![]() She also argues more fundamentally that men have written women’s history. How does de Beauvoir refute the statement that women have never contributed “anything grand” throughout history?ĭe Beauvoir points out that anti-feminists who make this argument also tend to make the contradictory argument that historical circumstances have not prevented some women from being great. Throughout the book, de Beauvoir will reference the many ways in which our values affect how we think of men versus women. ![]() It is because humans value finding meaning and creating a purpose that they assign hierarchies to the sexes in the first place men want to assert their own purpose by declaring that women are inferior to them. de Beauvoir believes that our system of values helps to explain the gaps in these other theories. Psychoanalysts believe that humans have certain “drives” that affect their behavior, but they do not explain where these drives come from. ![]() For example, biology is not enough to explain the difference between the sexes, because it cannot explain why we believe that women’s relative physical weakness makes them inferior to men in every other sphere of life, as well. What does de Beauvoir mean when she refers to the importance of “values” in shaping society and woman’s place within it?ĭe Beauvoir criticizes a number of theories (biological, psychoanalytic, historical) for ignoring the importance of values in shaping certain beliefs and systems. ![]()
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