The Moral Weakness of 'The Second Sex'

In the introduction to her magnum opus, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) writes, “I hesitated a long time before writing a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially for women; and it is not new. Enough ink has flowed over the quarrel about feminism; it is now almost over: let’s not talk about it anymore.” Is feminism still talked about? This is a tongue-in-cheek question, of course. Better we should ask, is feminism now merely a subject, intellectual and otherwise, or does it in any way reflect a lived reality for women, and thus, does it demand our attention? Do we need to change the way we view feminism or is it, much like Karl Marx’s theory on capitalism, only weakly relegated to the confines of academia and the insufferable theoretical professing?