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Sexuality Situated: Beauvoir on “Frigidity”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Suzanne Laba Cataldi
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Abstract

This essay relates scenes from Beauvoir's novels to her views of female eroticism and frigidity in The Second Sex. Expressions of frigidity signal unjust power relations in Beauvoir's literature. She constructs frigidity as a symbolic means of rejecting dominance in heterosexual relations. Thus frigidity need not be interpreted, as it sometimes is, as a form of bad faith. The essay concludes with some thoughts on the relevance of Beauvoir's view of frigidity to contemporary feminism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 14 , Issue 4: Special Issue: The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir , Fall 1999 , pp. 70 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by Hypatia, Inc.

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