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Welcome back to New Books and Gender Studies. I am the co-host of the channel Lillian Barger. Today my conversation is with Meryl Altman, Professor of English and Women's Studies at Depaul University. Her new book, Vivore in Time, published by Brielle Rodope Press, situates Simone Vivoir's The Second Sex in its historical context in response to negative criticism that muddled what she actually said about sex, race, and class.
It takes up three aspects of Vivoir's works, today feminist, flying problematic. The characterization of the frigid woman and lesbians, the analogy of race and class that obscures black and working-class women, and her examples drawn from white middle-class experience. Charged with ethnocentrism, interpretations of Vivoir ignoring her place in time distorts her contribution. Through close reading, Vivoir's writing and mini-genres alongside expansive criticism, Altman shows that what appears as a problem for feminist theory is best understood by full consideration of Vivoir's engagement with Freudian Marxists and antacolonial thinkers.
Many helpful in understanding the place of the second sex within international feminist theory, Altman offers insight on how Vivoir is still relevant in the age of intersectionality and identity politics. Here is my conversation with Meryl Altman. Hello, Meryl. Hi.
Welcome to the show and thank you for writing such an important book that helps us understand some of Vivoir a little bit better. A lot of people are not familiar with who she is and those who are maybe confused about what she actually said. So first we get into the specific questions. Tell us about yourself, your background, and how you came to write Vivoir in time.
Well, I have just retired from teaching Women's Studies and English at a small college in Indiana at DePaul University and I was here for 30 years. And every spring I taught feminist theory and I always included both of her in that class, both because she is historically important as sometimes people call her the mother of feminism in the 20th century. And also because I think she's a great thinker. So this book kind of grew out of my teaching and my interest as a, as someone trained in literary studies and also in women's studies.
Okay, so, you know, a lot of people, some of them wrote her book the second sex in 1949. American audience has gotten in 1953 in English. Since then, lots have happened. So, relevant in she.
No kidding. No kidding. Yeah. A whole lot has happened.
You know, I was born after that, for instance. And, and when I taught, when I would teach her to undergraduates, which I did for a long time, I was struck by two reactions that my students had. One was what you just said, oh, this was such a long time ago. You know, this, this, what could this possibly have to tell us?
But then also look on page 73. That just happened to me last week. And I found, I have found that, and students in that time have changed a lot. But I found that there was always something in it that was meaningful to their lives that spoke to their condition in the same way that it spoke to Kate and Alette and, and those folks in the 1970s and, well, not in the same way, but as much.
So, that was something I wanted to explore the, the, the, that, that she spoke at a different time, but not, you know, over. Yeah, in other words, she's almost eternal. Some of her ideas are kind of eternal or perennial. They've been around forever.
So, those things that she points out. Well, I would, I would like to think that some of the things she talks about might not be with us forever. Bylaws against women, for instance. We'd like to think that won't be with us forever.
But the fact is that it's been with us for a long time. Okay. So you point out that many people who claim of war or talk about her have never really read her. She, she's one of those people that people like to evoke, but they, they may have a few lines from her book that they kind of picked up somewhere, but they'd have never read her.
So how much do you think this has led to misappropriation and distortion of what war has actually said? And in a way, makes her, makes it, makes her work meaningless because everybody has their own take on it. That it's not fully engaged with the text itself. Well, I guess I think that everyone having their own take on a thinker of the past is actually a good thing.
That people should look for themselves and see what they think and not have their expectations set by someone else's agenda of what, what it's going to say. I think that if people do pick it up, they might be, if people pick it up who haven't read it in decades or who have just read the introduction in some course or just heard about her as a, you know, as a person who did certain things, they might be surprised by, by a lot of what's actually in the book. And that's, I guess what I'm hoping for more than that. There's someone right way to read it that people should, I hope, engage with it and look at the things that seem weird to them and think, gee, why would anyone think that?
And just, just approach it in more of a spirit of, of curiosity, maybe as opposed to, oh, this person, this writer has been packaged in a certain way. Or even, this is the kind of book you have to study in a course. Because when the book was published, there were courses, there were no women studies courses. And it was a paperback with a naked lady on the cover of it and people just bought it, the drug store and read it and it changed their lives.
So, so in a way, what I'm hoping for is, is, is a restoration of some, uh, some sense of reading, not as an assignment or a dredger or that's something I should know or educate myself about, but just, here's someone who had some thoughts about quite a few things. One thing that struck me that I really particularly liked about your book and the reason that I picked it up was because I'm a historian. And I was trained, been trained to read text in context, you know, read a text with what was going on around at the time it was written and what they were, what the person was responding to. And if you don't do that, you can very much do, I think, a lot of violence to the text because you're not reading it within the frame that the intent and so, uh, what they're responding to.
So let me ask you, uh, what, what elements of the context have been ignored, uh, when reading the second sex and the whole body of work, this Monday, the bar, she wrote a lot. I mean, she wrote all kinds of things, uh, political essays and she wrote novels. And so she didn't just write the second sex. And you, uh, tell us what are the elements of the context because there was a lot going on in 1949 and 1948.
Lots of what was going on. Right. Right. Well, I think one of the things that people have missed about her is how fully she was a woman at the left and how committed she was to anti-racist politics, to, uh, politics of social justice.
And I think people have missed that because questions of social justice looked very different at that time. You know, the, um, the second world war was an inevitable reference point for them. Uh, the, uh, a little later, uh, anti-colonialism would be an inescapable reference. Why say that?
I mean, I mean, Beauvoir and Southton and all of the existential group that she was part of. Um, and anti-racism was a real inescapable reference for Beauvoir after she had traveled to the US. Sexual liberation of a very, uh, basic sort. You know, women had only just gotten the vote in France.
Right after the war. Um, a woman couldn't, uh, move without her husband's consent, a married woman. It, it, the people didn't have their own money, you know? It was so, it was a very, uh, so some of the, some of the things, um, and, and also, uh, she was writing out of, as someone who had freed herself from a very restrictive educational, uh, early education, a very middle-class Catholic respectability, uh, of a, of a, of a really cycling kind.
And so sexual self-determination for women was really basic to her. And of course it's basic to us too. We use different words to talk about it. We use different, we're having different arguments with different people.
I like what you said about who people were arguing with. I think that's, that's inescapable. And so learning about Beauvoir's context has really helped me learn an awful lot about the 20th century period. Yes.
I think her book, uh, the second text specifically, uh, speaks to a broad range of historical moments. I wanted to ask you about why, do you think that most Americans, particularly Americans, have misread her because they read her from a liberal paradigm versus not an existential freedom perspective that they don't understand her politics because you're coming at it from a liberalism frame? That's really interesting. That's really interesting.
Um, because, you know, from, from, from, uh, you know, you know, why was not that interested at all in a fact that the French women had gotten the vote. She wasn't interested in liberal politics. She was very critical about engaging in liberal political maneuvering, you know, protesting, petitioning, voting. Uh, so that, so some people could say she was apolitical or anti-political, but it was really because she was not a liberal as a liberal thinker.
She was an existential freedom thinker. I think that might be right. I want to think about that more. There were a lot of reasons why people, well, first of all, Americans, um, were not in a good situation to understand her right away because I don't know if people know this, but the first English translation of, of the second sex was terrible.
And it was, um, it cut out a lot of her examples. It cut out a lot of the texture of her work. It misunderstood a lot of the existentialist and philosophical terminology. There's a much better one now.
Um, so if anyone out there is wondering which one to buy, don't buy the one by H.M. Partially, by the one by, uh, Conson Ford and Sheila Malavani, which is, um, you know, this big, well, it's a big book, what can I say? But so, so in a way, it was kind of a self-reinforcing thing because, uh, the publishers of the American version were, um, were, were looking to make a book and I mean, they weren't bad people, but they were, they were publishers and, um, they, they made assumptions that the American audience needed to have it dumbed down. And so that became a self-reinforcing thing.
Um, and they also made the assumption that American readers would not be interested in the politics. Uh, and, and therefore, um, this, so a lot of it got cut out or got, uh, kind of distorted. And then, uh, really the critique came up that, that, uh, that Beauvoir wasn't really very political or that she was. I didn't think about what you said because people have also criticized her for being too much of a liberal thinker in the sense of, of, uh, uh, you know, when people say, uh, oh, she's just a liberal, she's like free speech or whatever and she's a white woman and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, I'm not a liberal class woman, but, but I think, I think there's, I think there's something, I think there's something to be said for that, that there was really not a meeting of the minds or the French have this expression that means, that, that, that translates as the dialogue of the deaf. And that's, and that, you know, and that's, that's a lot of what, uh, that's actually a lot of what the book is about is people thinking that they're talking about the same thing or the not. Yeah, I, I think that the, the publishers, uh, first they didn't think that Americans would be interested in, uh, existentialism. Uh, you know, that was sort of the French thing.
I think that was one of the things. And the other thing they pitched it and marketed it as a sex book. Right. Okay.
And they totally missed that one. Uh, so, right on the, no, because it, because it is sex book. Why is it sex books? But you know what I mean?
It's a sex manual. Right. But it's a, you know, there are a lot of people in the world of various ages who learned various facts of female biology from this book. Right.
Right. It's sort of terrible that they had to, but, but, but you know, there are, there are worse things. And, um, I think part of why it was such a fruitful book for, uh, what we call second white feminism for the late 60s, early 70s is because she was so honest about sex because she just, uh, you know, her account of it is different from what some people's accounts might be, but she just talked about female sexuality, uh, as though women had a right to sexual feeling as though women had a right to sexual satisfaction. That wasn't something that everyone in the 1950s was saying.
Uh, so, so I think, you know, I think that the publishers were, um, it was a reductive version, but it wasn't totally wrong. Yeah. She was often interested. She was often reviewed with Kingsley, you know, and female sexuality and male sexuality.
And so she was kind of dumped into that, but her, her view of sexuality was very different from his, uh, so anyway, I want to go on and ask you about how much you talk about this in your book, how Kate Millet, Betty Friedan, and Firestone, She'll Smith Firestone, uh, influenced, uh, her legacy in America and what have people read her and, and especially Firestone. Uh, she, she kinda went for much for, she, she gives her credit and, you know, dedicates her book, uh, uh, to her, to, uh, Baguar, but she, she kinda gets off the track. Can you talk about that a little bit? Right.
Um, right. I think, you know, in hindsight, so each of these are different case, Friedan. Fried, Friedan, I think, so Friedan, I think, um, picked up the liberal feminist parts of the book and the rest of it. Right.
And, uh, you know, Friedan too was extremely important and influential and a lot of people learned a lot from her book too. But, um, when people, uh, when readers now look at Friedan and say, but she misses the point because she only talks about women of her same class, who have a privileged women, married women. Um, well Baguar talks about a lot more than that. But Baguar talks about working class women's experience.
She talks about prostitution. She talks about, you know, she's, she's got the whole spectrum there and Friedan just took one part of it. So it's not just that Friedan was a popularizer, but she, she kind of miss, she got some of it, but she kind of missed the point. Um, and, and I think, I think, I've read both and I think what I have concluded was that Friedan, what she did was she was looking at also ideology, you know, the feminine mistake, the ideology.
And the second sex is heavily about the myth of woman, not necessarily the actuality of how women actually live, but the myths that sort of shape their, how they experience their life. And I think that ideological bent is what Friedan picked up and, and, you know, became the feminine mistake that she tried to unpack and show how the feminist operated in society, not only for, if it actually operates for all women, regardless of whether they're in the home, married, divorced, whatever, it doesn't matter. They're always having to encounter and deal with this feminine mystique or this, the myth of woman that's been constructed. And suppose of them, we're not really, because sociologically Friedan was not really on point because she missed so many women in her time.
But she wasn't trying to do that, I don't think. No, well, I mean, Friedan is interesting because she actually, as you probably know, she had a past as a leftist, which she renounced. Right. So it's not just that she didn't notice that.
She decided, probably rightly, that most of the kinds of American women who would read in Bible didn't want to know about that. And you know, also McCarthyism was just like right before. But there actually is a surprising amount in the, so there's, so yes, the myth of women, the eternal feminine, the fact that that is garbage, the way that it's been used to keep women down and keep women out, that is really important in the second sex. But there's also a lot of structural analysis.
There's a lot of, there's a lot of, I don't know that this will make people more wanting to beat it, but there's a lot of statistics in there. There's a lot of, sorry, there's a lot of facts in there. There's, there's a lot of, well, I wanted to know about prostitution. So I went to the library and I found all of these, there is a lot of stuff of what we would think of a sociology in there.
So it's not just, here's my theory, here's what I see in my life, but it's a real attempt to bring everything together in a completely, what we would call an interdisciplinary way. Firestone to me is a different story because if you look at the dialectic of sex now at Firestone's book, she thought she was going, she thought she was more radical than before. But if you look at what she says about race in that book, you just can't even, you just can't believe, right? And, and that's not in both worlds.
Firestone took, took Bojor's, what Firestone says that is that Bojor made a mistake in that she didn't put women's oppression at the center of her book, right? So Bojor has a general theory of oppression, which she then applies to the case of women, but she also talks about race and class and nationality and other things. And she develops this, just a general theory of, we, people might not know this is Bojor, but when we talk about othering, when we talk about turning somebody into the other, you know, that's in Bojor and that is Bojor's like general theory of oppression. And Firestone thought she was being more radical by saying, no, it's sexual oppression, that's at the heart of everything.
And even racial oppression is like an offshoot of it. And apart from the fact that that's some of what she says is really not, I'm sorry, on the face of it, not, that was actually narrowing down. Whereas Bojor I think has more of what we would now call an intersectional analysis. She says, yes, the problem of women is terrible.
It's not the only problem. But you know, and that I think is a real resource for our time. And also with Firestone, who've never thought that the problem of women's oppression was because their bodies were a problem. Firestone moves further and she thinks the biological body itself, the female body that, you know, lactates and gets pregnant and compensates, that is a problem that has to be overcome through technology.
That's what I read. And I'm like, but you know, see, Mother Wart never, she, it's the meaning that was assigned to the body, not actually the body itself was a problem. Yeah, I think, you know, Firestone probably could not have imagined what the new reproductive technology would really be like. She had a utopian, almost a science fiction idea of how that would release women from, release women from the biology of childbearing.
Where she, she's very close to Beauvoir in refusing to romanticize childbearing. You know, she, so Beauvoir was trying, one of the myths that she really, really, really wanted to get rid of was this myth that women, women equal mother, mother equals woman. That's the most sacred thing that a woman can do. And therefore we can't let her like vote or be a legislator or be a philosopher because we need her to the Yumami, right?
I mean, Beauvoir was completely against that. And she was very, said that in very vivid ways, which Firestone also picked up. But I think what, I think what, so Beauvoir has this idea of the body as a situation, right? And so you have your situation is a big word for her.
And you have what's given to you, including the body that you have. But that doesn't define you, it doesn't determine you. The question, and here's where the existentialism comes in, is, you know, here's what you're given and what are you going to do with it? What are you going to make out of that?
What choices? How are you going to freely choose what to do with what you've been given? So she didn't, she didn't think that men and women should become exactly the same, right? She did not deny, people often have had this misreading.
She didn't deny that women's bodies were different, that there were certain constraints, right? That there were certain, she talks a lot about how children are brought up. And she's very, she gives an account that would later be called social constructionist of, you know, how the choices that girls have are narrowed down by what they're allowed to do, by the messages that they're fed and all of that, as opposed to little boys. But at the same time, she gives the audience do.
That's right. That's right. I think that's correct. And she also, something that I really like about this is that for her the body is not just the sexual body.
It's not just the maternal body, but it's also not even just the sexual body. She talks about, you know, a part of the book that my students often resonated with was when she talks about confining, not being allowed to take up space because you're a girl, not being allowed to go to certain places, not being allowed to make a loud noise, not being allowed to hit anybody, you know, about the way that that being born, female, being born, male, it doesn't have to determine you, but certain things about how it's socially understood. And social, social construction is real. It's not just an illusion that we can somehow peel off.
I can't go, oh, okay, that was all bullshit. Now I'm going to not feel bad about my body, you know? I mean, believe me, if that would work, you know, but it doesn't work. And so this idea, so one scholar has used the word sedimentation to talk about.
It's not a word that Baujore uses, but I like it. You know, that these, all of these messages and all of these lived experiences, that is Baujore's word, become part of your situation and part of you. And then, you know, it's on that basis that you make choices and that you see certain things. Does this make sense?
No, yeah. Yeah, but that leads me to another question. She has been attributed as being the source of the sex gender distinction. Can you talk about why this is wrong headed or is it?
Is she the source of the sex gender distinction or does she think about it that way? Well, right. You know, one of the things that I say in the book that I feel most strongly about is that if an idea is a good one, more than one person will have it at more than one time. You know, and I think that this comes up in the stake in the question of whether certain ideas, whether they were Sartre's idea that she picked up or her idea or whatever.
And then also with Fanon, right, because he learned a lot from her and she learned a certain amount from him and, you know, they were all thinking about the same problems. And if an idea is, if it's a right analysis, you know, it will strike different people at different times. I think, I think there are things, I think there are insights that, and what we call social construction is really one of them. You know, some people got that idea from Bauvoir.
Other people later got that idea from Foucault. It's a good idea. It's right. And how complicated human beings are, you know, how we're both in ourselves and with others and the effects.
And I think the, but the terms that certainly she did not have access to these terms sex versus gender. She does, and French people until pretty recently didn't pick up on the word gender in that way. But I think she did. I think she did have awareness.
Which she would say that even how we view the body, the biological sex is discursively constructed. So that sex gender, sex gender distinction becomes rather muddled because female itself is linguistically sort of discursively constructed. Well, that's what Judith Butler thinks. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
That's what Judith Butler thinks. And I think Judith Butler is right. And it's interesting that Butler's earliest writing about Beauvoir, she's like, this is great, I agree with Beauvoir. And then when she went to write gender trouble, we just heard a wonderful book.
She presented what she was saying as an advanced non-boure and something of a critique of Beauvoir. And whereas I see them more. And the further away, this is the time aspect. The further away we get from that moment when Butler needed to say, no, I am making a new theory that will revolutionize feminism and Beauvoir go away.
The further away we get from that point, the more similar to each other they seem. And the same, and so I see that as a, I think Beauvoir leaves open a lot of possibilities that later theories might foreclose. I think there was a, so I talk, so the book is partly a reception study in a way that I, and I talk, I have a long part that's about the 1980s. And in the 1980s, it was like you were either an essentialist or you were a social constructionist and you had to like throw tomatoes at the people who were not in the same, on the same team as you there.
And so people at that time, I'm really oversimplifying, but I think this is not totally unfair. So during that time, social constructionists through tomatoes at Beauvoir for being essentialists and other people who had more, who had more investment in the idea of woman as, of centering woman and womanness, which at that time I would have said, ooh, essentialist tomato, but people, people who, who had, who felt that way through tomatoes at Beauvoir for not, for being a social constructionist and for not giving enough credit for the body, right? So what this tells us is like, it's like when you get student evaluations and some of them say there's too much reading and some of them say there's not enough, you can go right, I must have gotten it right, you know, because that wasn't, that was our argument in the 80s, I'm dating myself, okay, whatever. That was an argument that was really important then, but it wasn't her argument, wasn't, you know, on her horizon, and it's not her argument now, either, because the views of the body have really changed, the world has changed.
So that's another reason to kind of go back around and say, well, you know, can you think both of these things at the same time? Right, and I think that's, I think she was thinking both at the same time. That's how I read her, but anyway, and don't we, you know, don't we think both of those things? Absolutely.
So there's another question here about her idea of a, you talk about identity politics today and how Beauvoir didn't really, in the second section, she wasn't really calling for women to rally around their identity as women, okay, and she said, you know, women don't say we, that kind of thing. So, and she's been accused of, you know, being a detriment to real feminist politics. What do you think about that? Is her, does her idea, are her ideas, do they foreclose a true feminist politics?
Group politics, a group identity by which to strive for greater freedom? I think insofar as they, so she says, for instance, in that part of the introduction where she talks about how women don't say we, what she says right after that is she says, Beauvoir women show solidarity with Beauvoir men, working class women show solidarity with working class men. So, let's see, it's not, and they're not, they're, they're, they're generally, genuinely, economically and practically rooted reasons why it doesn't necessarily make sense to women to be part of one movement, right? And so then in the 70s, people were like, oh Beauvoir didn't see that we have to have a unified movement movement.
And Beauvoir did support the unified movement when it, when it, when it, the, the women's liberation, the, the MLF in France, she did support that, she was with them, she was behind them, she helped them. But you know, at this point in time, so it's like there was women do not say we, and then there was, what do you mean we white woman? Yeah. You know, if we, if somebody says we, it's important not to say we too easily, it's important not to say we, assuming, you know, on behalf of other people who don't share our material situation, right?
So I think, you know, it no longer looks like such a good idea. I was wondering when she said women don't see we, when she was not actually making a prescription, she wasn't prescribing that. She was basically, I think maybe one of the reasons that she knows that women are set up by the patriarchy in competitive situations with against each other, you know, women compete with, you know, for men and for the men with the money and for favors so they can maintain their position. So that, that competition that she describes among women keeps them from saying we, so they have to bring out some sort of privilege that they may have within a patriarchal system in order to join other women.
What do you think? It doesn't, and she doesn't, she doesn't call for that. She doesn't call for much of anything. Right.
It's a, it's a, well, I think this is part of the strength of the book, actually the lasting strength of the book. She says here is the situation, it stinks, right? And then in the, in the conclusion, like if you get through all the hundreds of pages and you get there, she says, there, you know, here's what needs to happen about this. There needs to be a material and structural things need to be addressed and also the cultural and psychological things need to be addressed and women need to do it for themselves, for ourselves.
But, but she doesn't, but doesn't she put this, doesn't she put the individual woman at that center of that, instead of the group. In other words, individual women living authentically out of their own freedom to change the society comes first. If you happen to meet others, other women who are doing the same thing, then you've got a movement or you've got a, like, right, that she was very centered on the individual experience. No?
Yes, that's right. And do you think that's, do you think that's wrong? I think it's just one aspect. You know, it's like, it's, it's what's more important to community or the individual.
They're both, they're both important. And you can't, if you just say, well, the community and forget the individual, that doesn't work and be just like the individual and not the community, that and work either. I mean, you have to, it's attention there between your own, uh, freedom and acting out of your own authentic freedom and what's around you and other people. And she talks about that in the executive ambiguity about, you know, your freedom is, is limited by somebody else's freedom.
Right. But, you know, she does, she does. She puts the individual at the center of it, but it's a challenge to the individual. You know, she's calling on women to change.
She's not saying, yes, woman, be empowered like you are. She's like, no, it's, it's, um, yeah. And, and, um, you know, I found something that Angela Davis said, um, and we'll be able to quote exactly. And Davis was not talking about Beauvoir.
But she said, uh, someone asked her about identity politics and standpoint. And she said that, um, she was hoping for a politics where people would come together, not out of some static identity that they held, but in the service of a project. And that sounds very Beauvoir. That sounds very sorry to me, you know, so it's, this is not, so it's not about be.
It's about do. It's not a noun. It's a verb. If you, um, so rather than seeing, um, seeing some kind of, um, I mean, you're, you're right, Beauvoir does not envision a collective identity.
She doesn't. And that's a limit that may be a deal breaker for some people, right? And I totally get why. Um, but what she does envision is, uh, free individuals coming together to do something, right?
To, um, to get rid of colonialism or to, um, you know, is that a law, isn't it out of a recognition that you're never going to be truly completely free if the other is not free. Right. Yes. Thank you.
Yes. That's, that's, that's really, um, that's the piece I left out. You know, that, that my freedom is meaningless if other people, if it's based on the oppression of other people. And she has this almost, these almost, um, Kantian moments in the ethics of ambiguity, which she says, you know, if I can't will the freedom of everybody, I can't will mine.
And that, you know, as, as students as it may sound has, has been, uh, a really great and important, um, motivating rally and cry for, uh, progressive movements ever since, you know, I had bumper sticker for a while. It said none of us is free until all of us are free. Maybe you had that bumper sticker, you know, um, it's, that's just true. Uh, that's just true.
Um, and it's something that she never backed away from. Um, and, uh, yes, utopian in a way. But it's not about, um, well, isn't that what's really, sorry, there's one point where she says here are the five things the woman has to do. Well, she, yeah, she wasn't a strategist.
She was a philosopher and as a good, you know, a good philosopher, their job is to be a little in a bit, uh, utopian. Okay. Uh, what could be the possibilities? That's what they're supposed to do.
They're not supposed to give you a practical guide to things. Uh, so I want to talk more specifically about the things that critiques that have been, uh, hurled at, uh, once it's how she talks about women's sexuality, the frigid woman, the lesbian, uh, how she talks about rape, all these different things that have just sent, you know, many, many generations of feminists screaming out of the room. So can you talk a little bit about those issues? I know it's really complicated and you do, you do a fabulous job in your book.
So, um, how do you turn people on to get through those passages where she says things about women's sexuality that are just, uh, really up, you know, puts you off and go, wow, she really doesn't like women. The first time I was assigned to read this book in graduate school, I hated it. Um, and, um, we were made to read all of it and I was like, why? And part of the problem was that I was reading it in English, but, um, but, so, so it's really hard for me to summarize my book.
Right. No, absolutely. Because it's got, because it's got all kinds of rabbit holes and digressions in it. But, but, um, the first, basically the first half of it's about sex and the second, well, the first third is about sex.
The two thirds of it is about race and class and nationality and all of that. And, um, I structured around a set of things that people have found embarrassing about before. And how I address that is historically by going back and thinking, why would anybody say that? What was she reading?
What was she reacting to? Right. Um, what else was going on there? And, um, what was the language of the time for talking about these things?
And, and I start from the assumption which people have not always done, but I start as a reader from the assumption that she knew what she was doing. She was very smart. She was very looked into things from a lot of different angles. Um, she knew what she was doing.
So what did she think she was doing? And why did she think that? And, um, and who else thought that? And what else do people think about it?
Um, and I don't always end up, you know, this is, this is not a book about making excuses for things that Beauvoir said. But I think we have a richer understanding both of her work and of the situation of women in the 20th century, and women and other, um, groups who are not white and, and, and, and middle class. I think we come away with a richer understanding of what was happening, uh, for people, uh, both during the time when she wrote. And also during the times when people responded to her.
Um, so I guess that's, that's, that's part of, that's part of it. I think, um, what I ask people to do and what I hope, I somewhat help people to do is to engage with what's weird and not dismiss it. Yeah. Could you talk about her engagement with, uh, one of the psychiatrist or psycho analyst?
Yeah. Uh, I can't find his name right now. Uh, oh, this completely weird, awful guy. Right.
Who was, who was, um, you know, he was a minor member of, of Freud's circle. They threw him out. Um, he was, you know, um, and so, so you're like, he wrote this book called Frigidity in Women, which was a bestseller and which did a huge amount of damage to, you know, any, uh, any amount of damage, mostly, um, and so you're like, how could she when he did all these other things? But then what I, what I saw, what I saw about Juarez, a reader was that she would take what she needed and just throw away the rest.
And she used these examples or his case studies. Do you use his case studies? She, novelists that she hated, she would use their account of a woman's experience. She depathalized, uh, female sexuality because, uh, within the Frigidity, the woman about the, the book about the Frigidity woman it was about, it was some sort of deep something wrong with the woman.
And she is kind of showing, her argument basically is, no, this is sort of like a, uh, reasonable rational response to the situation that she has been placed in. Right. This is not fundamentally a, a, this function in her. Right.
That's exactly, yes, that's exactly, that's exactly right. It's not that there's something wrong with her. It's that look at what happened to her. I know wonder she's not orgasmic with this jerk that she's married to.
I'm oversimplifying. I know. There are lots and lots and lots and lots of stories that's about terrible sexual initiations that she calls about, uh, awful marriage nights. Um, and, um, but she, you know, where she differed from Freud is that, um, she, um, so she tells several times, uh, an anecdote, um, from Denise DeRouche-Mogg, it doesn't matter from who, about a woman who was in a psychiatric clinic.
And, um, because she had this delusion that birds were attacking her. And she was in this, this is just an anecdote. She, it's probably not true, but, but, but she was in this, uh, facility, uh, for a long time and then one day without being able to solve this problem. And then one day the psychoanalyst took her for a walk around the grounds and birds were attacking her, you know?
And so this is, this is like, this is Bob Wars. Uh, she actually got a lot from Freud, but this is, this is, is her response to him, you know, is look, don't seek for childhood, uh, deep-seeded dysfunctions. It's the patriarchy, stupid. You know, well, she, I mean, I'm putting this in a very colloquial way.
And it's like, no, this really is happening. You are not crazy. This is not okay. Yeah, it's a rational response.
It's a rational response to response. Let me ask you that go on to a little bit. She was accused of being ethnocentric, you know, very French, bourgeois French. And, uh, that her book did have a huge influence around the globe.
All kinds of, uh, cultural situations. China, you talk about China quite a bit. Uh, you know, I know she was influential in Latin America. Uh, so in this, uh, circulating around the globe with its multiple, you know, translations and how much has been lost, misunderstood, or appropriated in a different way, a lot of, it's amazing how many women found her in very different cultures, Eastern cultures, found her speaking to them.
I thought that that was, so it's kind of hard to accuse her of being ethnocentric when she's speaking in ways that are like universal. And is that kind of a universalist viewpoint that we should reject? Is she just talking about Western women? You know, I think what I'm going to say about this is, um, there's an insight into the world of white from reception theory that goes, and I'll explain what I mean by this in a minute, it goes, meaning is realized at the point of reception.
In other words, the meaning of the work, that happens when I read it and I see in it what I see. And then I make it that when I make it, which is a very existentialist idea. If you think about it, this is what we're given. This is what we make, right?
And, um, and she would have been so happy with that, really. So, uh, she, she was interviewed, uh, for, I think the 20th anniversary of it. Maybe it was the 20th or 30th anniversary. Um, and the guy who was interviewing her, John Chirassie, said, um, well, so many women in the second, well, it wasn't called the second white yet.
Sorry. So many women in the American feminist movement say that they're inspired by your book. Um, and she said, well, they say that, but it was their own experiences. Maybe they found something in my book that was helpful to them, but it was their own experiences that inspired them to make the movement.
And it was also their experiences with the civil rights movement in the US. And, um, you know, if, um, she said, uh, and this is interesting, she said, I don't think a book really changes things. And it's funny to have her say, she said it several times at different points. She says, you know, you, you write a book and you say what you see, but it's up to people.
It's the, this word uptake, you know, if it's meaningful at a certain point, you know, then it becomes meaningful to the people who are actually on the ground making a movement or writing a new theory because, you know, writing is also activism, right? It's not just, just, you know, boots on the ground. Um, you know, that's, that's really fine. Um, whereas a scholar, um, I put that together with, um, no, wait a minute, they're really armistrages, you know, they really are, you know, so, so that's like the idealistic way of putting it.
But then there's like, no, that's not what she said. No, that's not what she meant. And, and you know, a fair, I will say that a fair amount of my book is, is taken up with, um, I hope not too much of it, I've taken up with. How could you think that's what it says?
Look at this age. Look at this. And, and, and look, I'm giving you the, um, I'm giving you the French in the footnote too, so that if you think I'm wrong about what the English says, go check. So there is a certain amount of, um, you know, I hope it doesn't, I think it doesn't, um, make the book too dry, but there's a certain amount of, no, like, let's go to the videotape.
What did she say? What did she do? Um, and then why would she say that? And then what would people make of it?
Um, so, so that's the, that's my, that's my hope for it. That's my hope for it. I have a final question for you. Um, another reader who's never read the second sex.
They get inspired to go out and read it. I got to read that. I've heard about it. I've heard about it.
I've heard about that, but I've never read it. Uh, what would advice would you give them to how to approach the book? Besides telling them to read the new, the new translation. What else would you tell them?
I would say be patient and be patient with yourself. Um, but be patient with her also because she very often, and this is two of a lot of French writers. She'll spin out a thread for some pages and then she'll say, but and she'll cut the thread. You know, or she'll say, um, or there are a lot of the, uh, the second half of it, which is based on women's experience.
Um, she'll say, well, for some women, it's this. And if you're going, if you're reading it going, not me, not me, not me, then she'll go, but for other women this, and then you might be in there, right? Um, so I would say, I would say to be patient, um, to try as much as possible, um, not to fix it on particular sentences or particular paragraphs to, to try and, um, well now I'm sounding like a teacher, but to try and, to try and hold in your sense some sense of the overall chapter and the overall project. Um, and where I'm hoping that my book will be helpful to the general reader and not just to the, to the, to the scholar is that, um, you know, like any philosopher who makes reference to a very large number of other people that the average reader or even the academic reader has never heard of.
Um, and, and I'm hoping that my book will, you know, maybe tell people who some of those people were, um, not the thing necessarily, not, oh my God, I can't understand this book until I read like four other books, but like, this is who that guy is, don't worry about it. You know, I don't know. Um, I would say that the, the parts of the book that, um, students tend to find most relatable to use that word, um, are the parts of it where she talks about women in the life cycle. Um, you know, don't you think that the, the, the, the, the child, the child, and they, um, and the, and the mother parts and all of that.
Um, and it's understandable that people have focused on those parts. Um, I think if there's something you're interested in, if you're interested in history, if you're interested in, in French literature, maybe start with those parts. Maybe don't read it in order. I don't know.
But, but I think the, I think the, um, I think the thing that I would, that I would most say is, um, don't look for a key. Just kind of, Yeah, she doesn't give you a lot of answers. I think she doesn't, she's, you're not going to get the answer. It's not self-help to do.
It's not self-help. She hated self-help. Um, it's, um, see what, see what you can, um, see what, what it's, it's like her idea of being with others. So be, be with the other of this book and with the other people that are in the book and, and see what you can learn from that.
And if, if it's not, if it's not right, then it's then leave it behind, you know? Um, but, but it's, but I would really encourage people to, to plunge into it, uh, and not look for a sound bite because the sound bites are wrong. It is a demanding book. It is a demanding book.
It's a demanding book, but you know, if people in the, if people in the, in the early 50s could read it, we could read it too. We still can read. Um, we can read, you know, and, and, and they say that, um, they say it's good for us. Really.
Well, Meryl, uh, thank you so much for your time. You have written a really important book. Uh, I encourage the audience to check it out. It's full of stuff.
It's, there's something for everybody in that book that you've written. Uh, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another edition of New Books and Gender Studies. This is your host, Lillian Barger.