Let me just say to anyone whose introduction to "The Second Sex" is the sentence William quoted: yes, it's quite a read.

I think one of the interesting things we see in this chapter is just how delicate it is to make an argument from science, that is, from "physical facts".

"Woman? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female – this word is sufficient to define her."

William, you ask if she would find any (physical?) definition derogatory. For me the word "sufficient" is a clue. I would certainly say she thinks it is wrong. The equation of woman with womb is shown to be problematic by running through a litany of other examples of wombs which have qualities very different from those we might find in a human female. Even among humans, at least well-bred ones, we do not consider people who have had hysterectomies "no longer women". I would say that the problem, in particular, is given by the equation of a person with a part of their anatomy. We certainly believe that humans must have bodies to exist, and yet we would not locate the person in any particular part of his/her body (even the brain, which requires the sense data of the body). Pinning down a physical location for a person's identity, even if it is intended to be metaphorical, implies that everything about them is mediated by, conditioned on, the functions of that organ; and this is a recipe for disaster. Imagine a race of people whose souls were located in their arms; and a race of people whose souls were located in their stomachs. The human faculty of imagination immediately begins to play at constructing the characters of these unfortunate tribes.

This sentence is particularly important: "The term ‘female’ is derogatory not because it emphasises woman’s animality, but because it imprisons her in her sex."

On the issue of praying mantises, etc: there is an obvious paradox here, and as Ellen says, a paradox is usually a sign of something interesting. Namely, why are women portrayed simultaneously as weak and passive, and as archetypically terrible ("monstrous and swollen termite queens")? Surely at least one of the two is a lie? Or -- if we take the fear to be a true fear, whether or not it is a true fact -- then what is at stake in perpetuating the mythology of women as weak and passive? For, if there is one thing we learn from this chapter, I think it is that society (our society? SdB's?) does not, exactly, view women as individuals. What it believes of one woman it believes, to some degree or another, to be true or at least potentially true of all women.

Why does sex exist? This is a very deep question, and a very loaded one. I'll sign off for now, but will think about it. :-)

I interpreted these sentences differently.
In: "Woman? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female – this word is sufficient to define her." I understood the word which defines her to be simply female. Probably in french the word has a more animal association to it than in English. I don't remember much French, but perhaps the word in French is femelle instead of femme. Maybe someone with a French version can verify this for us?

You ask William: "Does SdB feel that "defining" woman via her uterus amounts to insulting her, and if so why?"
 I understood her saying that women are defined 'as a uterous' not 'via her uterous'. That is, that that's all she is - a uterus. Exists for sex and kids (she did forget the cooking part at least).

You then ask William: "I was a bit shocked by her characterization of the male mindset in the first paragraph, with the termites, praying mantis, lionness, etc.  How do people feel about these examples?"
I don't find them to be a paradox Mia, though I agree with you that women are in general somehow associated with a paradox - what do women want?
I would describe it more like the associated properties of a group, like those of Jews, Blacks, and Scorpios Mia.
And yes William, I think it's still quite accurate to what are the properties most associated with women in the minds of people.
Also, by the way, the cosmos-microcosm also appears in the understanding of the Zodiac, no?

I liked your connection Mia between William's Why does sex exist? and Arthur's "What's the point of sex?" They seem such opposing questions, but are actually very connected. Nice.

Dear everyone,
For now, just a short response to the issue of "cosmos-microcosm"&SdB's project.

 It's always a very subtle point to know whether one should read the world literally, and if so, to what extent. For instance, the way one experiences time over the course of a day: the almost ethereal aliveness of early morning; the long hours before about eleven o'clock when the entire day stretches before one, unbroken; the concentration of light around noon as something changes; the thick, almost palpable light of midafternoon, when time seems to stand still; the suddenness of dusk; the entirely different quality of night, and its freedom of thought.

The difficulty is that any kind of elevation of physical fact to intellectual truth, not to say revelation, is sometimes a great understanding and sometimes a great blindness. You have an example in front of you, and you are trying to understand the general situation: how do you know if you have chosen the correct properties to abstract? I tried to say something about this here.

For me, many arguments which involve the polarity of qualities have this shadow. What begins as an interesting and useful separation of concepts becomes imprisoned in its own structure. Once we have set active against passive the motor is running and the division of the world has begun, often with a kind of Procrustean indifference to the fine structure of things, which have much more to teach us than what we understand.