Simone de Beauvoir is one of the most influential feminist philosophers of all time, with The Second Sex (1949) defining many elements of second-wave feminism. In recent years, her work has been twisted to support the biological imperative agenda pushed by prominent anti-trans figures in their most inflammatory books and blog posts.Beauvoir scholar Megan Burke sought to set the record straight and prove that Beauvoirs work supports an ethics of trans affirmation. Thats precisely what they have achieved in their gripping new book, Becoming A Woman: Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Trans Existence. Related Restoring the rainbow: How cis white gay folks must show up for trans & queer people of color When Burke originally sat down to write the book, the anti-trans reading of Beauvoir was not on their radar. Instead, they had envisioned a more positive project.I just kept thinking about trans and non-binary existence through the lens of Beauvoirs existentialism, Burke says. I was writing more about gender as a life project, as a Beauvoirian and as an existentialist.That intention remains; however, as Burke worked on their project, they encountered anti-trans applications of Beauvoirs work and felt compelled to respond.I started to encounter in various forms and ways the uptake of Beauvoir in anti-trans feminist uses, I started to become really annoyed and frustrated and concerned about how non-scholars of Beauvoir were circulating Beauvoir, but in really popular venues. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Beauvoir was an existentialist, concerned with how we define ourselves within society. In The Second Sex, she reckons with the way that women were defined not by their own merits, but by their otherness to men, with men as the default gender. The book includes perhaps Beauvoirs most famous line: One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.Trans people have long seen Beauvoirs statement as affirming of their genders, but anti-trans campaigners claim that this is an error. In Becoming A Woman, Burke highlights an interview comment where the gender critical writer Kathleen Stock decried this reading of Beauvoir, saying, I dont think she had any conception of how that phrase would be used, but it set in motion a chain of thought and processes. That sentence is used all the time to justify the idea that trans women are literally women, or even that gender identity makes one a woman. Burke argues that claims like Stocks, including those that cherry-pick additional quotes from Beauvoir, misunderstand the philosopher, her view of the world, and the way that many terms are used within a philosophical framework.I wasnt aware that she was being used in this way as much as she was until I started those initial encounters, Burke explains. And the more I dug in, the more that became kind of the way into this more positive project.In the book, she puts it like this: What these turns to Beauvoir share is the claim that, for Beauvoir, to be a woman is a matter of sex, not gender. One of the more notable references to Beauvoir appears in the well-known and controversial blog post by the author of the Harry Potter series on June 10, 2020. It is often the case that gender-critical discourse turns to Beauvoir to insist that real women are born women, which delegitimises trans existence.For the anti-trans reading, becoming a woman is a social destiny proscribed on women at birth as part of their biology. But Burke explains that the words born (used here in the sense of being) and becoming have more specific meanings in philosophy, and that Beauvoirs position as an existentialist casts these ideas in a light that the anti-trans argument misses. Theres a classic distinction in philosophy between born and becoming, being and becoming, they explain. And for Beauvoir as an existentialist thinker, thats just the difference between an inherent nature, being born with a fixed essence, and something that unfolds in the creation of ones existence. And thats the becoming part. For Beauvoir, the becoming piece isnt merely about self-formation; it concerns how we create ourselves in the world, shape our identities, and get to choose who we become. The anti-trans people are just mapping female and male onto this thing youre born as that cant change. And for Beauvoir, thats just not the case.The anti-trans interpretations arent limited to the one famous line. A wealth of other comments by the philosopher are distorted or misunderstood to advance an exclusionary agenda. For example, in an essay titled How Simone de Beauvoir Got Me Cancelled, Susan Picard complains that no one wanted to publish her anti-trans book. Picard cites several Beauvoir quotations to support the claim that the philosopher would endorse an anti-trans reading.Picard smugly points to the line No woman can claim without bad faith to be situated beyond her sex, claiming that pro-trans Beauvoirians looked away in embarrassment when asked to explain how that wasnt a clear refutation of trans identities. Burke offers a markedly different interpretation of this quotation.Beauvoir is using sex as a phenomenon. So that particular sentence is to reckon with ones position in this world that they are in. Anti-trans people think trans and non-binary folks are saying We are beyond our bodies. And I actually think thats not at all the claim thats being made. Its I am of this body, and something else is becoming for me. And that, I think, is exactly what Beauvoir means. To say that I am not situated in the way you say I am. To ignore how one is in the world and the body one inhabits, yes, that would be bad faith. But I think where this goes awry in the way this gets levied at trans and non-binary folks is to say, youre just ignoring the fact of your body as you are in the world.To say a trans woman is saying, Im situated beyond my sex so I can become a woman, is just a complete misreading of the phenomenal unfolding of her life. And to say that Beauvoir is saying you can never be situated beyond your sex of this world, I think completely ignores what she is gesturing to as a feminist future in her conclusion, which is that she says, yeah, there might still be men and women, but its a might. Where I think that reading of that sentence goes wrong is its both rooting sex as a thing that never changes, and more importantly, is just saying, trans folks are being disingenuous, when actually I think trans folks are being quite Beauvoirian.While only a part of Burkes project in Becoming A Woman, the refutation of this anti-trans application of Beauvoirs work is crucial, both for the trans community and for Beauvoirs legacy. People might encounter Beauvoirs name because they read some famous persons blog, which is really troubling. And I dont want that to be a part of Beauvoirs legacy. And I also dont want that kind of misreading of her circulating, because as I say at the beginning of the book, if we turn to a philosopher to justify the truth about something, thats the kind of justification that can have a lot of power. Its not even an engagement with her work, but just an engagement with her, I think, as a figure of some sort to mobilise and to justify anti-trans views.When it comes to Burkes ethics of gender affirmation, they think too many people are starting with the wrong question. Im just really concerned about the focus on, What are trans people? Its not a really interesting question, but I find it to be a really violent one. Its not asked of people who can comfortably conform to the norm. The What are you? How do you know? Where does this come from? What is, in philosophical terms, the metaphysics: Whats the essence of being trans? You must continually justify who you are. But in most cases, its not important. I want to say that ethics, primarily, is how we are with one another, and that matters more than the what. For Burke, if we can move beyond the what and why of trans people and accept that we exist, it highlights the threat posed by the anti-trans movement and can help to find a way to develop a better community.If we can just focus on the how, if that can be the centre of the conversations, then we can get somewhere else together, and we can create different forms of sociality. And I think thats actually whats at stake. And whether or not anti-trans movements and the people behind them know this consciously or not, thats also what all anti-trans legislation is about. Its about legislating how we are together and what we become. So, its like now we have legislation about what biological sex is, but that also legislates how we now get to be in spaces together. Lets focus on the how: How do we want to be together in the world? And I think this is actually the threat of trans life and trans possibilities to dominant structures.In building out this ethics, Burke looked at the claims that anti-trans thinkers were making about Beauvoir and their claims that her ethics are aimed at protecting cis women. Disagreeing with that, Burke says that in writing Becoming A Woman, they sat back and asked, Well, what are her ethics of gender, using gender as we use it today, for how we understand and become who we are? And Im thinking about that as Im also thinking in relationship to how trans folks articulate the ethics of gendered life in relationship to self-determination and gender freedom, and in particular to that idea of affirming my gender, so one of the things that Im doing in this book is taking seriously that gender affirmation is an ethical project.But for Burke, talking about gender affirmation means throwing out the term gender identity and all the baggage and weight that it has developed in political conversations. They suggest that understanding of gender leads to a hunt for a true gender that limits what people can actually become in our society: I think that when we stop looking for a rooted being, which is what I guess I think gets ushered in from the gender identity discourse is like: this is who you are, this is who youve always been. So youre going to become that, and then it better work, and you better stay fixed in that position. And if you dont, then weve gotten it all wrong. That, Burke argues, leads us into political conversations about detransition in ways that are rarely helpful. But they also have a solution: Im actually saying, lets not affirm gender identity either, but lets affirm gendered existence. And I think that thats a term that we get from Beauvoir that helps, again, shift the terrain.Theres a whole different way to understand what gender affirmation means. Lets talk about what it means to affirm someone as an ethical project of their existence, which might mean, at a different time, that we affirm who they are differently. And that, I think, is exactly what Beauvoir means by becoming. So, does that mean becoming is messy and fallible, and we might make mistakes about who we become? Sure. Thats exactly what Beauvoir is saying as an existentialist. This might be who you are right now. You might become something else in a month, in 10 years, in 15 years.And is it ethical to affirm that becoming? Yes. In their book, Burke discusses the importance of moving away from the third-person authority over gender toward the trans first-person authority. That space for affirming self-determination in relation to a gendered existence is a crucial part of this ethics.While its essential to support and affirm trans people, Burke is suggesting that there are problems when we see gender identity as a static thing that must be found and then held on to tightly. For Burke, the more helpful approach is to affirm gendered existence, where gender is a life project, and to recognise that, if it changes, that is part of the journey.Ultimately, they say life can have regrets, but those regrets can be affirmed, and you can become someone else. And so thats what Im trying to do with the ethics of gender affirmation.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.