to have been a part of. If only the two political parties of the U.S. Congress could explore their different views and perspectives in such a genteel fashion. One can only hope that they someday learn how to do so. Perhaps the field of political science has yet to produce its own Adam Smith, or Simone de Beauvoir, to show the way.
