Simone de Beauvoir states, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

" What does she mean

by that?
These are the opening lines to Book II of The Second Sex, and what De Beauvoir is doing here is developing
an important theme set out in Book I. There, De Beauvoir argued that femininity, as it is traditionally
understood, does not arise naturally. It does not come about through differences in women's biology,
psychology, or intellect. Femininity is an entirely artificial construct, arising not out of natural differences
between the sexes, but out of their respective situations and the power they derive from them.
Men have traditionally held the power in most civilizations. Therefore, they have constructed an idea of
femininity that keeps women in a state of permanent subordination. It is this notion of what femininity is
and should be that women need to overcome and reject. In doing so, they will be asserting their true
womanhood, one no longer subject to the shackles forged by unequal power and gender relations.

As the other responses indicate, Beauvoir’s quote argues that gender is a social construct rather than an
inborn identity.
Through patriarchal structures and proscribed gender roles, female human beings are taught what it means
to be a woman. This education is often achieved throughout childhood and young adulthood prior to a girl’s
coming of age as dictated by the culture in which she is raised.
Interpreted another way, Beauvoir believes that traditional notions of femininity are not based on natural
instincts but rather instilled from a young age. As a result, many women internalize these feminine
tendencies as inherent, which further enforces male hegemony. This internalized sexism has just as much
of an impact on a female’s identifying with traditional femininity as external forces, since it deepens an
individual’s bias in favor of the status quo.

Simone de Beauvoir's comment "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" is a comment on the idea
of femininity, womanhood, and maturity. She is saying in this quote that a person's sex does not make them
into a woman—it makes them female. As they grow and mature, they will develop and their mind and
thoughts, as well as their experiences, shape them into a woman over time.
This is a sad criticism of the world when taken in context with recent women's rights movements which
highlight the cruelty and injustice suffered by women worldwide. In the light of those movements, it could
be interpreted as saying there are many universal experiences that a girl must go through end route to
becoming a woman, and most of them are painful.
# Explain the concept of myth from the text The Second Sex as explained by Simone de Beauvoir.
In “The Second Sex”, Beauvior writes of how woman's role in society has been prescribed by historical and
literary myths of woman, rather than what women have done, or could do, in real life. Beauvoir
differentiates between what women do in real life (significance) with the falsely prescribed myth of woman:

The myth must not be confused with the recognition of significance; significance is immanent in the object;
it is revealed to the mind through a living experience; whereas the myth is a transcendent Idea that escapes
the mental grasp entirely.
Here, Beauvoir shows the double-standard in terms of immanence and transcendence. Women are limited
to myths, which are transcendent ideas, but women cannot transcend those myths in real, living experience.
"Few myths have been more advantageous to the ruling caste than the myth of woman: it justifies all
privileges and even authorizes their abuse."
What are the sources of these myths? To start with, men have categorized women with certain unchanging
roles that supposedly are absolute, based on biological or spiritual essentialism. And women have been
taught to internalize these roles. Beauvoir seeks to acknowledge that these roles are limiting and not
absolute. One of these myths is that women are "mysterious." In the history of patriarchal categorizations
of women, this mysteriousness is not on account of women's complexity or man's inability to recognize that
complexity; rather, it is that, from men's perspective, women are odd, ambiguous, angels and demons, the
Virgin Mary and Pandora.
The "mysterious" suggestion is that women are unpredictable, incapable of reason, and untrustworthy. This
is, of course, based upon man's biased perception which has been based upon these stubborn, absolutist
myths.
Beauvoir suggests that doing away with these myths (which include viewing woman as a desirable object)
will not detract from her desirability. "Woman's dress in becoming practical need not make her appear
sexless . . ." And even if women increasingly hold men's social and economic positions, we will all adapt
to such notions and maybe even invent new myths which propose that women can be in powerful positions
while also being desirable. In the end, true equality amongst both genders will only come when women are
no longer considered as "man's other." This is the truly limiting myth: that women are, and can only be,
defined on man's terms. The significant reality is that men and women are both capable of being
autonomous, existential, self-creating individuals: neither are limited to absolute notions or myths of
gender.
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In her book, Beauvoir examines why women are treated as inferior and subordinate to men. In studying this
issue through the lenses of history, biology and psychology, she finds much evidence that women have
been treated as inferior but no logical reasons why this should be so. Therefore, she concludes that myths
or false stories have been constructed to justify treating women as second class and in defining them as
mutilated or incomplete men.
Myths include the myth of maternity or the "eternal feminine" that defines woman by her reproductive
capacity and robs her of her individuality in favor of casting her as the abstract symbol of "life."
Another myth is that menstruation is a threat that becomes much exaggerated. Beauvoir writes
... since patriarchy, only harmful powers have been attributed to the bizarre liquor flowing from the
feminine sex. Pliny in his Natural History says: “The menstruating woman spoils harvests, devastates
gardens, kills seeds, makes fruit fall, kills bees; if she touches the wine, it turns to vinegar; milk sours
…”
An old English poet expresses the same thought:
Oh! Menstruating woman, thou’rt a fiend From whom all nature should be closely screened!

Beauvoir also discusses the virginity myth. She explains that men demand women come to them as virgins
out of a myth of wanting to possess them. However, she writes the idea of possession is always impossible
to realize positively; the truth is that one never has anything or anyone.
In the beauty myth, the woman must be eternally young and healthy, to hide from the man the reality of his
own mortality. Older women, even older virgins, are seen as repellent because they remind the man that he
too will die.
The woman is the "Other," not herself but what reflects back to the man what he wants to see. Conversely,
what he doesn't like is mythically exaggerated and made repellent in the woman. In all of this, the real
woman is lost.
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Book One, part three of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, entitled "Myths" explores how myths and
misconceptions have led to women's oppression.
The author argues that women are shrouded in mystery and portrayed as "Other," implying that they are
either alien and therefore cannot be understood or less than human and therefore do not deserve equal
treatment. She describes the many myths about menstruation, all of which suggest that women who are
menstruating are unclean and will spoil or corrupt anything they touch. Thus, women are feared and
stigmatized based on their reproductive functions.
Referring to the works of Henry de Motherlant, D.H. Lawrence, Paul Claudel, Andre Breton, and Stendhal,
as well as a variety of other texts, de Beauvoir demonstrates that the majority of male writers cast women
in the role of wife and mother. Women are taught that their anatomy is their destiny and that their sole
purpose is to serve as helpmates to their husbands and care for children in the home. Women are denied the
education and career opportunities enjoyed by men because of the myth that they are only capable of
performing domestic duties.
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# What did Simone de Beauvoir mean by labeling women as "the second sex"?
When Simone de Beauvoir describes women as the "second sex," she means that maleness is assumed, that
men are the standard from which women are the deviation. A man does not have to proclaim that he is a
man as a part of his identity, but a woman does. She argues,
If I want to define myself, I first have to say, "I am a woman"; all other assertions will arise from this basic
truth. A man never begins by positing himself as an individual of a certain sex: that he is a man is obvious.
Then, people will make assumptions based on the woman's sex. For example, someone might claim that
she believes something because she is a woman, but a person would never say that someone believes
something because he is a man. To be a man is to have one's sex be invisible, but to be a woman is to have
one's sex take front and center stage of one's identity. Beauvoir continues,
The relation of the two sexes is not that of two electrical poles: the man represents both the positive and the
neuter to such an extent that in French hommes designates human beings [. . .]. Woman is the negative, to
such a point that any determination is imputed to her as a limitation, without reciprocity.
So, it is not that man is positive and woman is negative, but man is also neutral, the default. Consider how
often we use the pronoun "he" when we discuss a generic person of unknown sex, or words like mailman,
fireman, or chairman. We find ourselves having to retrain our brains to say mail carrier, fire fighter, or
chairperson. Our brains default to the assumption of maleness, and we only move to femaleness in a
secondary step.
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# What does Beauvoir claim about the role of philosophy and religion in their historical relationship
to the emancipation of women? What specific examples does she use to illustrate her claims?
As Simone de Beauvoir points out in her introduction to The Second Sex, a prayer often voiced by orthodox
Jewish males begins "Blessed be God . . . that He did not make me a woman." St. Thomas Aquinas, as
Beauvoir notes, one of Christianity's most influential theologians and philosophers, argued that women
were simply "'imperfect men.'" Beauvoir's point here is that the institution of religion, a creation of men,
generally holds women to be inferior to men both intellectually and morally, a view, unfortunately, that has
been moderated, but not eradicated, by centuries of experience and understanding that should have ended
an artificial distinction created by a Judeo-Christian belief-system that fails to yield to reason and logic.
From a philosophical standpoint, women have also been victimized by belief systems created by males who
voiced the coventional belief that women were not quite men in terms of intellect and morality. Again, as
Beauvoir notes, even a first-rate thinker like Aristotle could not envision women as like men, but with
different plumbing:
'The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities . . . we should regard the female nature as
afflicted with a natural defectiveness.'

The greatest philosopher of his time, then, essentially argues that women are different from men because
they lack crucial attributes that render women defective versions of men.
In the eighteenth-century, according to Beauvoir, certain philosopers--Diderot, for example, "strove to show
that woman is, like man, a human being, but she also notes that these philosophers were unique for their
time and ultimately failed to convince their societies of a natural equality between men and women.
Ultimately, Beauvoir concludes that religion and philosophy have generally been either unsuccessful or
instrumental in perpetuating the belief that women are not, and can never be, equal to men.