O mundo dos homens e o segundo sexo: do essencialismo de gênero à transcendência

Abstract

Our dissertation aims to show the evolution of the concept of gender within philosophy from a feminist perspective, approaching the first constructions of the concept within the historical context of the first and second feminist waves as a strategy against the oppressive discourse and the condition of women's inferiority observed in the lives and theories of English philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and Brazilian Nísia Floresta (1810-1885) from the perspective of existentialist philosophy of French philosopher Simone Beauvoir (1908-1985) in her work The Second Sex (1949), that marks the discussions of the second feminist wave deconstructing all essentialism in gender roles for the free transcendence of the subject creator of its own project as a mark of freedom understanding this own movement of the existent, a theme discussed in her work The ethics of ambiguity (1947). This path was followed by these dissident women in their respective eras when they decided to write, they needed to justify themselves by the simple act of writing, they were labeled as strange, intruders, exotic and abnormal in the world of men, even yet they marked the precariousness of the philosophical consciousness of the tradition, denouncing the sexism of the time. Therefore, it is intended to demonstrate and reflect the contributions to a new way of thinking and transgressing - transcending - that has been developing for long centuries to break paradigms and the sexist canon of the history of thought, as well as the realization of these claims within the political field. The realization of the transcendence project must ensure the emancipation of contemporary women, here, specifically thought through the influence of beauvoirian works on the importance of studies of the signifier "woman" in Philosophy.