The woman destroyed: from Simone de Beauvoir to “gender ideology

Abstract

In 2015 French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir received a motion of repudiation from the Campinas City Council, which accused her of mentoring so-called “gender ideology”, a phrase used by conservatives to challenge feminist scientific work. Seventy years after the publication of The Second Sex , why does “becomes a woman” continue, for some, to be such a provocative or even dangerous phrase? Do the fears and criticisms that she aroused at the time continue to be the same, or are we facing a new moral panic in contemporary Brazil? By analyzing the words of the city council members involved in the debate, it becomes evident, in the face of significant advances made by those who are oppressed by socio-hierarchical gender relations, that there has been a strong reaction from those sectors that do not understand the inexorable social transformation promoted by feminists, and who tremble at the sound of Beauvoir’s name.