Is Feminism Enslaving Women?

I want to bring you back in. I want to ask you one burning question. You're a biologist. I have two biologists here. I have a burning question that has been asked recently. I'm wondering if you can help out with.

I know that this can't be answered by Supreme Court justices. What is a woman?

Oh, you do not want me to go down this road because sex determination and development. I mean, Dr. Jensen is probably more familiar with developmental biology than I am. But that's a really complicated question, especially when you consider the complexities of human biology.

Look, I actually do. I talk in class about sex determination, chromosomal determinants, hormonal determinants, genetic determinants. What determines sex? See, there's no short. There is no answer to that question that I could answer in the time that we have tonight.

Really? It is a really complicated question.

It is a really complicated question. So it's not a question of chromosome X versus Y? One hundred percent.

No, it's not. And no, you can ask me the question 12 different ways if you want, but you're going to get the same answer each time. I don't think it's all that complex.

I would answer it very simply. A woman is what God, who created the women, defines it as. God, God created her. He gets to give the definition. So it's a woman is what God calls a woman.

What Apologetics Live Is About and Why This Topic Matters

Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your challenging questions about God and the Bible. If you think you have something we can't answer, take up the challenge. Come on in. Go to apologeticslive .com.

Just scroll down to where you see the little duck icon for StreamYard. Join us. And if I say, I don't know, to your most challenging question, just remember, I don't know is a perfectly good answer. So Apologetics Live is produced by Striving for Eternity.

If you want to check out everything we have at Striving for Eternity, go to strivingforeternity .org. Check out the articles we have there. We're also going to be having tonight, the topic tonight is, is feminism enslaving women?

Now, if you want to hear more on this, I'm going to tell you that what intrigued me on this is the fact that I was listening to a fellow Christian podcaster on the Christian podcast community. This is one of the many podcasts that are on the Christian podcast community.

But if we were listening to that, to the Thoroughly Equipped podcast with Melissa Lex, she'll be joining us shortly. And she was engaging with Amy Russo, who is another podcaster with the Grace and Peace Radio podcast.

And so we were basically, I was, I should say, really intrigued with what I heard and said, I need to get these two ladies on here to discuss this in way more detail for all of you. So that is what we're going to be talking about tonight.

But as usual, any topic that you have is open game. You can come in and join us as usual. Just go to ApologeticsLive .com. It's scrolling on the bottom so you can read it there and go to the duck icon, click there.

If you're on Facebook, go to ApologeticsLive .com so that you can give permission for Facebook to share your name so that we don't say, well, Facebook user when people put comments up, because we do put the comments up like Kathy, who says greetings from Pennsylvania.

So with that, I want to bring in my guests. Let me first bring in Melissa Lex from Thoroughly Equipped podcast. Welcome. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on. And you had as kind of a co-host with you was Amy Russo.

So welcome, Amy, from Grace and Peace Radio. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Now, this is the first time I'm actually getting to see you, Amy. I've seen you this way because he is one of the administrators of the Christian podcast community.

So I see him every week on Zoom. But I, you know, I also see him another way. Well, not really see him, but I get to see his name because I have I have this on my shelf. I don't know if you've ever seen this, Amy.

This is a book called Jesus Changed Everything by Anthony Russo.

You know that, right? Yeah, I do know that guy pretty well.

Yeah. So a good book on evangelism. If you want a book, you can just hand out to people on evangelism. It's a very it's kind of done in a storytelling kind of way. It's like you're you're just you're not sitting there reading, OK, here's how to evangelize or it's it's it's really drags you into where you feel like you're just sitting into a conversation.

And so, yes, thank you. Real good book to get. I will say anyone who wants. I did this with my church. You can contact Anthony. Go to Grace and Peace Radio. You can go through Christian Pocket Afternoon.

Go to their go to the different shows. Go to Grace and Peace Radio. Go scroll down. You'll see that where you can contact him, but he will actually design them in bulk and put your church name on the back so that you can get them to hand out for your visitors, which is a wonderful thing to do.

So and I will say that I listened also to the recent Grace and Peace Radio. So I'm just going to let our regular listeners know that we're what we are five minutes in, not even six minutes, and I'm already declaring we're going into Anthony time.

Now, this is not your Anthony. This is our co-host, Anthony, who always goes over the two hour mark every week. But if I if you listen to Grace and Peace Radio, you're going to know why I'm calling that early.

I'm I'm predicting now we're going over the two hour mark. We're hitting Anthony time. So those who love Anthony time, you can you can start rejoicing already. So I did try to get your Anthony on here.

I figured maybe we could get some really bad jokes. He's good with the dad jokes. He's good with it. He has perfected them well. Yeah, and he keeps me laughing. What can I say? Well, I'm glad he keeps somebody laughing.

You know, I'm just not getting the joke sometimes.

So I was going to say it's a New Jersey thing, but you should get that.

If it was a Jersey thing, I would get that. And so I switch cameras. See, I got to I got to use this camera because it hides the mess on my desk. See, so. All right, so let's let's get into this a bit.

And I want to give some overview why the title is Feminism and Slaving Women. But what you did, Melissa, on your show where Amy joined you was you reviewed a book I'm going to ask Amy for folks to understand your background.

You were not born a Christian. Wait, no, no one is. I forgot. But but your background plays into this tremendously. And I mean, I've heard you on on your show with your husband on Grace and Peace Radio talk about your background, your insight, your love for books.

And so that is very important to understanding. Some of this is your background because we're going to talk feminism. And for folks, you're going to hear some new terminology. Maybe you're not familiar with or haven't heard of a first, a second and a third weight of a feminism.

I'm going to ask the ladies to define those and help us understand those different waves and then look at how they're they're playing. So and as I said, Melissa Lex has and I was I don't know if you even know this, Amy, but I enjoyed it so much.

I asked Melissa if I could take that for part one of the episode that you guys did. You guys did a two parter. I took part one and put it on my rap report podcast so that more people would hear that. Of course, hoping that everyone would go and listen to part two on Thoroughly Equipped.

You know, it really got me thinking, which I like any podcast that gets me thinking. So let me start off. I'll start off this way. Melissa, let me let you introduce yourself to folks. I know you've kind of popped in here once before, I think, but if you can introduce yourself, your podcast, and then I'm going to I'm going to let Amy introduce herself a little bit longer.

OK, sure. So the podcast is called Thoroughly Equipped, and basically I take women's ministry teachings and books and speaking engagements and I look over them and I basically compare it to scripture.

Right now we're going through the IF gathering and we're looking at the whole ministry and everything that's involved in is Jenny Allen's ministry. And basically just I'm very methodical in the way I do things.

So I like to attack it from bottom up, basically. And so we're just comparing it to scripture, what they teach, what they use, the tools that they use and stuff like that. For this show, I this portion of my show, I have also included what I call the Titus two times.

And so we've just kind of started this and I was looking at we're looking at Titus two. I want to look at it very much in depth. And so the first thing I had to look at was woman. What is woman? I had to define that.

So that's what I did on the first Titus two time for this one. And then when Amy came to me and said, this book is wonderful. I wonder if you've read it. I was like, yes, I already read it. So and that's kind of how this the last two Titus two times came about and are attacking feminism.

So, yeah.

OK, and I don't know if you saw I put up some comments here from Melissa. She said, I need to go listen to that podcast. And Kathy here says it was a good podcast. I heard the feminist podcast. I did like it.

Where's this comment? I saw a comment here that cracked me up. I should have started made a start. It's like, oh, here it is. Katie is saying it seems like the names Melissa and Justin are popular for politics.

Life program. Oh, and Chris. Yes, there's going to be popular names here. And just to let folks know, you know, another Melissa. But Bonser and for Christ's thing, I'm in a game of at Fallout 76 with Missionary Gamer, who we had on here a few weeks ago.

If you didn't see that, go check out that episode where he is a full time missionary in the gaming platforms. And so he started getting a follower here from some of our folks. And so Melissa is saying I sent I sent to Peter Missionary Gamer.

I was going to talk. Please pray for him to get involved with Bible and participating in local church. I'm guessing he's not talking about Peter, the missionary. She's because Peter, the missionary gamer, is very active in his local church.

But that does remind me I was supposed to start by reading some comments. So I'm going to let Amy introduce herself. And then I have some feedback I was supposed to start with. And I forgot. Sorry, folks.

But I'm going to let Amy. Amy, if you could let folks know, you know, who you are, your podcast that you do with your husband, but also your background, because that's going to be very important for this discussion.

OK, well, my husband, I, Anthony and I have Grace and Peace Radio, and I became part of that. Oh, my goodness. Maybe two years ago just started that he says, hey, you want to just sit in and, you know, let me bounce things off of you.

And I found I just really liked it. And so we discovered it was something we enjoy doing together. So that's what we do. And we just try to be encouraging, keep them short and just encourage the other believers to stay in the word and just honor the Lord every day.

As far as my background, I came to the Lord late in life. I was 42 when I was saved. And even then, while I believe I was soundly saved, there was a lot of I say I was the most liberal new believer that you probably had ever met.

It just took time, you know, to do Bible reading and that kind of thing. And, you know, my background is, you know, working in higher ed. And, you know, when I was working on my master's degree, it was in literature.

And even my undergrad, I was doing a minor in literature. And so feminism was a huge part from day one when I was taking literature classes. Then going into my master's degree in English and doing feminist literary criticism and those kinds of things.

So I've had a lot of that infused into my thinking even before I was a believer. And it has its effect because even after I became a believer, it took a while to really understand biblical womanhood and shed a lot of that stuff.

So, yeah, it's enslaving and it's tough to get rid of.

You did some postgraduate work. You were doing reading and literature on things dealing with this topic as well, right?

Right. Most of the when you get in the master's, a lot of what I had to read dealt with criticism, you know, literary criticism and feminist literary criticism. So the Simone du Beauvoir that we talked about, you know, I didn't read her in depth, but I had to read bits and pieces of of her works and all of that stuff.

I forgot this is what's going to happen. I'm going to go blank. I'm going to have to look at my notes. But a lot of these other women and what they were saying, you know, as a nonbeliever and having nothing to anchor myself to, this all made perfect sense.

And so you grab onto it. And that's what I was doing.

Yeah. And and so this is the thing that you've you're. You barely pick up books and read, right? You don't read anything.

You've been talking to my husband. No, I read all the time. Yeah, that's why Melissa and I get along so well.

You did it. There was an episode when early on, when you came on your podcast with your husband, you guys discussed just some of the books that you read. And I think your list, just just a list of your books, if you just listed them, it kind of took up the whole show.

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Actually, the lists were so long, he didn't have time to get in a bad joke at all. Maybe not. Oh, so so let me before we get into this. I was bad. I was supposed to read some reviews because some people sent us some sent some email and I was supposed to read that.

So forgive me for those of you who sent this in. So let me let me just read some of the feedback we have gotten on some of the podcast. First off, this is from Virginia, and she's she says hi from an Alaskan listener.

She said, I interacted with you a bit on your Facebook page a few weeks ago regarding women's sin of and the curse of man, which is still an eye opener for me. I recently listened to your podcast regarding health and trials, and it was very poignant to listen to.

And I absolutely loved how you refer to your wife as, quote, your bride, unquote. She thinks that I shouldn't do that, by the way, folks, but everyone else seems to think that's good. But I continue. She said you were encouraging people who listen to write an email.

So here it goes. I started listening to your podcast because I was listening to Voice of Reason radio podcast. I used to work with Chris Honholds in another lifetime. My husband was a coworker of Chris when we lived in Nevada.

I didn't even remember what Chris was talking about when he was referring to your show, or it might have been plugging the Christian podcast community. And you were the first up that I had checked. And your series on what we believe, I love it.

I moved over 40 times in seven states in my 56 years here on Earth, somewhere from circumstances beyond my control, some following my husband, and we were end up where we'd end up. Some were attempts to be closer to my grandchildren.

I'm going to stop there and say I'm looking forward to that part of my grand. My first grandson is coming in January. Looking forward to seeing him. And we're probably going to I know we just moved to Pennsylvania, folks.

I'll probably be moving again to Ohio. But here's continue. She says true story. We moved southeast Alaska to the Pacific Northwest to be closer to the grandchildren. Less than one year after we moved, they moved to the East Coast.

I heard you say that your brides, your bride's culture is to be near the kids and grandchildren. Grandkids, let me give you a tip. Be sure that you both enjoy the area you move to. The only reason we move near the kids.

The only reason is you move near the kids and they leave. Then you find out you don't care for the area you just moved to. Trust me, it isn't an Asian culture that you want to do that to. We just can't afford to move to the East Coast after buying a house on the West Coast after following a major move from Alaska.

It's hard to explain. But once you've lived in Alaska, it tends to draw you back within a few, after a few miserable years on the West Coast. We're puzzling over what's wrong with the churches in the area.

I've lived for so many years. We watched the reasons we move fade away. Other family members passed on. We decided to move back to Alaska a few years ago, 90 miles north from another one of your podcasters, Nathaniel Jolly.

That is, he and Eki have a podcast together, Truth Be Told Podcast. So plug that. So she says, I don't want to be rambling much longer. I may be putting you to sleep. But since that's not something that you do well, perhaps that'll work to put you out in the end.

After speaking of sleep, I just ordered two MyPillows. And yep, I used your promo code. Thought you might enjoy the segue. I learned that from you. So yes, I do, Virginia, enjoy that segue. And folks, if you want to use to get a good MyPillow, we do have a promo code.

It is SFE. And we do, we always say, if you share us pictures of you using your MyPillow, we'll share it right here. And let me just actually, let me just bring this up. Let me bring Cole in here. Cole, I just want to bring you in because I really appreciate a couple of weeks ago, you wanted to model for us and promote MyPillow.

So Cole, here you go. We really appreciate you. This was the after show of, during the after show when Cole was soundly asleep during half the show. And the after show, we tried waking him. He did not, but he was saying, I need a MyPillow use promo code SFE.

So that's Cole completely out like a light. You got to be careful. If you're going to go to sleep during a show, when you're backstage, Cole, don't go asleep to the point where when the show is over and we had a whole conversation and we were saying, Cole, wake up, Cole, wake up.

You were really out. So that must've been a MyPillow behind you. That's my theory. I'm here for the memes. So this is our new promo for MyPillow. Just go to MyPillow .com, use promo code SFE and get a good sleep like Cole.

Yeah, don't fall asleep in your computer chair. Your neck won't appreciate it.

You can't get a better sleep than Cole did. So I'm sorry, Virginia brought up the MyPillow. I had to, that's a great time to plug it. She goes on and says, thank you for all your hard work. Enjoy the next chapter of your life.

And remember to rest on those nice comfy MyPillows. So that was one feedback we got. That was the longest one, folks, but I promised I'd read some of these. So I wanted to give some back. Kelly had reached out to me and was looking for some information.

I sent it to her, asked her to let me know what she thinks. So here was what Kelly had sent. She said, as promised, you asked me to respond with my thoughts to the resources, the resources from striving for eternity.

So here's what she says. I have one word, wonderful. That's an all caps exclamation point. She says, my only complaint is that I did not find your resources sooner. I completed lessons two and three in your school of biblical hermeneutics, keys for correctly interpreting God's word last evening.

So I'll stop here and just say, if you want, we have an academy at Striving for Eternity. It is, well, free. You can watch it all on YouTube until they kick us off YouTube, and then we'll move to Odyssey.

But you can go and watch all the classes there for free. You could buy the syllabuses at Striving for Eternity. Just go to strivingforeternity .org. When you get there, go to the academy page. Then you could see each of the classes that we have.

She continues, I was trying to wait until I'd complete the entire syllabus. However, I'm far too excited to wait. I have learned so much in just these three lessons. For example, I own each of the study Bibles you mentioned, but now I know exactly how to use them.

I now actually understand the purpose of a concordance because as you mentioned in the video, I was using it incorrectly. It's far more powerful than I understood. And her third point, she says, I have a better understanding of how the Bible originated and the textual criticism.

These are just a few of the things I've learned. What's sad is that I called myself, unquote, walking with the Lord, unquote, for 30 years and realized that in 2020, I wasn't even saved. Since then, my appetite for the word of God and learning correctly of him has been voracious.

But seeing as how I spent 30 years in the dark and learning wrong doctrine, I'm at times very afraid of taking in wrong information. Finding resources that I can trust is both encouraging and refreshing.

Admittedly, I am convinced to use your resources because of the endorsement of Phil Johnson. I've found grace to you and similar ministries to be my wellspring during these exciting, albeit scary times, because I feel like I'm learning everything new.

Oh, and I have to mention how very much I love the videos. They are the perfect length, pace, content, following so nicely with the syllabus where I make my notes. But most important to me, the teaching is not above my head.

I definitely am purchasing the other syllabi. Truly, I am at a loss for words for the good things I can say. I just thank the Lord and you for your ministry and will be recommending it to others. So we want to thank Kelly for that.

And I will say that the syllabus for especially, Melissa is a homeschooler. She's involved in homeschooling movement. These courses have been used by homeschoolers for the very reasons she mentioned, that it seems that it doesn't, I don't talk over people's heads, that it seems to be something that everybody enjoys.

One last one from Peter Hammond. He was missionary gamer we had on not too long ago. And he said, I just want to commend you brothers for being so loving and respectful and patient in your conversation with Matt.

This is last week with Matt Slick. He said, trying to help him see why the stance he has taken is biblically inaccurate. That was a tough conversation. And I learned so much from your thoughtful and wise discourse.

I am not familiar with the other two gentlemen. He's referring to Chris and Drew from Matter of Theology, another Christian podcast, community podcast. But he says, I'm not familiar with the other two gentlemen.

But you all were such a great example of faithful brothers speaking the truth in love, praying for Matt now and thankful to God for faithful brothers like you demonstrating how we are to conduct ourselves with difficult situations like that.

So I will say, Melissa, I know you were on Matt's after show that he had after we did that. And in that, I will say I listened to it. I was too tired to join him. But as he said, he felt that Jim and I did not make very compelling arguments for the cessation of gifts.

He thinks we didn't really answer his questions. But if you heard him, he actually said, but those guys are going to say the same about me. And yes, we will. But that's the thing. You know, folks, if you listen to last week's show, Matt and I are really good friends.

He's one of my very dear friends. And we disagree on so many topics. And you see that's one that he gets very emotional with. And yet we could disagree with it. And we can deal with what the scripture says, try to reason through it.

That's how we should be handling these things. Just like the left does in politics, right? No. Okay. That was my segue into the left and feminism.

Can I say real quick to Virginia? She's my email buddy. So we've been emailing back and forth.

Yeah. So you know who she is.

Yeah. When you know, how do you know it's that same Virginia?

Everything she told you, she told me. Oh, pretty much. Yeah, it's really good to see through your ministry. And people just she reached out to me because you had my episode on your rap report on harmonetics, by the way.

Okay. Yeah, neat. That's right. I was on your show talking about harmonetics. You know, which so I played the intro for this show just for this topic. So we could define what a woman is. But we're actually going to do what I want to do.

I want to ask you, ladies, if you could help in defining what is let's start with the first wave of feminism. What was the you know, what's the first wave of feminism? What was its goals?

The First Wave of Feminism and Women’s Legal Rights

In that first wave. The main goal was to sorry, Melissa. No, no, go ahead. Um, the main goal was to have women be equal citizens with the men. So voting rights, legal rights. Once women became wives, this is what I'm looking at.

1848 was when this first conference was in Seneca Falls, New York. Once women became married, all their property and all their rights for that property were completely gone. It all belonged to their husband.

And so. As Melissa and I discussed. What you'll find with some of the roots of this, like other things like, you know, unions and other things, they started out for good reason. Because and all bottom line is sin, but women were not being treated well.

And, you know, they should be considered citizens and voting citizens at that. So that's where this started. And that's a good idea. But as we discuss, you'll see as things move along that. Um, you know, as I think even the author said that women were sinned against.

But women sinned even more in the response, in their response to it. So that was that was essentially the first wave in a nutshell.

And just with that, I think for people today. It's hard to conceive of when women couldn't like vote, let alone have a time in our history where if a if a woman was married, she lost all her property.

And so when we look at this, I mean, when we talk about feminism, what I want us to do, I mean, this is like what I teach when we come to scripture. We need to put ourself in the setting of the time, because a lot of people just think, oh, feminism, all bad.

Because I think in the feminism today. But put yourself in a position. You think about a time when a woman had basically no rights. I mean, no rights to property. If if her her husband, if her father was wealthy and left everything to her.

Basically, the only way she could keep that is if she married someone and all that wealth went to him and he could spend it any way he wants. And so when we talk about this first wave of feminism, I just want our audience to kind of put yourself in that position, you know, to thinking what it would be like living in a time when that was the law of the land.

There's even more as you do some more research. We tend to think of first wave feminism as the suffrage, you know, the suffrage and all that. It actually has even more deeper roots in the foundation of America.

You have Abigail Adams asking her husband as you know, they're working out the Constitution and all this stuff to to include the women in it. Then you have a little bit later, Mary Wollstonecraft, who is talking about just women getting education.

So it's not just not being able to vote. It's education and it's family life. One of the things that I found out the suffrage movement really took off was off of a actual court case where a woman was married to a man who was very abusive.

And basically, he ruled so much his rights overpowered her that he could put her into a separate house. Um, he would take care of her. Of course, that was something that he was supposed to do, but he could take his her children away and prohibit her from seeing her children.

So we're looking at parental rights, voting rights and education.

Yes, when we talk first wave, I think many of us today would actually support that first wave of feminism. You know, I think there's a lot of good that came out of it. I think there's a lot that should have.

I think it was important at that time for women to have equal rights. They were not, you know, look, even in America, which was based on Christian values, we see or saw, we could see in history, the fact that it still had the influence of every other culture that treats women as second class citizens.

Even if you go to Arab countries today, women, the things we just described are still active in Arab countries today, which is always confusing me that the modern feminist movement wants to go after the Christians saying that we're the ones against like, wait, do you know what the Muslims do?

Exactly.

We'll get more into that and why as you start to see the progression of feminism. Yeah, that's right.

And even some of these women, I mean, what you heard us on the podcast, speaking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and, you know, Susan B. Anthony and that, you know, yeah, they were feminists and they wanted to take it to a different level.

But there are some like Abigail Adams. Of course, the word feminist wasn't a word then, but she would not have defined herself as a feminist. She fully believes she, from what I've read, because I read the biography on John Adams, I think she was a believer, but she believed in wife and mother and home.

But yet she also, as Melissa and I talked about, she ran the household. I mean, John Adams wasn't home most of the time. He was in various governmental places.

He wasn't even there for his own son's funeral. Exactly. He found out, and this is, like, as I've studied John Adams, and I do believe he was probably a believer, but he didn't, you know, he had a son who was, you know, an alcoholic and drinking all the time and ends up dying.

He's in Washington, and he finds out about his son's death from a letter he gets from his wife three months later. Like, they've buried him. And she's telling him about the funeral because that's how slow the mail was.

I mean, it's hard for us to think about that in a time where we could text and get an immediate response around the world. Right. So I think there's, when we talk about first, second, third wave of feminism, the first wave, we would say this is really tied up with basically equal rights as far as property, rights to vote, just having an ability with, you know, having a stay in your life and not being controlled.

And even in a country like America, where it was based on Christian values, we see that some of that culture that we've seen all over the world did influence even here, because this was part of our laws.

And this is where, you know, and as you guys mentioned on your show, Susan B. Anthony, most people just know because she's on a coin. Exactly. Other than that, no one would know who she is. And it's funny because, you know, when you said that, I kind of laughed when you said that on the podcast, because I was like, when I heard that, this is what I thought.

I was like, wow, you know, the thing is, though, most of the feminists that wanted to put her on the coin, she probably wouldn't agree with what they were doing on the names of feminism. Correct. Because it was something that continued to morph.

The Second Wave of Feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, and the “Other”

So let's define then what is the second wave of feminism? Amy, I'll let you start.

This is the one where I was a little more familiar with it. Simone, and I'm going to butcher her last name because I don't speak French, but de Beauvoir, I think is how you say it. So I just call her Simone.

It sounded right to me. I mean, my. I'm sure we'll be corrected somewhere along the line. And I and I welcome that. But I'm just calling her Simone. She was the one that she was had a relationship. She was in France.

She had a relationship with John Paul Sartre. So if you're familiar with philosophy and whatnot, just he was a big deal back in the day as far as philosophy goes. And she's the one who really defined the term of women as the other, the other sex.

And how we are oppressed because we are, you know, under man and made to live under these sexual restrictions that shouldn't be there. But, you know, as we discussed with her is the hypocrisy, the second sex.

That's what I was trying to find the title of her book. She's best known for her work called The Second Sex, which was published in 1949. And, you know, she was with John Paul Sartre for 51 years in a so-called open relationship.

Yet it was non monogamous. She said that nothing that she achieved in her professional life, she said this toward the end of her life, was as great as her relationship with Sartre, which was dysfunctional to the max.

And yet when he died, he cut her out of the will and left his estate to his latest mistress. So it just was this whole idea of women as other. And, you know, at this point, I'm not explaining it well.

Carolyn McCulley explained it much better in her book that we discussed. But it made sense to me at the time that I was reading all this stuff of, oh, yeah, I must be oppressed, you know, because, yeah, I am the other.