QuestionsWho am I, really?One is not born, but rather becomes, woman
Who am I, really?A self to build

One is not born, but rather becomes, woman

"One is not born, but rather becomes, woman"

Simone de Beauvoir 1908 · 1986One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
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What it claims

No biological destiny defines the social figure of "woman": civilization fashions it, and each girl becomes it. One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.

Why

As children, girls and boys have the same abilities; femininity comes from upbringing, which a different upbringing largely changes.

The same idea through history
Mary Wollstonecraft1792A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: a century and a half before Beauvoir, the same idea in another form. Women's character comes from their education, not from a nature. Beauvoir does not cite her in our excerpts.
In short

"One is not born, but rather becomes, woman" is an argument by Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, Volume II, Part One, ch. 1 "Childhood" (1949)) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: a self to build). Its claim: No biological destiny defines the social figure of "woman": civilization fashions it, and each girl becomes it. One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Second Sex, Volume II, Part One, ch. 1 "Childhood" (1949)
Valid with an implicit premise

Volume II of The Second Sex opens with Beauvoir's most famous sentence. Mind what it means. She denies neither the body nor the difference between the sexes: she speaks of "the human female", and elsewhere she grants that the division of the sexes is "a biological given". What she refuses is that this given alone produces "woman" as we see her: passive, turned towards the gaze of others, coquettish. That figure, she says, is fashioned by civilization as a whole, and it begins early: from earliest childhood, through what adults make of the child. Her argument is thus a thesis about the causes of the feminine character, resting on what she asserts about childhood, before puberty.

P1In childhood nothing separates girls from boys in ability: up to twelve, the girl is as sturdy as her brothers, with the same intellectual aptitudes, and no area is barred to her.
P2If the little girl nevertheless appears "feminine" very early (passive, coquettish, turned towards motherhood), it is not through mysterious instincts: it is that the intervention of others in the child's life is almost originary, and her "vocation" is breathed into her from the first years.
P3The girl is taught that, to please, she must make herself an object: she is treated like a "living doll", freedom is denied her, and the less she exercises her freedom, the less she dares to assert herself as a subject. It is a vicious circle.
P4When a girl is encouraged and given a "male" upbringing, she can show the same curiosity, initiative and boldness as a boy, and many problems are spared her.
P5 · implicit premiseA trait that appears in childhood, that education installs, and that a different upbringing largely removes, is not a biological destiny: it is produced by society.
Therefore no biological destiny defines the social figure of "woman": civilization fashions it, and each girl becomes it. One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a situation where everything is true (children are alike, adults breathe femininity into them, a male upbringing helps) and yet part of femininity is natural: for instance if nature gives a slight tilt that education amplifies.
Valid with P5, the principle linking facts to causes (the trait comes from education, therefore not from biology). Beauvoir does not write it as a rule, but she applies it on every page of this chapter. Note the reach of the conclusion: it does not say the body counts for nothing, but that no biological destiny defines the social figure of woman. To reject it, one must deny P1 (natural differences already exist in childhood), or P4 (these are isolated cases, without figures), or P5 (a trait can have two causes, nature and education, and the second does not prove the first is nil).
Analogy. A path through the grass. Ten thousand footsteps wore it, and it seems "natural". Yet the grass never wanted a path: each walker followed the one that already existed. Beauvoir says femininity is a path of this kind, and the little girl arrives in front of it before she can walk.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

D
Defenders of a biological difference attacks premise 1

Girls and boys are not identical before puberty: bodies, hormones and perhaps some tastes differ on average from childhood. Education does not do everything. What Beauvoir attributes to society could come in part from nature.

Beauvoir replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Simone de Beauvoir 1949
In the chapter "Childhood" she does not deny the anatomical difference between the little girl and boys: it is, she writes, a fact the girl could assume in many ways.
Simone de Beauvoir 1949
It is thought that a natural condition defies change. In truth, she says, nature is no more an immutable given than is historical reality.
The debate goes on (our summary) These passages answer only in part. She grants the difference of bodies but holds that it does not fix the way it is lived; she does not discuss here average differences in tastes or abilities. The second sentence comes from the Introduction, where she grants biology ("the division of the sexes is a biological given", women are women "by their physiological structure") and refuses to make it an immutable destiny. Her detailed examination of biology, at the start of volume I, is not in our corpus. Today research still debates the innate and social shares of average differences in tastes and behaviour, and does not always confirm the "same aptitudes" of 1949 on every point.
Rousseau (Emile, Book V) 1762 · attacks premise 2

Girls' tastes appear before any education: boys look for movement and noise, girls for mirrors, jewellery and above all dolls. The doll is this sex's own plaything: it shows a natural bent towards its destiny.

Beauvoir replies
Simone de Beauvoir 1949
The little girl's very early taste for making herself beautiful (her "narcissism") is readily taken as the effect of a mysterious feminine instinct. But it is not, she says, an anatomical destiny that dictates her attitude.
Simone de Beauvoir 1949
In the same paragraph she adds that the doll helps the little girl in this tendency, but that it does not have a determining role either.
The debate goes on (our summary) Beauvoir does not name Rousseau in these sentences (he writes almost two centuries before her): she answers the idea of a "feminine instinct" in general, and the doll is precisely the example Rousseau gives of it. Neither he nor she can rely here on a controlled comparison: we do not know how girls would play if no adult handed them a doll. The disagreement is over what an early taste proves, which may come from nature, from example, or from both.
Judith Butler and later critics of "gender" 1990 · attacks the conclusion

The formula assumes that nature supplies a stable sex, on which society then builds the "feminine". But how we see and sort bodies is already shaped by culture. If gender is made, "sex" itself may not be a mere natural given. And who is the subject that "becomes"?

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1990, after the author's death (1986).
The debate goes on (our summary) Beauvoir died in 1986 and could not answer Gender Trouble (1990). Our corpus does not say what she would have answered: we only read that she speaks of "the human female" and of "the division of the sexes" as a biological given, which is the point the later discussion takes up. Scholars debate what Butler extends from Beauvoir and what she sets aside.