Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Virgina Woolf?

Though it was written more than 50 years ago, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex it is still applicable in a lot of ways. Women really don’t have a past, a history or a religion of their own. Though we have come a long way, we still live in a male dominated world, and we often times have to play by their rules if we want to play at all. I have often wondered why it is that the struggle for equality for women has been so slow, why so many women just accept things as they are, or worse, side with the status quo and label women who do not trouble makers or femi-nazis. But de Beauvoir said several things that put it into perspective for me. Her point about a lack of unification amongst women and a simultaneous unbreakable bond with men was so obvious a point and yet I had never really thought about it along those lines before. There are so many factors that can divide women: race, religion, sexuality, socio-economic status. Our need for men is basic, biological. And then there is the cultural aspect. Females are also taught from an early age that they “need” men, whereas males are taught to stand on their own, and “be men.” Boys grow up learning the importance of “bros before hoes” while girls grow up seeing each other as competition.

While reading de Beauvoir I thought about Virginia Woolf, which reminded me of last semester. A teacher had assigned the class a reading from “A Room of One’s Own.” When we returned to class the next day, a male student in the class began our discussion by asserting that he had no interest in having a dialogue about “useless female drivel like this.” When further questioned he told us all that he had not yet read a female writer worthy of his time. He said the things that females wrote about had nothing pertinent to give to male readers. His response to Woolf (and all female writers, apparently) was eye opening for me. As a lit student I spend a lot of my time reading male writers and I have never once thought to reject them on the basis of their sex. But judging by the chuckles in the room that day from other male students, I would venture to guess that there are more people than I would have imagined still believing that female writers as prolific as Virginia Woolf are worthless based upon the fact that they have ovaries rather than testicles. Wow…just wow.