Impasse－A situation in which no progress is possible, especially because of disagreement; a deadlock

Derrida thinks that one should not be embarrassed by confusion of meanings as he thinks it is the mark of adulthood for the mind

Phonocentrism is the belief that sounds and speech are inherently superior to, or more primary than, written language. It is to note that the deaf community opposed this belief. Jacques Derrida used the term "phonocentrism" to criticise what they see as a disdain for written language

德里达－解构二元对立，如男性／女性；语言／文字；自然／文化。由于两元对立虽是对立的关系，但两者并非是平等并置的。第一项，如男性、语言、自然等，是首位，本质的，中心的，本源的，而第二项则是次要的，边缘的等。设立第一项的优先性而迫使第二项从属于它。 Derrida解构这种对立，颠倒等级秩序。他不是拒绝建立任何中心，而是消除中心本身。

Deconstruction－解构. Basically, it is dismantling our excessive loyalty to any ideas and learning to see the aspects of the truth that might bury in the opposing terms. For example, Feminism VS Masculine; Profitability VS Generosity; Speech VS Writing

Does this mean that if the biological differences argument stands, the attributed sex-roles will be justified as a natural order?

de Beauvoir identifies the economic underpinnings of female subordination--and the economic roots of woman's liberation. Only in work can she achieve autonomy. If woman can support herself, she can also achieve a form of liberation.

In the final chapter of "Woman's Situation and Character", de Beauvoir reiterates the controversial claim that woman's situation is not a result of her character. Rather, her character is a result of her situation. Her mediocrity, complacency, lack of accomplishment, laziness, passivity-all these qualities are the consequences of her subordination, not the cause.

de Beauvoir's goal is to prove that women are not born "feminine" but shaped by a thousand external processes. She shows how, at each stage of her upbringing, a girl is conditioned into accepting passivity, dependence, repetition, and inwardness. Every force in society conspires to deprive her of subjectivity and flatten her into an object. Denied the possibility of independent work or creative fulfillment, the woman must accept a dissatisfying life of housework, childbearing, and sexual slavishness.

The Second Sex 记述了 de Beauvoir‘s effort to locate the source of these profoundly imbalanced gender roles of how "female humans" come to occupy a subordinate position in society. To answer this question-and to better understand her identity-de Beauvoir first turns to biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. She thinks that these reveal only the "essential" differences between man and woman but do not provide justification for woman's inferiority.

De Beauvoir's primary thesis is that men fundamentally oppress women by characterising them, on every level, as the Other, defined exclusively in opposition to men. In other words, Man occupies the role of a subject while women is the object. He is essential, absolute while She is inessential and incomplete. He creates, acts, invents; she waits for him to save her. This distinction is the basis of all de Beauvoir's later arguments.

uncertainty，不断变动

时代

Said in a different way: it is not what we think that decides our reality. It is rather our reality that decides what we are capable of thinking. (enotes.com)