Beauvoir upset - by Belinda Cannone
- La Petite Sirène
- Jun 26
- 12 min read
n° 1151 - Simone de Beauvoir - March 2025
Belinda Cannone is a novelist and essayist. As a lecturer, she taught comparative literature at the University of Caen-Normandie from 1998 to 2020.
In 2009, I expressed concern over the differentialist drift in new feminist discourses, in which women were reduced to their “identity”: they were seen as belonging solely to the community of women, understood as resolutely distinct from that of men, rather than being considered as acting persons and citizens. Their “differences” were overemphasized at the expense of what they shared with men. Alongside this trend—and beyond a looming battle of the sexes—there was also the risk of reducing women to a victim status: they were becoming victims (as a noun), rather than people who had been victimized (as an adjective) by certain discriminations.
Fearing the harmful direction feminism might take, I wrote La Tentation de Pénélope (2010). This essay, addressed to feminists (to my own side, then), aimed to ward off this drift by analyzing it and reasserting certain values. It was reissued in paperback in 2017 with a more explicit subtitle, A New Path for Feminism, and again in 2019, when I added six chapters to address the #MeToo movement. But I never felt the need to change the original text: seven, then nine years later, the situation seemed to confirm my intuitions and analyses.
In that essay, I devoted a chapter to Simone de Beauvoir. I present here its essential ideas, before commenting on the present situation, to highlight what Beauvoir did not foresee—could not have foreseen: I myself am quite astonished…
The Second Sex: The Elegance of a Leap
So I take this opportunity to return to the fundamentals. To the fundamental. I had intended, somewhere in the essay, to recall what we owe to Simone de Beauvoir, to restate that the freedom of her thought created a momentum from which we are still reaping the fruits. I could have placed this homage at the beginning of the essay or inserted it almost anywhere along the way: regardless of what people say, we all come from there, we were all born into freedom (into the desire for it) because one day she changed a crucial paradigm. When she wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” thought and consciousness leapt forward. I say “leapt” because there are two ways knowledge progresses. One is cumulative: it enriches data, discovers new sources, enabling fresh syntheses and perspectives. The other occurs through paradigm shifts—intellectual leaps that permanently alter the course of thought. From then on, this new knowledge must be transmitted into behavior and social customs, but the possibility is suddenly there. Much to the dismay of those who believe in a feminine essence—biological or psychological (and who often dislike the philosopher)—the intellectual framework that allowed us to rethink femininity was established by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. Few bodies of thought are so profoundly foundational.
Three intellectual movements enabled this shift in ideas. First, the inversion of the biological and the social: drawing on existentialist thought, which posited the primacy of existence over essence, Beauvoir asserted that “becoming a woman” (culture) overrides “being born a woman” (nature). Against the ancient arguments that confined women to their physiological identity—which served as their destiny—she opposed the notion of social and historical construction. Becoming a woman is not merely the result of individual development; it also stems from one’s inscription in the flow of history. And once women were seen as historical beings, one could hope that with some effort, inequality might one day be corrected.
Second movement: she observed that the male/female pair is conceived as an opposition between the Same and the Other. Asking, “What is a woman?”, Beauvoir pointed out that the very framing of the question provides an answer: it would never occur to anyone to ask the same question of men, for “it is understood that being a man is not a singularity.” Man is the vertical line against which the oblique line—woman, the Other—is defined. Thus, he is the subject, while she is only the object.
Third movement, which allows us to embrace the paradigm shift: progress should not be measured by happiness—a too vague notion—but by freedom. Each subject expresses their freedom and humanity through ever-renewed achievements: “there is no justification for present existence other than its expansion toward an indefinitely open future,” no way to fulfill one’s freedom “except through its continual surpassing toward other freedoms” (The Second Sex, p. 33). Beauvoir insisted on this crucial idea: to live, to become, to fulfill one’s freedom, is above all to act. But how can this be possible for women in a world that casts them as the Other?
The initial reception of The Second Sex was stormy because the book, drawing from all fields of knowledge—biology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, history, etc.—was a true intellectual war machine, one designed to dismantle the discourse built over centuries of male domination. Yet what makes her message remarkable is that nowhere does it bear the mark of bitterness or vengeful grievance; it never carries the plaintive tone that characterizes some of today’s feminists. An intellectual war machine, yes—but not a declaration of war between the sexes. Perhaps this is because Beauvoir, by extraordinary fortune, never experienced the suppression of thought or life still common in the first half of the century. She once wrote to Nelson Algren: “I have never suffered from being a woman.” On the contrary, she had the “privilege” of being able to fully flourish. One day, Sartre simply asked her what being a woman meant to her—and from that reflection, not from any desire for revenge, came this book, in which she demands for all women the same access to the universal that is granted to men—and already, as well, to herself.
[…]
What remains for us, like a talisman, is that extraordinary way in which, by placing freedom as the predominant value, she opened up the possibility of equality. I still feel intellectual and moral enthusiasm when I read the conclusion of The Second Sex, so full of promise when it predicts that from women’s emancipation will be born, between the two sexes, not indifference but “carnal and emotional relationships we cannot yet imagine” (p. 651), and, in the final word of the text—arguably its boldest—the word “fraternity.” I love that, using the masculine as neutral, she chose to end her essay with that word, like a smile that, intertwining the destinies of both sexes, expresses both mischief and complicity.
*
In 1974, speaking to activist Claudine Monteil, who was expressing her joy at the upcoming vote on the abortion law, Beauvoir is said to have replied pessimistically:
“It will take only a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights, our rights, to be called into question. Your whole life long, you must remain vigilant.”
I’m certain she had no idea where the threats would come from.
Today, in 2025, one may ask whether the current paradigm shifts—so strikingly at odds with Beauvoir’s materialist and humanist thinking—concern the long term, the timescale over which deep socio-anthropological transformations occur (in which case, it is worrying), or the short term of passing events and trends—temporary, and limited to a few social groups with no lasting influence. Because, as we know all too well, a paradigm shift does not necessarily imply progress, and some may be based on a troubling or even regressive distortion of the original thought. Let us try to describe them.
The Word Woman
When Beauvoir called for vigilance, she knew that women’s rights could be repeatedly challenged—as they are today, by profoundly sexist ideologies, primarily associated with the rise of religious fundamentalism. But could she ever have imagined that the very notion of woman would be endangered? The word itself—as evidence continues to show—is being attacked in official language. “A collective agreement may provide, solely for the benefit of menstruating employees, a half-day of rest,” one could read recently in an official document. Or, at a university, an informational note refers to female students as “menstruating persons studying at university.” One also sometimes sees “person with a uterus.” In the Trans Lexicon published by Planned Parenthood (2023), the only term used, with various modifiers, is “person”; the words woman and man appear only with the prefix “trans,” and in the section titled “Terms Not to Use,” one finds “male/female” and “masculine/feminine.”
The rationale behind this administrative self-censorship: since there are trans women (technically, biological males who have transitioned), the label woman should no longer be reserved for biologically female individuals. It is entirely reasonable to understand the need to extend the term to individuals who have transitioned. If someone has become a woman socially—and sometimes even morphologically—it is fair to refer to and address them using feminine markers. But why eliminate the word woman from our vocabulary altogether?
Did You Say 1984?
Because if the word woman disappears, the entire feminist struggle collapses. Men likely sought to control women’s bodies because women are females, meaning endowed with the reproductive capacities men needed to secure filiation. If there are no women, there is no history of women—no history of their struggles, their discrimination, their hardships, or their victories. There are no longer subjects who carry with them the memory of a shared, long history in which they are inscribed.
Gender Identity
Beauvoir’s great innovation lay in distinguishing sex (biological) from gender (roles and behaviors socially constructed—what one “becomes”—though she did not use the term). This distinction had far-reaching consequences because the notion of gender, forged in the 1970s, made it possible to undo a destiny of inequality: gender is necessarily malleable since it is tied to the societies in which it is realized.
But now destiny returns in the form of a paradigm shift: a third term has been added to sex and gender—gender identity. This concept is based on beliefs unknown in Beauvoir’s time: that of an identity, masculine or feminine, which would be disconnected from both sex and gender—thus dependent neither on the body nor society (the soul, perhaps?)—and which would manifest as a kind of innate self-knowledge. One is (in the essentialist sense) a man or a woman, and this is known or felt with certainty, internally. This identity would be more solid than any social construction or biological fact.
Note that the idea of an “authentic” and innate self belongs to a system of thought emblematic of the 19th century, when literature, for instance, staged the opposition between the deep “truth” of a Julien Sorel and the “falsity” of the surrounding society. This idea is likely linked to the emergence of the modern notion of the individual in Europe: modern natural law theorists posited the existence of a “human nature,” composed of autonomous beings defined solely by their inner characteristics, their “interiority”—everything that makes them act and be. We forget that this conception, today taken to its extreme, is historical, not universal.
As Norbert Elias emphasized, society is not a set of artificial elements “layered” onto an individual substrate that would be our true essence: it is our true essence, the foundation upon which our humanity is built (differently depending on time and place). Or, as sociologist Irène Théry wrote in 2007: “We can only become what we call a ‘person’ by being welcomed by others into a world of shared meanings that preexists us.” It is therefore impossible to casually dismiss these shared meanings that shape us. A person is always already wrapped in and formed by the institutions (language, social organization, morality, politics, etc.) into which they are born. And, to borrow Théry’s eloquent phrase: “A person is much more than someone who says I.” The resurgence of this old romantic illusion is indeed surprising…
Even while drawing from Foucauldian thought—which holds that concepts are historical constructions of power—the proponents of gender identity essentialism ignore Foucault’s historicism when it suits them (thus forgetting that gender identity itself is a recent concept). They deny sex as an empirical reality and promote self-determination: a linguistic act (“I feel like a woman”) is taken as a fact. All truths of the world, all realities underlying discourse, are reduced (even erased) in favor of what a subject feels.
Another belief foundational to gender identity is that biological sex is “assigned” at birth—that is, subject to a subjective, intentional decision (by parents, doctors—the “system”). Based on cases of sexual ambiguity or hermaphroditism (estimated between 0.04% and less than 1% of the population), this belief asserts that biological sex exists on a “spectrum.” Yet it is easy to object that when over 99% of bodies fall clearly at one of the two “extremes,” and only a minuscule number of ambiguous or irregular cases exist, one cannot invoke a “spectrum.” Reproductive capacity, ensured by sexual difference, is not a mere abstraction.
These ideas—deeply “idealist” in that they rely on beliefs and ideas rather than real social or biological facts—could not have emerged from, nor even been imagined by, a feminist and materialist philosopher like Beauvoir, who sought to understand and transform the social mechanisms that shape relations between the sexes. That masculine and feminine roles do not flow “naturally” from biological sex—that one is not born, but becomes, a woman—was a major advancement of 20th-century feminism. In Beauvoir’s view, this stemmed from existentialist philosophy, which placed existence before essence. With gender identity, essence once again takes precedence.
These beliefs serve to legitimize the demand for self-determination. I am what I say I am. As was foreseeable, we have probably reached the peak of individualism—its caricature. Individualism can be defined as that noble movement in which each person is seen as free and responsible, part of a social body whose values they have internalized (even if they wish to change or refine them). Today, in break with this collective perspective, the hedonistic, consumerist, “influenced” individual—free-floating in the liberal capitalist system—demands to be recognized solely as what they declare themselves to be—and nothing else. Yet for Beauvoir, becoming a woman was not merely the result of individual development; it also meant being inscribed within the movement of history.
The Broadening of Life
We can wager that Beauvoir—who didn’t shy away from free love or bisexuality, whose greatest pleasure was to roam alone through the Provençal hills, and who hoped for the emergence of “carnal and emotional relationships we cannot yet imagine”—would have been outraged by the promotion of the veil, a concession to religious fundamentalism that preaches the submission of women and control over their bodies. Today, support for the “oppressed” takes precedence over the fight for female emancipation. Here too, a new paradigm shift is at play: self-criticism, pushed to a paranoid extreme, now paints freedom of expression, emancipation, and secularism as mere ruses used by the West to impose domination over others. What Beauvoir saw as the inalienable equality of all human beings is now dismissed as a Western-centric, imperialist value…
And just as with equality, the value of freedom is no longer cherished. Our era is witnessing a return to moralism and prudery, grounded in caricatured visions of the sexes (predators and oppressed women in inherently violent relations). In parallel, a masculinist backlash is emerging—no doubt in response to the excesses of neo-feminism—thus threatening the very achievements of sexual emancipation.
I have said nothing of eroticism… It’s obvious that Western culture (at least) originally conceived of only two gender roles derived from sex, and these two roles governed sexual orientation and practices. That does not mean that the existence of two sexes necessarily produces heterosexual norms. A biological fact does not create a norm: humans are bipedal land animals—has it been concluded that they must not fly, swim, or exceed the speed of sound? Erotic freedom stems from this liberty to reinvent oneself. For decades now, norms of sexual behavior have been challenged as new possibilities opened up. To listen to one’s desire in terms of orientation, to play—because fantasy belongs to the realm of the imagination… This is where the end of the 20th century had led us, without needing to deny, as we do today, the materiality of bodies.
Beauvoir was driven by a will to expand: that women be active agents, accomplishing their freedom and demanding—on the basis of their shared humanity with men—not only emancipation but also equality. Identity-based confinement is the exact opposite of a philosophy of freedom. Democracy (in the French tradition) is a political arrangement based on a collection of individuals who consider and treat one another as such—not as members of rival communities. The problem with identity-based claims, whether concerning women or “racialized” groups, is that identity—being non-negotiable and immutable—prevents escape from given conditions: it becomes destiny.
Therefore, the only way to remain true to the best of Beauvoir’s legacy is to acknowledge that “we are condemned to be free” (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1943), to work concretely to keep improving women’s conditions (in the workplace, in childcare), and, in 2024, so as not to despair, to bet on humanity’s eternal aspiration to freedom—a freedom that their children, after “they/them,” will no doubt reclaim.
—Belinda Cannone
[1] Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe [1949], Paris, Gallimard, « Folio », 2008, Introduction, p. 16. De cet ouvrage sont tirées les citations du Deuxième Sexe qui suivent.
[2] Françoise Héritier analyse quelques erreurs dans les références anthropologiques de Beauvoir, et conteste l’idée que l’origine de la prééminence masculine tiendrait aux valeurs attachées à la transcendance (masculine, les hommes étant exemptés de maternité) contre celles de l’immanence (féminine) : elle pense même, on l’a vu, l’inverse, considérant la maternité comme le privilège qu’ont voulu contrebalancer les hommes… Mais rien toutefois, de l’aveu même de l’anthropologue, qui enlèverait à la pensée de Beauvoir sa puissance de subversion des représentations. (« Le point d’aveuglement de Simone de Beauvoir », in Masculin/Féminin, II, Odile Jacob, 2002.)
[3] Cité par Danièle Sallenave, Castor de guerre, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 342.
[4] Geneviève Fraisse, Le Privilège de Simone de Beauvoir, Arles, Actes Sud, 2008 (et La Raison des femmes, Paris, Plon, 1992).
[5] Le phénomène touche encore plus sévèrement l’Amérique : le responsable de l’administration de Biden a fait valoir dans une note du 5 février 2024 que le genre étant une construction sociale, l’identité de genre d’une personne « peut ou non correspondre au sexe assigné à la naissance ». En conséquence, il faut éviter le terme manpower (main-d’œuvre) et ceux, jugés sexistes, de père et mère.
[6] Dans son ouvrage capital, La Distinction de sexe. Une nouvelle approche de l’égalité, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2007, p. 15.
[7] Ibid., p. 17.
[8] Idée développée par Martine Rothblatt, en 1992, dans le contexte de l’activisme juridique transgenre ; reprise par la biologiste Anne Fausto-Sterling dans son célèbre article intitulé « Les cinq sexes » (1993) ; et répétée par Judith Butler à partir de Trouble dans le genre (1990). Elle fait florès depuis.
[9] Cette régression est peut-être à penser en rapport avec l’effacement de la matérialité du corps biologique dans les nouveaux discours.
[10] Le rapport du 22 janvier 2024 du Haut Conseil à l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes (HCE) observe une confirmation du rapport de 2023 qui, déjà, « pointait un sexisme persistant, avec, une nouvelle fois, une inquiétude particulière sur la tranche des 25-34 ans. Chez les garçons, les tendances masculinistes s’affirment et chez les filles, on relève la même tendance régressive, avec par exemple la valorisation de rôles traditionnels et de stéréotypes. » Les hommes de 25-34 ans témoignent, plus que les autres, d’une « forme de passivité, voire d’hostilité et de résistance à l’émancipation des femmes dans la société ». Le Monde, 22 janvier 2024.
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