English subtitles for clip: File:Ikusgela – Simone de Beauvoir - ca.webm

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One is not born: but becomes a woman.

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No biological, psychic or economic destiny

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defines the image of women in society:

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it is created by all civilization.

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This thought is still current.

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despite being from 1949.

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It was written by Simone de Beauvoir,

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in a literary essay called "The Second Sex".

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Philosopher, essayist, novelist,

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writer, journalist...

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Beauvoir was all of that.

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Today we know her mainly because she developed

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some of the fundamental ideas of contemporary feminism.

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But who was Beauvoir?

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What do we know about her life?

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She was born in 1908,

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in Paris,

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within a rich and Catholic family.

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At the age of 15, she already knew that she wanted to be a writer,

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and by then she had lost her faith.

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She studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne University, Paris.

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There she met several intellectuals of the time,

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including Jean Paul Sartre:

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the thinker who would accompany her for the rest of her life.

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In 1949 she published the book "The Second Sex",

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and although she did not consider herself a feminist yet,

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it became the basis of the world struggle

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in favor of women.

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The Second World War had a great impact on the life of the thinker.

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Beauvoir set aside her apolitical stance

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and began her participation in the political conflicts of the time,

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as we would say today.

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In the 1970s, for example,

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she created a movement in favor of the decriminalization of abortion,

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called “Choisir”.

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"Choisir" means "to chose" in French.

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She died in 1986;

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but she left

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in her novels, essays and memoirs

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Reflections that continue to have repercussions up to date.

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The intellectual current embodying

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Simone de Beauvoir's thought is existentialism.

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Or to be exact,

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atheistic existentialism,

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which has no theological foundation.

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According to this line of thought,

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the human being is not predetermined

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by any philosophical or moral doctrine.

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Life and the world have no intrinsic meaning,

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but each one can give their own.

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Furthermore, you have to give it a meaning,

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if you want to live an authentic life.

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The human being is free, and therefore,

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you are doomed to constantly make choices.

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And, consequently, you are also responsible for your own decisions.

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You decide what kind of person you want to be,

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and what kind of society you want to build,

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through your choices and actions.

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No more looking for excuses in tradition,

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in biology or whatever!

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Therefore, Simone de Beauvoir drank

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from existentialism.

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Here experiences were very present

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in the development of her thought, and for this,

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she merged philosophical, scientific thought and literary gift.

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Her contributions can be summarized in five main ideas:

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1- In order to be free, you need to want it and act for it.

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According to Simone de Beauvoir, freedom is always

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located and established:

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it occurs in each individual,

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conditioned by a given context.

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So people don't have

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the same opportunities to develop their freedom

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and carry out their own life projects.

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For example, the slave does not have

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the same opportunities as the lord,

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and the woman does not have those of the man either.

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Against this,

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human beings have to build, expand and fight for

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their and others freedom at all times.

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In Beauvoir's words,

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to reject freedom is to renounce to humanity.

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2- Humanity is ambiguous.

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Contradiction is essential to the human being.

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It is the animal that does not want to be an animal.

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The human lives in the present,

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as between the past and the future.

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It is an individual, but also, part of a collective,

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since the human is formed through relationships with the others.

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Beauvoir declares and thinks about these duplicities,

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and seeks to bring up and gather

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the typical binary ideas within European thought.

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Life and death,

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the body and the mind,

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nature and culture,

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the man and the woman.

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Beauvoir paved the way to review and rethink

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those binary schemes.

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3- The woman is built.

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She discarded the attempts to predefine

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the human being, the man or the woman:

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be it from economics, be it from psychology, be it from biology.

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Life, and therefore concepts, are given meaning by acting,

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according to one's own specific or social frameworks.

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The meaning comes from outside, and inside.

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There is no natural, intrinsic essence.

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There is no oppression or natural privilege.

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And therefore, as those power structures and positions

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are cultural, they are variable.

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You are not born Jewish, black, Basque,

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you come to be.

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The process is done by society, the context and one's own decisions.

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So happens with the woman.

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4- The philosophy of otherness.

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Beauvoir uses the category of "otherness"

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to explain the role of women in this masculine world.

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Oneself is not enough to develop a free project.

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Human beings develop ourselves through relationships with others.

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The relationship between oneself and the other can be of two types.

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If the relationship develops wide open,

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respect will be bidirectional,

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and it will enrich both.

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If, on the contrary, comes from the otherness,

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like that of the owner and the slave, there will be no respect.

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The Other will always be defined in the relationship towards the One,

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and the Other will know the world and themself through the One's eyes.

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The owner will be the "who", the subject;

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the slave, on the other hand, the "other", the object.

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In Beauvoir's words,

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that's what happens with women.

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The man is the subject, the woman, instead, the otherness.

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We can find an example of this in today's sports news.

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Men's sport is sport.

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Women's sport, on the other hand,

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a lower category, the otherness, women's sport.

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5- Diversity of thought: differences in equality.

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Regarding diversity,

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Beauvoir counterpointed two ideas:

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on the one hand, the oppressive and imperialist logic:

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“equality in difference”.

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Some kind of theoretical equality is given

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to those who are different,

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but as far as the actual conditions are concerned, they are relegated.

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On the other hand, the thinker claims the inversion of the phrase,

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becoming "difference in equality".

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Starting from that idea,

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countering the differences,

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she developed a thought-line that would take them into account as equals, from the very root.

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In essence, that could be the basis for current understanding

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of various domination-relationships

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and the intersectional struggle.

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We still use those concepts

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to understand and analyze the current world.

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That is the reason why Simone de Beauvoir

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is among the most significant thinkers of the 20th century.

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And also for her ability to look to the future:

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"new carnal and affective relations of which we cannot conceive 

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will be born between the sexes."

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70 years later,

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Could we say that she was right?

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Or do we still need to develop relationships that we cannot imagine?