SE Academic Review 2023

65 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2023

“ Beauvoir argues that menstruation is your body punishing you for not bearing a child ”

Finally, the last condition of the female gender is menopause. This could reveal itself as being a relief from woman’s ‘duty to humankind.’ At this stage woman should be able to thrive by expressing her individuality which is no longer endangered by the species’ interest. However, this is, yet again, not the case. Beauvoir claims that menopausal women are perceived as being a ‘third sex’ as their essential characteristic, which is the ability to bear children, has gone. In reaching menopause they lose their sexuality and their femininity and are hardly even seen as women. Though this may be a slightly extreme way to put it, it is true that many women find menopause to be a mentally difficult step in their lives, their body’s hormone fluctuations alone (without taking into account the societal pressures) ‘may lead to depression’ according to womensmentalhealth.org. So, how can woman come out the victor? How can she win when she has been placed in a situation where ‘her wings are cut and she is blamed for not knowing how to fly’? It could be the case that she would win in society, she could be viewed as valuable and strong because she is living a normal life despite her complex biology, despite her pain and suffering which is unavoidable and essential to the human species; however, this is sadly not the case. Instead, woman is limited by her gender, she is limited by all that comes with being a woman and is unable to escape her obligations. When she can manage to suppress society’s, and even her body’s pressure to being ‘the woman’ by, for example, not having children, she loses value in the eyes of others as they see her as a failure. They see her as failing to fulfil her role, her fate, her ‘destiny’.

In the first chapter of The Second Sex , published in 1949, Beauvoir describes the woman’s almost damning biology at lengths. She puts forward the idea that childbearing is the enemy of female individuality, and only when ‘she (the woman) escapes the servitude of maternity, can she sometimes be the male’s equal’. By having the role of childbearing, a woman ultimately renounces her individuality ‘for the benefit of the species that demands this abdication’, however motherhood is not only a societal expectation, but also a biological one. In fact Beauvoir argues that menstruation is your body punishing you for not bearing a child, woman has a self-punishing biology due to her species’ requirements and her own interests come second. During this cycle of ‘pain and misery’ a woman suffers to make a crib, her body is dedicated to her species and is not her own. Proof of this is the development of mammary glands, which have ‘no role in the woman’s individual economy: they can be removed at any moment in her life’. Breasts have no use to the woman, they can even be a source of discomfort for many due to hormone fluctuations during the menstrual cycle; having them can even be life threatening as (using data for women in the US) ‘there is a 1 in 8 chance a woman will develop breast cancer sometime in her life’. Her very biology is limited by her gender’s purpose. From the fact that failure to be pregnant leads to pain, it would be logical to assume pregnancy to be physically painless, maybe even enjoyable, however this is definitely not the case. Even when the woman fulfils her ‘biological destiny’, ‘gestation is tiring work that offers woman no benefit as an individual but that demands serious sacrifices’. Pregnancy comes with many symptoms, mental and physical pain, and childbirth being potentially life threatening is a terrifying yet necessary step into motherhood.