In sociology seminars all over the world, a game is played, almost imperceptibly. A theory is presented by someone. It is contested by someone else. De Beauvoir is pulled out by someone. The room suddenly changes. It has occurred in cramped postgraduate offices in Manchester, bright lecture halls in Nairobi, and packed seminar rooms in Lahore where the whiteboard markers are constantly dry and ceiling fans sway overhead. Simone de Beauvoir appears everywhere, and she nearly always prevails.
When you spend time with people who work as social scientists, it’s difficult to ignore this. Other theoretical references just don’t have the same weight as the Beauvoir card, as some students only half-jokingly refer to it. You get a nod when you bring up Durkheim. Someone will argue if you bring up Foucault. When de Beauvoir is brought up in a discussion about gender, identity, work, family, or even religion, the conversation usually revolves around her.
It’s not just that she was well-known. There are many well-known theorists. It’s that her main point, which was put together in The Second Sex in 1949, is able to function on several levels at once. On one level, it’s an existentialist philosophical assertion that women’s identities are created by history, culture, and social expectations rather than being innate biological traits. On a deeper level, it’s a remark about everyday life that is almost brutally realistic.
Her claim that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” feels more like a diagnosis than a theory when you stroll through any city, gaze at the billboards, or sit in any school. Probably more intellectual work has been done by that one sentence than by her contemporaries’ whole volumes. Its refusal to be constrained by any one discipline is what gives it durability, not just its elegance. It is used by sociologists. It is used by literary critics. It is used by philosophers. It is used by historians. De Beauvoir freely traverses all theoretical boundaries in a world where academic disciplines fiercely defend their own, which may be why her market value never seems to decline.
The Beauvoir card is particularly potent because it requires an explanation of the problem’s construction rather than merely describing it. Mechanisms piqued her interest. How is the concept of the “other” systematically created in a society? How is femininity portrayed as the aberration and masculinity as the neutral human standard? These are uncomfortable questions, and they shouldn’t be. It feels more like watching someone discreetly remove a load-bearing wall from a structure that everyone thought was perfectly stable than listening to a lecture when de Beauvoir is appropriately invoked during a sociology discussion.
Additionally, there is something about timing that needs to be acknowledged. The links between capitalism, patriarchy, and social reproduction were still being established when De Beauvoir arrived. Marx, Sartre’s existentialism, and a sincere interest in psychology and history all had an impact on her. This combination resulted in a theory that philosophers could not completely reject, socialists found useful, and feminists considered essential.
Whether a single up-and-coming theorist still has the same cross-disciplinary influence is still up for debate. Certain frameworks rise and fall in tandem with academic fashion, and some names are widely used. However, de Beauvoir’s card continues to be played because it keeps landing rather than out of nostalgia. The woman who was once told by her father that she “thinks like a man” went on to redefine what it meant to be a woman and to think.
