EXISTENTIAL CERTAINTIES

“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” These most quoted words of The Second Sex became the centerpiece of first-wave feminism and the signature of their author, Simone de Beauvoir. Their meaning, fleshed out in The Second Sex's descriptions of women's daily lives, once seemed obvious. They seemed to point to the difference between sex and gender. They seemed to indicate the ways in which human beings born with vaginas were habituated and initiated into the roles of adults called women. Today things seem less clear. Do these words mean that sex and gender are radically distinct – that any sexed body can become whatever gender it chooses? Could any body become a woman? Should Beauvoir's critique of the “biology is destiny” argument be taken as an argument for the complete malleability of the body? Or should her words alert us to the fact that the different materialities of human bodies constitute us as sexually distinct but that the sex/gender differences mandated by patriarchy are epistemologically untenable, ethically intolerable, and politically unjust (SS 267)?

“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” When originally written, these words produced shocking effects. They soon became central to the feminist critique of patriarchy. Eventually they became familiar, obvious. Contemporary theorists and advanced technologies have returned these words to their radical origin.