Simone de Beauvoir was a writer on feminism and existentialism. She also wrote novels. Her book "The Second Sex" is a feminist classic. It is based on the idea that, while men and women may have different tendencies, each person is unique, and it is culture which has enforced a uniform set of expectations of what is "feminine," as contrasted to what is "human" which is equated with what is male. Beauvoir argued that women can free themselves, through individual decisions and collective action.
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• This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.
• Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.
• Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.
• When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
• All oppression creates a state of war.
• However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.