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Talks from C block have been ever more customary as the Feminism Society has been branching out, and on Wednesday the talks were intellectually stimulating . Unfortunately, due to some technical issues Shaw Worth’s talk was postponed to a later date, but nevertheless, the evening progressed.

Gustav Comradie KS opened Wednesday’s meeting with a talk on existentialism, and feminism within that concept. He commented on various key thinkers specific to existentialism, such as Nietzsche, and one of the most important feminist thinkers, Simone de Beauvoir. He related to us where their beliefs, at times, overlapped. It was in de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”, where the concept of “othering”, the woman regarded as the other and the man as the self, was realised; questioning the roots of gender and sex was also discussed in her book, with her view that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman." At the end, we talked in groups about the idea of gender, and indeed sex, as social constructs, and what the term “woman” actually means, and whether it should be abolished – but is that an existential question? De Beauvoir certainly might have wanted it to happen.

Many thanks to Gustav for his talk.

Nate Swidler