Infants of both sexes develop identically through childhood up to age twelve

Evidence

For girls and boys, the body is first the radiation of a subjectivity, the instrument that brings about the comprehension of the world: they apprehend the universe through their eyes and hands, and not through their sexual parts. The drama of birth and weaning takes place in the same way for infants of both sexes; they have the same interests and pleasures; sucking is the first source of their most pleasurable sensations; they then go through an anal phase in which they get their greatest satisfactions from excretory functions common to both; their genital development is similar; they explore their bodies with the same curiosity and the same indifference; they derive the same uncertain pleasure from the clitoris and the penis; insofar as their sensibility already needs an object, it turns toward the mother: it is the soft, smooth, supple feminine flesh that arouses sexual desires, and these desires are prehensile; the girl like the boy kisses, touches, and caresses her mother in an aggressive manner; they feel the same jealousy at the birth of a new child; they show it with the same behavior: anger, sulking, urinary problems; they have recourse to the same coquetry to gain the love of adults. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the book’s central biological critique; connects to Chodorow’s later object-relations feminism. Note: need to check the library — but reader’s reference set appears to be a specific list, none of which match; suggest adding Nancy Chodorow to reading list. — connects to: Early divergence between boys and girls is socially imposed, not instinctual — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676; Gender differences are learned developmental outcomes, not natural expressions — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 668

Broader Connections

• Early divergence between boys and girls is socially imposed, not instinctual #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676
• Gender differences are learned developmental outcomes, not natural expressions #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 668