SIMONS. The Second Sex and the Roots of Radical Feminism

Abstract

The article by Margaret Simons, one of the most well-known researchers of Simone de Beauvoir’s thinking and a Philosophy professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA, as the title suggests, presents an approximation of the great work The Second Sex, authored by the French existentialist, to the historical intervention which it helped to occur by forming the basis of the radical feminist thinking. By connecting various forms of oppression, Beauvoir defies the reductionism of identity politics (SIMONS, 1999, p.147) and anticipates the fundament of radical feminism, a political movement dedicated to the elimination of sex-class system.