Beauvoir's Best Insight

Simone de Beauvoir identified as a communist for much of her adult life. She was a firm advocate for abortion and artificial contraceptives. As noted by Emina Melonic in her lead essay, she had a kinky sex life and questionable taste in men, as well as a pronounced hostility to maternity. As a conservative, pro-life, anti-communist, Catholic mother of five, I am obviously supposed to revile Beauvoir. But actually, reading through her most famous work, The Second Sex, I find some segments quite compelling. When I first picked it up some years ago, I was startled to find that some passages tracked my own considered view rather well.