Introduction: feminism, bodies and biological sex

Summary

In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir passionately described women's enslavement to what she called the ‘outside forces’ of their reproductive biologies. ‘Woman is of all mammalian females’, she wrote,

at once the one who is most profoundly alienated (her individuality the prey of outside forces), and the one who most violently resists this alienation; in no other is enslavement of the organism to reproduction more imperious or more unwillingly accepted. Crises of puberty and the menopause, monthly ‘curse’, long and often difficult pregnancy, painful and sometimes dangerous childbirth, illnesses, unexpected symptoms and complications – these are characteristics of the human female.

(de Beauvoir 1988: 64)

These crises are fundamentally linked to endocrine systems; for de Beauvoir, puberty, ovulation, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause all demonstrate the ways in which ‘the species’ takes hold of women's bodies through the actions of sex hormones. Women's lives are a profound struggle against this ‘imperious’ process. ‘Not without resistance’, she argues, ‘does the body of woman permit the species to take over; and this struggle is weakening and dangerous’ (de Beauvoir 1988: 59). Unlike men (whose endocrine systems do not create significant crises), a woman must strive to maintain a hold on her individuality and resist her ‘enslavement’ to the demands of biological reproduction, which are, physiologically at least, of no benefit to her (de Beauvoir 1988: 62–4).