Biology alone cannot establish the primacy of either sex in the species.

Evidence

In any case, it is not always true that the male’s individual privileges confer upon him superiority in the species; the female regains another kind of autonomy in maternity. Sometimes he imposes his domination: this is the case in the monkeys studied by Zuckerman; but often the two halves of the couple lead separate lives; the lion and the lioness share the care of the habitat equally. Here again, the case of the human species cannot be reduced to any other; men do not define themselves first as individuals; men and women have never challenged each other in individual fights; the couple is an original Mitsein; and it is always a fixed or transitory element of a wider collectivity; within these societies, who, the male or the female, is the more necessary for the species? In terms of gametes, in terms of the biological functions of coitus and gestation, the male principle creates to maintain and the female principle maintains to create: What becomes of this division in social life? … For species attached to foreign bodies or to the substrata, for those to whom nature grants food abundantly and effortlessly, the role of the male is limited to fertilization; when it is necessary to search, chase, or fight to provide food needed for offspring, the male often helps with their maintenance; this help becomes absolutely indispensable in a species where children remain incapable of taking care of their own needs for a long period after the mother stops nursing them: the male’s work then takes on an extreme importance; the lives he brought forth could not maintain themselves without him. … But we are going beyond the field of biology: in purely biological terms, it would not be possible to posit the primacy of one sex concerning the role it plays in perpetuating the species. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 107

Categorization

• XREF: The male-creates/female-maintains gametic division connects to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and Sartre’s being-for-itself, which Beauvoir is already positioning against. — connects to: Biology alone cannot explain why woman is the Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 109; Biology gives no basis for gendered immanence and transcendence allegories — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 87; Sexual difference cannot be reduced to the biology of gametes — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: The ‘male principle creates to maintain / female principle maintains to create’ chiasmus is striking — worth pulling apart how this prefigures the transcendence/immanence split that structures the rest of the book.

Broader Connections

• Biology gives no basis for gendered immanence and transcendence allegories #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 87
• Biology does not condemn women to inferiority; meaning applied to differences does #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1978
• Sexual difference cannot be reduced to the biology of gametes #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88
• Gender is a social power structure rather than a genetic trait. #expands (0.75)