Seperate being-ness

I have taken various classes at Rhodes - each hitting upon ideas of difference. Within these classes I've consistently been taught similar lessons. Race, I am told, is a social construct. So is the concept of gender. These statements have been emphasized with text from current as well as past authors. Simone de Beauvoir, as a leading writer within gender and sexuality authorship, stands out among the rest. Though I had previously recognized the difference between sex and gender - it was her words which outlined for be the defense for this statement. If ever approached by someone who was unable to grasp the concept of sex and gender being two distinct and separate forms of being-ness, I would likely point them to her. 

In her text, Simone de Beauvoir distinguishes between the concept of sex and gender. She suggests that gender is an aspect of identity which is gradually acquired over time. This distinction is essential to the effort in debunking the claim that sex is invariant. By differentiating between the terms sex and gender, de Beauvoir expressed her belief that gender is the cultural meaning that the body acquires over time. With this – it becomes incredibly difficult to attribute the social values of woman to the biological compulsion of female. Neither can we easily refer to gendered behavior as natural/unnatural. By definition – all forms of gender is socially constructed. All gender is therefore unnatural.

If this idea (that gender is the accumulation of cultural meaning over time and therefore is essentially unnatural) is preserved, then it follows that being a given sex has no necessary consequence to gender. The presumption of a cause-based relationship between sex and gender is then undermined. Following this, the identification of the female body as the center of the gender “woman” is recognized as arbitrary.

I believe that this line of thought is what leads to a distinct contribution of Simone de Beauvoir: that being female – and being woman – are two separate forms of existence.