The Second Sex is a feminist work by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. The work is considered the beginning of second-wave feminism, studying the historical and cultural causes of sexism against women. Famously claiming "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman," de Beauvoir describes the ways in which girls and women are conditioned to accept a subservient position in patriarchal society. While men are allowed a sort of philosophical transcendence, women have been forced to be identified as bodies.
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