The Second Sex

by Simone de Beauvoir

  And Renée Vivien:

  Our heart is alike in our woman’s breast,*

  Dearest! Our body is identically formed.

  The same heavy fate was laid on our soul

  I translate your smile and the shadow on your face.

  My softness is equal to your immense softness,

  At times it even seems we are of the same race

  I love in you my child, my friend, and my sister.†

  This uncoupling can occur in a maternal form; the mother who recognizes and alienates herself in her daughter often has a sexual attachment to her; the desire to protect and rock in her arms a soft object made of flesh is shared with the lesbian. Colette emphasizes this analogy, writing in Les vrilles de la vigne (The Tender Shoot): “You will give me pleasure, bent over me, your eyes full of maternal concern, you who seek, through your passionate woman friend, the child you never had.”

  And Renée Vivien expresses the same feeling:

  Come, I shall carry you off like a child who is sick,

  Like a child who is plaintive and fearful and sick.

  Within my firm arms I clasp your slight body,

  You shall see that I know how to heal and protect,

  And my arms are strong, the better to protect you.7

  And again:

  I love you to be weak and calm in my arms …

  Like a warm cradle where you will take your rest.*

  In all love—sexual or maternal—there is both greed and generosity, the desire to possess the other and to give the other everything; but when both women are narcissists, caressing an extension of themselves or their reflection in the child or the lover, the mother and the lesbian are notably similar.

  However, narcissism does not always lead to homosexuality either, as Marie Bashkirtseff’s example shows; there is not the slightest trace of affection for women in her writings; intellectual rather than sensual, extremely vain, she dreams from childhood of being validated by man: nothing interests her unless it contributes to her glory. A woman who idolizes only herself and who strives for abstract success is incapable of a warm complicity with other women; for her, they are only rivals and enemies.

  In truth, there is never only one determining factor; it is always a question of a choice made from a complex whole, contingent on a free decision; no sexual destiny governs an individual’s life: on the contrary, his eroticism expresses his general attitude to existence.

  Circumstances, however, also have an important part in this choice. Today, the two sexes still live mostly separated: in boarding schools and in girls’ schools the passage from intimacy to sexuality is quick; there are far fewer lesbians in circles where girl and boy camaraderie encourages heterosexual experiences. Many women who work among women in workshops and offices and who have little opportunity to be around men will form amorous friendships with women: it will be materially and morally practical to join their lives. The absence or failure of heterosexual relations will destine them to inversion. It is difficult to determine the boundary between resignation and predilection: a woman can devote herself to women because a man has disappointed her, but sometimes he disappoints her because she was looking for a woman in him. For all these reasons, it is wrong to establish a radical distinction between heterosexual and homosexual. Once the indecisive time of adolescence has passed, the normal male no longer allows himself homosexual peccadilloes; but the normal woman often returns to the loves—platonic or not—that enchanted her youth. Disappointed by men, she will seek in feminine arms the male lover who betrayed her; in The Vagabond, Colette wrote about this consoling role that forbidden sexual pleasures often play in the lives of women: some of them can spend their whole existence consoling each other. Even a woman fulfilled by male embraces might not refuse calmer sexual pleasures. Passive and sensual, a woman friend’s caresses will not shock her since all she has to do is let herself go, let herself be fulfilled. Active and ardent, she will seem “androgynous,” not because of a mysterious combination of hormones, but simply because aggressiveness and the taste for possession are looked on as virile attributes; Claudine in love with Renaud still covets Rézi’s charms; as fully woman as she is, she still continues to desire to take and caress. Of course, these “perverse” desires are carefully repressed in “nice women”; they nonetheless manifest themselves as pure but passionate friendships or in the guise of maternal tenderness; sometimes they are suddenly revealed during a psychosis or a menopausal crisis.

  So it is all the more useless to try to place lesbians in two definitive categories. Because social role-playing is sometimes superimposed on their real relations—taking pleasure in imitating a bisexual couple—they themselves suggest the division into virile and feminine. But the fact that one wears an austere suit and the other a flowing dress must not create an illusion. Looking more closely, one can ascertain—except in special cases—that their sexuality is ambiguous. A woman who becomes lesbian because she rejects male domination often experiences the joy of recognizing the same proud Amazon in another; not long ago many guilty loves flourished among the women students of Sèvres who lived together far from men; they were proud to belong to a feminine elite and wanted to remain autonomous subjects; this complexity that united them against the privileged caste enabled each one to admire in a friend this prestigious being she cherished in herself; embracing each other, each one was both man and woman and was enchanted with the other’s androgynous virtues. Inversely, a woman who wants to enjoy the pleasures of her femininity in feminine arms also knows the pride of obeying no master. Renée Vivien ardently loved feminine beauty, and she wanted to be beautiful; she took great care of her appearance, she was proud of her long hair; but she also liked to feel free and intact; in her poems she expresses scorn for those women who through marriage consent to become serfs of a male. Her taste for hard liquor and her sometimes obscene language manifested her desire for virility. The truth is that for most couples caresses are reciprocal. Thus it follows that the roles are distributed in very uncertain ways: the most infantile woman can play an adolescent boy toward a protective matron, or a mistress leaning on her lover’s arm. They can love each other as equals. Because her partners are counterparts, all combinations, transpositions, exchanges, and scenarios are possible. Relations balance each other out depending on the psychological tendencies of each woman friend and on the situation as a whole. If there is one who helps or keeps the other, she assumes the male’s functions: tyrannical protector, exploited dupe, respected lord, or even sometimes a pimp; a moral, social, and intellectual superiority will often confer authority on her; however, the one more loved will enjoy the privileges that the more loving one’s passionate attachment invests her with. Like that of a man and a woman, the association of two women can take many different forms; it is based on feeling, interest, or habit; it is conjugal or romantic; it has room for sadism, masochism, generosity, faithfulness, devotion, caprice, egotism, and betrayal; there are prostitutes as well as great lovers among lesbians.

  There are, however, certain circumstances that give these relations particular characteristics. They are not established by an institution or customs, nor regulated by conventions: they are lived more sincerely because of this. Men and women—even husband and wife—more or less play roles with each other, and woman, on whom the male always imposes some kind of directive, does so even more: exemplary virtue, charm, coquetry, childishness, or austerity; never in the presence of the husband and the lover does she feel fully herself; she does not show off to a woman friend, she has nothing to feign, they are too similar not to show themselves as they are. This similarity gives rise to the most complete intimacy. Eroticism often has only a very small part in these unions; sexual pleasure has a less striking character, less dizzying than between man and woman, it does not lead to such overwhelming metamorphoses; but when male and female lovers have separated into their individual flesh, they become strangers again; and even the male body is repulsive to the woman; and the man sometimes
feels a kind of bland distaste for the woman’s body; between women, carnal tenderness is more equal, continuous, they are not transported in frenetic ecstasy, but they never fall into hostile indifference; seeing and touching each other are calm pleasures discreetly prolonging those of the bed. Sarah Posonby’s union with her beloved lasted for almost fifty years without a cloud: they seem to have been able to create a peaceful Eden on the fringes of the world. But sincerity also has a price. Because they show themselves freely, without caring either to hide or to control themselves, women incite each other to incredible violence. Man and women intimidate each other because they are different: he feels pity and apprehension toward her; he strives to treat her courteously, indulgently, and circumspectly; she respects him and somewhat fears him, she tries to control herself in front of him; each one tries to spare the mysterious other whose feelings and reactions are hard to discern. Women among themselves are pitiless; they foil, provoke, chase, attack, and lead each other on to the limits of abjection. Masculine calm—be it indifference or self-control—is a barrier feminine emotions come up against: but between two women friends, there is escalation of tears and convulsions; their patience in endlessly going over criticisms and explanations is insatiable. Demands, recriminations, jealousy, tyranny—all these plagues of conjugal life pour out in heightened form. If such love is often stormy, it is also usually more threatened than heterosexual love. It is criticized by the society into which it cannot always integrate. A woman who assumes the masculine attitude—by her character, situation, and the force of her passion—will regret not giving her woman friend a normal and respectable life, not being able to marry her, leading her along unusual paths: these are the feelings Radclyffe Hall attributes to her heroine in The Well of Loneliness; this remorse is conveyed by a morbid anxiety and an even greater torturous jealousy. The more passive or less infatuated woman will suffer from society’s censure; she will think herself degraded, perverted, frustrated, she will resent the one who has imposed this lot on her. It might be that one of the two women desires a child; either she sadly resigns herself to her childlessness or both adopt a child or the one who desires motherhood asks a man for his services; the child is sometimes a link, sometimes also a new source of friction.

  What gives women enclosed in homosexuality a masculine character is not their erotic life, which, on the contrary, confines them to a feminine universe: it is all the responsibilities they have to assume because they do without men. Their situation is the opposite of that of the courtesan who sometimes has a male mind by dint of living among males—like Ninon de Lenclos—but who depends on them. The particular atmosphere around lesbians stems from the contrast between the gynaeceum character of their private life and the masculine independence of their public existence. They behave like men in a world without men. A woman alone always seems a little unusual; it is not true that men respect women: they respect each other through their women—wives, mistresses, “kept” women; when masculine protection no longer extends over her, woman is disarmed before a superior caste that is aggressive, sneering, or hostile. As an “erotic perversion,” feminine homosexuality elicits smiles; but inasmuch as it implies a way of life, it provokes scorn or scandal. If there is an affectation in lesbians’ attitudes, it is because they have no way of living their situation naturally: natural implies that one does not reflect on self, that one acts without representing one’s acts to oneself; but people’s behavior constantly makes the lesbian conscious of herself. She can only follow her path with calm indifference if she is older or secure in her social prestige.

  It is difficult to determine, for example, if it is by taste or by defense mechanism that she so often dresses in a masculine way. It certainly comes in large part from a spontaneous choice. Nothing is less natural than dressing like a woman; no doubt masculine clothes are also artificial, but they are more comfortable and simple and made to favor action rather than impede it; George Sand and Isabelle Eberhardt wore men’s suits; Thyde Monnier in her last book spoke of her predilection for wearing trousers;8 all active women like flat shoes and sturdy clothes. The meaning of feminine attire is clear: it is a question of decoration, and decorating oneself is offering oneself; heterosexual feminists were formerly as intransigent as lesbians on this point: they refused to make themselves merchandise on display, they wore suits and felt hats; fancy low-cut dresses seemed to them the symbol of the social order they were fighting. Today they have succeeded in mastering reality, and the symbolic has less importance in their eyes. But it remains for the lesbian insofar as she must still assert her claim. It might also be—if physical particularities have motivated her vocation—that austere clothes suit her better. It must be added that one of the roles clothing plays is to gratify woman’s tactile sensuality; but the lesbian disdains the consolations of velvet and silk: like Sandor she will appreciate them on her woman friend, or her friend’s body may even replace them. This is why a lesbian often likes hard liquor, smokes strong tobacco, uses rough language, and imposes rigorous exercise on herself: erotically, she shares in feminine softness; by contrast, she likes an intense environment. This aspect can make her enjoy men’s company. But a new factor enters here: the often ambiguous relationship she has with them. A woman who is very sure of her masculinity will want only men as friends and associates: this assurance is rarely seen except in a woman who shares interests with men, who—in business, action, or art—works and succeeds like a man. When Gertrude Stein entertained, she only talked with the men and left to Alice Toklas the job of talking with their women companions.9 It is toward women that the very masculine homosexual woman will have an ambivalent attitude: she scorns them, but she has an inferiority complex in relation to them both as a woman and as a man; she fears being perceived by them as a tomboy, an incomplete man, which leads her either to display a haughty superiority or to manifest—like Stekel’s transvestite—a sadistic aggressiveness toward them. But this case is rather rare. We have seen that most lesbians partially reject men. For them as well as for the frigid woman, there is disgust, resentment, shyness, or pride; they do not really feel similar to men; to their feminine resentment is added a masculine inferiority complex; they are rivals, better armed to seduce, possess, and keep their prey; they detest their power over women, they detest the “soiling” to which they subject women. They also take exception to seeing men hold social privileges and to feeling that men are stronger than they: it is a crushing humiliation not to be able to fight with a rival, to know he can knock you down with one blow. This complex hostility is one of the reasons some homosexual women declare themselves as homosexuals; they see only other homosexual women; they group together to show they do not need men either socially or sexually. From there one easily slides into useless boastfulness and all the playacting of inauthenticity. The lesbian first plays at being a man; then being lesbian itself becomes a game; a transvestite goes from disguise to livery; and the woman under the pretext of freeing herself from man’s oppression makes herself the slave of her personage; she did not want to confine herself in a woman’s situation, but she imprisons herself in that of the lesbian. Nothing gives a worse impression of small-mindedness and mutilation than these clans of liberated women. It must be added that many women only declare themselves homosexual out of self-interest: they adopt equivocal appearances with exaggerated consciousness, hoping to catch men who like “perverts.” These show-off zealots—who are obviously those one notices most—contribute to throwing discredit on what public opinion considers a vice and a pose.

  In truth, homosexuality is no more a deliberate perversion than a fatal curse.10 It is an attitude that is chosen in situation; it is both motivated and freely adopted. None of the factors the subject accepts in this choice—physiological facts, psychological history, or social circumstances—is determining, although all contribute to explaining it. It is one way among others for woman to solve the problems posed by her condition in general and by her erotic situation in particular. Like all human beh
avior, this will involve playacting, imbalance, failure, or lies, or, on the other hand, it will be the source of fruitful experiences, depending on whether it is lived in bad faith, laziness, and inauthenticity or in lucidity, generosity, and freedom.

  1. A heterosexual woman can easily have a friendship with certain homosexual men, because she finds security and amusement in these asexual relations. But on the whole, she feels hostile toward these men who in themselves or in others degrade the sovereign male into a passive thing.

  2. It is noteworthy that English law punishes homosexuality in men while not considering it a crime for women.

  3. In the Eyes of Memory.

  4. La méthode psychanalytique et la doctrine freudienne (Psychoanalytical Method and the Doctrine of Freud”).

  * Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis.—TRANS.

  * Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion.—TRANS.

  5. As in Dorothy Baker’s novel Trio, which is, moreover, very superficial.

  6. Ces plaisirs (The Pure and the Impure).

  * Discrepancy between Renée Vivien’s poem quoted by Beauvoir and Vivien’s published version, both translated by Gillian Spraggs.—TRANS.

  † Cited incorrectly by Beauvoir as Sortilèges, which is nonexistent; poem from translation of Sillages (1908; Sea Wakes).—TRANS.

  7. At the Sweet Hour of Hand in Hand.

  * Discrepancy between Vivien’s poem quoted by Beauvoir and Vivien’s published version, both translated by Gillian Spraggs; from “Je t’aime d’être faible” (“I Love You to Be Weak”), in ibid.—TRANS.

  8. Me.

  9. A heterosexual woman who believes—or wants to persuade herself—that she transcends the difference of the sexes by her own worth will often have the same attitude; for example Mme de Staël.

  10. The Well of Loneliness presents a heroine marked by a psychophysiological inevitability. But the documentary value of this novel is very insubstantial in spite of its reputation.