ABSTRACT
‘Her problems are my problems’, ‘I live exactly as Beauvoir’, ‘I am Beauvoir’ … During years of research on the life and work of Simone de Beauvoir I frequently received such reactions from all types of feminists. Their passionate response to Beauvoir's writings and personality was miles away from the dismissive attitude of some major contemporary feminist theorists who had summarily condemned Beauvoir's thinking as outdated and ‘male biased’. 2 Numerous ‘ordinary feminists’, however, enthusiastically identified themselves with Beauvoir, and it even appeared that she herself was among us!
