Coalition as a counterpoint to the intersectional critique of The Second Sex

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-108
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
White Male ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Economic Injustice

The analogy Simone de Beauvoir draws between “les femmes” and “des Noirs d’Amérique” is a key part of the intersectional critique of The Second Sex. Intersectional critics persuasively argue that Beauvoir’s analogy reveals the white, middle-class identity of The Second Sex's ostensibly universal “woman”, emphasizing the fact that the text does not account for the experiences of black, Jewish, proletariat or indigenous women. In this essay, I point to multiple instances in The Second Sex in which Beauvoir endorses a coalition between workers black and white, male and female. When Beauvoir writes on economic injustice, she advocates for an inclusive workers party where racial and sexual differences become immaterial as workers come together in a collective struggle. I thus propose that Beauvoir’s Marxism is an overlooked, yet important, counterpoint to the intersectional critique of The Second Sex.

Writers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Eagles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
White Male ◽  
Ninth Grade ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Textbook ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Mississippi History ◽  
Tougaloo College

Jim Loewen, a sociologist, and Charles Sallis, a historian, assembled a diverse team of colleagues and students to produce a revisionist ninth-grade Mississippi history textbook. In addition to several disciplines, the group included black and white, male and female, northern and southerner. They drew on earlier tentative interracial contacts led by Ernst Borinski between the black Tougaloo College and the nearby white Millsaps College, both in Jackson, Mississippi. Loewen had published a book on the Mississippi Chinese, and Sallis had written about Mississippi politics in the late nineteenth century.

RACE AND PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS AS CRITERIA FOR WHITE SUBJECTS' DATING CHOICES

1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bem. P. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
White Male ◽  
Stimulus Person ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Female Subjects

Research involving race as a criterion for various social choices indicates that race may rival attractiveness for the determination of dating choices. This possibility was explored in two experiments involving “desirability for a date” ratings of black and white stimulus persons who varied in attractiveness. Experiment 1 results indicated that white male and female subjects gave appreciable weight to race and attractiveness, but females gave race more weight than attractiveness, while attractiveness was given more weight than race by males. The interaction between race and attractiveness had approximately the same form for males and females: attractive black stimulus persons were lumped together with unattractive stimulus persons.Female subjects in Experiment 2, who were informed about an opportunity to date a stimulus person of their choice before seeing slides of stimulus persons, tended to discount attractiveness as a criterion for choices. None of these subjects were willing to accept an actual date. It was noted that race may be a stronger rival to attractiveness relative to the more abstract factors with which attractiveness has been compared, because race, like attractiveness, is highly concrete and visible.

Mean Ages of Homicide Victims and Victims of Homicide–Suicide

2010 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Stephen Bridges ◽  
William B. Tankersley
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
The Other ◽  
White Female ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Victims ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Mean

Using Riedel and Zahn's 1994 reformatted version of an FBI database, the mean age of homicide victims in 2,175 homicide–suicides (4,350 deaths) was compared with that of all other victims of homicides reported for the USA from 1968 to 1975. The overall mean age of homicide victims in homicide–suicides was 1 yr. greater than for victims of homicides not followed by suicides, whereas the mean age for both male and female homicide–suicide victims was, respectively, 3 yr. less and greater than the other homicide victims. The mean age of Black homicide victims of homicide–suicides was 2.4 yr. less than that for Black victims of other homicides, whereas the means for Black and White male homicide victims in homicide–suicides were, respectively, about 4 and 5 yr. less than for victims of other homicides. Also, the mean age of White female homicide victims in homicide–suicides was more than two years greater than for female victims of homicides not followed by suicides. When both sex and race were considered, the mean age for those killed in homicide–suicides relative to those killed in homicides not followed by suicides may represent subpopulations with different mean ages of victims.

EFFECTS OF SEX RATIOS ON OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE AND DESIRABILITY AMONG BLACK AND WHITE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

1984 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence W. Littig ◽  
Carolyn D Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
Female College Students ◽  
Occupational Prestige ◽  
High Status ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
The Prestige

This study attempted to replicate Touhey's (1974a. 1974b) research on the effect of increased proportion of women incumbents on the prestige and desirability of six high status occupations. The subjects. 200 black and white male and female college students rated these occupations under instruct ions that they were either low and stable or high and increasing in proportion of women. Proportion of women did not affect the prestige ratings of the occupations for any of the subject groups. Proportion of women affected occupational desirability for men and women and for blacks and whites. In each instances, the effect was to increase desirability for one group and to decrease it for the other.

The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Céline Leboeuf
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Natural Object ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
White Middle Class

Simone de Beauvoir’s work has been a great inspiration for feminist philosophers. This chapter explores her legacy to the discipline. I begin by examining the opening question of The Second Sex: What is a woman? I argue that one of Beauvoir’s distinctive contributions was to put this question on the philosophical map. While her account of woman has been criticized—for example, for privileging the experiences of white middle-class women—her phenomenological approach to sexual difference can be appropriated to expand the scope of her analysis. I also discuss her iconic line, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” and claim that it should not be read in terms of the traditional sex/gender distinction. Such an interpretation misconstrues her conception of the body, which for her is never merely a natural object, but rather a situation wherein nature and cultural interpretations are intertwined. In addition, I consider the issues, such as economic power, legal status, and reproductive rights, that Beauvoir considered central to women’s liberation.

A Different Kind of Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Fousekis
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
Black And White ◽  
National Organization For Women ◽  
Welfare Rights Movement ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Women's Equality

This chapter looks at the new voices that began speaking for child care, both in California and across the nation: black mothers in the welfare rights movement and white middle-class women in the feminist movement. While black and white poor mothers organized in CPACC and around welfare rights, a more visible women's movement developed among predominantly the white middle class. In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) emerged out of frustration over the government's unwillingness to enforce Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made discrimination by sex as well as by race illegal. With seasoned women's rights, labor feminists, and a few black women at its helm, NOW quickly moved to the forefront of the struggle for women's equality.

White Middle-Class Identity Work Through ‘Against the Grain’ School Choices

2009 ◽  
pp. 76-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
David James ◽  
Diane Reay ◽  
Gill Crozier ◽  
Fiona Jamieson ◽  
Phoebe Beedell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
White Middle Class
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