Simone de Beauvoir on Sexual Difference

Abstract

In the introduction to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir clarifies her philosophical approach to embodiment and sexual difference by writing: “However, it is said, in the perspective which I adopt—that of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty—that if the body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp upon the world and an outline of our projects.”