SOURCE: Altman, Meryl. “Taking Thinking Seriously.” Women's Review of Books 13, no. 4 (January 1996): 9-10.

In the following review, Altman surveys the project to rehabilitate Beauvoir's reputation in such works as Simone de Beauvoir.

“But what exactly were you looking for in The Second Sex? A theory, or the voice and support of a big sister?” “What are we looking for in any philosophical text if not the theoretical support of a forerunner? Although, of course, we may not find it.”

(Hipparchia's Choice, p. 133)

The Second Sex is to Western feminism as the Bible is to Western culture: it's been an undeniably powerful text, but even the faithful can't agree about what it says. How can a single text lie behind Sherry Ortner and Gayle Rubin, Dorothy Dinnerstein and Judith Butler? But it does. Its author, more mysterious with every revelation, serves as a screen on which many Western feminists...