1. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 749.
2. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 759.
3. Schwarzer, After The Second Sex, 116.
4. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 96.
5. Srinivasan, The Right to Sex, 179; Zakaria, Against White Feminism, 95.
6. Beauvoir, The Mandarins, 584.
7. Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 192.
8. Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 193.
9. Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 181.
10. Beauvoir, Diary of a Philosophy Student Vol 1, 264.
11. Beauvoir, “Moral Idealism and Political Realism,” 180.
12. Beauvoir, Pyrrhus and Cineas, 180.
13. Beauvoir, America Day by Day, 94.
14. Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance II, 88–89.
15. Beauvoir, The Mandarins, 585.
16. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 81.
17. Beauvoir, Political Writings, 26.
18. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 90.
19. Schwarzer, After The Second Sex, 74.
20. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum. 1 (1989): 151–152.
21. Demby, Gene. “Why Now, White People?” NPR: Code Switch. June 16, 2020. Accessed Sep 1, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878963732/why-now-white-people.
22. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 91.
23. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 91.
24. Trump, Donald J. “Sad to See the History and Culture of Our Great Country…” Twitter. August 17, 2017. Accessed Jun 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/898169407213645824?s=20.
25. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 91. Philosopher Cécile Fabre also argued that we have a responsibility to choose to honor and remember the right people and the right things in the right ways (Fabre, Cécile and Nigel Warburton, “Philosophy Bites.” Cécile Fabre on Remembrance. 2016. https://philosophybites.libsyn.com/cecile-fabre-on-remembrance).
26. “Call for Plaques on Scotland’s Statues with Links to Slavery.” BBC News June 8, 2020. Accessed February 28, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-52965230.
27. Wilkerson, Caste, 14.
28. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 84.
29. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 87.
30. Beauvoir, The Mandarins, 26.
31. Philosopher Sonia Kruks argued that when the underprivileged can’t speak or act for themselves, or can’t do so effectively, then it can be helpful and responsible for an ally to use their advantages or platform to amplify the message—but otherwise it’s often better to stay out of it—to say and do nothing (Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege,” 185). Philosophers Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman advise white women to join the community in the spirit of openness, friendship, reciprocity of care, and especially humility: “So you need to learn to become unintrusive, unimportant, patient to the point of tears, while at the same time open to learning any possible lessons” (Lugones, Maria C., and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘the Woman’s Voice.’” Women’s Studies International 6.6 [1983]: 580).
32. Phillips, Julie. “Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds.” Humanities Winter 2019. Accessed Aug 26, 2021. https://www.neh.gov/article/ursula-k-le-guin-was-creator-worlds.
33. “Lettre ouverte à la Commission de révision du code pénal pour la révision de certains textes régissant les rapports entre adultes et mineurs.” Archives Françoise Dolto 1977. Accessed Mar 1, 2021. http://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html.
34. Beauvoir, The Mandarins, 358.
35. Beauvoir, The Mandarins, 397.
36. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 89–90.
37. Beauvoir, “The Second Sex: 25 Years Later,” 80.
38. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 89.
39. In The Bonds of Freedom, philosopher Kristana Arp criticized Beauvoir’s stance on violence because you can’t fully negate another person’s freedom unless you kill them; however, you can limit their power by, for example, imprisoning them to prevent further oppression.
40. Philosopher Amia Srinivasan argued that getting angry is a vital way of registering and communicating injustices beyond simply knowing them. In Srinivasan’s view, telling people not to be angry is about social control. Opposing anger, even if sympathetic to injustices, suggests not only that the victim is responsible but also that the injustice was not a big deal, since the implication is that it’s not worth getting upset about. An example of this, Srinivasan noted, is when women are given advice about not getting raped, which puts the moral responsibility for rape on victims and not perpetrators of rape. This is a function of reverse oppression. In this case, the flawed logic is that some people’s freedom from being raped impinges on other people’s freedom to rape. (Srinivasan, Amia. “The Aptness of Anger.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 26.2 [2018]: 123–44.)
41. Cherry, The Case For Rage, 5.
42. Ferber, Alona. “Judith Butler on the Culture Wars, JK Rowling and Living in ‘Anti-Intellectual Times.’” New Statesman Sep 22, 2020. Accessed Sep 5, 2021. https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times.
43. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 343.
44. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 97–98; Beauvoir realized that by virtue of being French, she was complicit in France’s colonialism. She asked, “I wanted to stop being an accomplice in [the Algerian] war, but how?” (Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance II, 91). She helped Algerian torture victims, but felt generally powerless until lawyer Gisèle Halimi asked her to help launch a campaign to release activist Djamila Boupacha, a member of a militant Algerian independence group who was arrested, then tortured and raped for weeks, for a crime she said she didn’t commit and that there was no evidence of her committing. Beauvoir transcribed Boupacha’s story and published it in the national newspaper Le monde, with the view to shifting public opinion about the war toward Algerian independence. After Boupacha was released, the militant group she was a part of forcibly sent her back to Algeria but Beauvoir refused to get involved because she didn’t want to speak out against a rebellion she supported. Philosopher Sonia Kruks argued that Beauvoir objectified Boupacha—because Beauvoir decided how to share Boupacha’s story and used it to advocate for a greater cause—but Beauvoir was probably not wrong to do so because, at least in this case, even though the choice was harrowing, the means justified the ends (Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege,” 194).
45. There is much philosophical support for fighting with rhetoric instead of violence. For example, Hannah Arendt proposed that, “politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent” (Arendt, On Violence, 56). The suggestion is that power flows through reason which should counter the need for violence. The problem with this logic is that if oppressed people use violence, then it becomes their fault, not the oppressor’s fault, even though the oppressors used violence to create the oppressive situation. Indeed, when members of oppressed groups use violence to counter violence, they are often the ones who are punished. Domestic violence is tolerated, if not acceptable or legal—such as in Russia, where domestic violence was decriminalized in 2017—and standing up to it is shunned or ignored. While police brutality in the US is acceptable, violence by protesters against police brutality is condemned and any hint of violence is countered with more police violence. When CeCe McDonald, a Black trans woman, was attacked in a racist altercation outside a bar and after a woman smashed a glass in her face, McDonald protected herself with a pair of scissors and killed one of the attackers. McDonald said, “For all of my life I was conditioned to believe that I’m supposed to get abused or accept violence because I was trans … This white man was getting off on seeing me beg for my life … seeing the fear in me that made him validate his white supremacy.” She took a plea bargain for manslaughter and was sentenced to forty-one months in a men’s prison, including three months in solitary—punishment even worse than imprisonment—under the guise of protecting her (Gares, Jacqueline. Free CeCe! Jac Gares Media, Inc., U.S., 2016).
46. Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 28.
47. Inspired by Beauvoir, Sonia Kruks employed the term “an ambiguous humanism,” to refer to a self-critical and well-intentioned humanism that combats oppression and dehumanization, acknowledges tensions in political action, accepts responsibility for failures, and focuses on continually reconstructing itself (Kruks, Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity, 33).
48. Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance II, 375.
49. Beauvoir, “Moral Idealism and Political Realism,” 190–191.
50. Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. 1955. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012: 15.
51. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 764.
52. Beauvoir, “Pyrrhus and Cineas,” 140.
53. Beauvoir, “Introduction to Women Insist,” 251.
54. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir nodded to Arthur Rimbaud who wrote that when women become free from servitude, they will become poets.