Second Sex (Complete Translation)

Author: Simone de Beauvoir (France)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not available
Features: The complete Chinese translation of The Second Sex, a book in history that discusses women's health, rationality, and wisdom, integrating literature, philosophy, sexology, psychology, biology, history, and economics, and is known as the "Bible of Women." This authorized and exclusive edition is published and distributed. The book is divided into two volumes. The first volume primarily discusses women's issues from the perspective of the female group, serving as the theoretical framework of the entire work. The author first explores the sexual life of male and female sexes from a biological perspective, from simple single-celled organisms to complex mammals, elaborating in detail the various manifestations of asexual and sexual reproduction, revealing the interesting phenomena of hermaphroditism, gynandry, and gynogenesis in the animal kingdom. She argues that asexual and sexual reproduction play equally important roles, refuting the view that women are equivalent to uteruses or ovaries.
Next, the author introduces the feminist perspective of psychoanalysis, suggesting that Freud's so-called "Electra complex" was fabricated based on his "Oedipus complex" modeled after the male pattern. She questions whether the "Electra complex" truly exists in women and criticizes Freud's male-centric "sex monism," which reduces women's physiology, psychology, and circumstances to "sex."
The author also dedicates significant space to discussing the changes in women's status, rights, and positions from primitive society to socialist society (Soviet society), revealing many little-known historical facts. She then examines women's rights and status in Eastern and Western myths, pointing out that the reverence for virgins was established only after the emergence of private property, as men sought to ensure the inheritance of ancestral wealth within a patrilineal system, thereby turning women into tools for producing inheritors.
In the second volume of the book, the author follows the life trajectory from childhood to old age, exploring the individual development histories of various women (lesbians, prostitutes, women in love or mistresses, mystics or nuns, independent women or professional women) and extensively discussing the physiological, psychological, and situational changes of women at different stages of life and in different types. She concludes that for women to achieve liberation, they must acknowledge their natural differences from men and establish a brotherly relationship with them.