# Quote — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

> All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.

- Author: [Simone de Beauvoir](https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir.md)
- Book: [The Second Sex](https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir#The_Second_Sex_(1949)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex/all-agree-in-recognising

## More from this book

> One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

p. 267 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex/one-is-not-born.md)

> All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception. The existent who is regarded as inessential cannot fail to demand the re-establishment of her sovereignty.
>
> Today the combat takes a different shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavours to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence.

p. 717 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex/all-oppression-creates.md)

> The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: "virtue", as the ancients called it, is defined at the level of "that which depends on us". In both sexes is played out the same drama of the flesh and the spirit, of finitude and transcendence; both are gnawed away by time and laid in wait for by death, they have the same essential need for one another; and they can gain from their liberty the same glory. If they were to taste it, they would no longer be tempted to dispute fallacious privileges, and fraternity between them could then come into existence.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex/the-fact-that.md)