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The First Sex
by Elizabeth Gould Davis
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Penguin Books, Inc. (1972-09-30)
ISBN: 0140035044
EAN: 9780140035049
Binding/Media: Mass Market Paperback - 382 pages
SKU: P0096-1
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: 1976 printing. Sound spine, no spine creases, pages lightly tanned, small piece of corner at spine worn from shelf use, rubbing, cup mark at back cover, remainder mark.
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Customer Reviews
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Essential reading for feminism
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-04-22
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Although it is not without flaws, the book is a landmark.
The only thing better is Mary Daly's "Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism" (1978) which builds on Elizabeth Gould Davis's work.
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still controversial over 30 years later
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-05-30
12 out of 12 customers found this reveiw helpful
i can't help but notice which reviewers gave the book 1 star and which ones gave it 5... ;) whether it's been proven or disproven i have to say that the IDEAS are enthralling, and VERY well argued. i have to say in response to one of the reviewers that it's hard to swallow the assertion that free thinkers would be harmed in some way by this book: the work is, in and of itself, about the freedom of thought. as a college professor i am constantly reminding my students that history is written by the victors, and that anthropology is not the study of human development - look at the word - it's the study of the development of MAN. we all have our lenses, which refract our views of life experiences, and i think that this book is a testament to the notion that we really MUST reconsider what we think we know. that which is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is often later found to err from reality. who knows what further investigations will yield? i, for one, was liberated by this book, and have used its theories as the basis of a novel (yes, fiction) i am writing. i would suggest this reading to anyone interested in gender studies, anthropology, archeology, sexual identity, and religious studies.
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Aha!
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-02-04
4 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
Now I know where Maureen Dowd gets her boring and rather idiotic rants that chic pseudo-intellectuals find so amusing while the "inbred" (in other words, dissenting free thinkers who actually do not just give blind praise to someone because of their gender,race, religion, ethnicity, etc.) hicks think of a reason why we wasted our time of this drivel.
This crap has been disproven by many professional men and women time and time again. It is understandable that some women are angry at how they have been treated. However, some of them are becoming what they hate. And it will destroy them in the end.
This book is garbage, pure and simple. It is this kind of stuff that makes people who can think for themselves realize this author and Dowd merely undermine their efforts instead of aiding them. Good job, dingbats.
Anyone find this rather scathing? Good, they can dish it, they should be able to dine on it.
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Possibly the most important book ever written.
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-01-19
15 out of 23 customers found this reveiw helpful
If I could make everyone on the planet read one book, this would be it. Ms. Davis gives us a new slant on archeology, stripping away layer upon layer of gender bias to find our decidedly feminist roots.
Note that the reviews listed below which are critical are written by men. This is the truth they can't handle, and the herstory they've tried so hard to bury. Even if you don't agree with the book's content, looking at history from a new perspective can only enhance ones world view. I disagree that the information has been "disproven". Rather, the vehemence with which it is attacked tells me that Davis was on to something.
Absolutely essential for any woman's library.
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A crank work already debunked time and time again
Rating (1)
Date: 2004-09-24
10 out of 19 customers found this reveiw helpful
Elizabeth Gould Davis' book THE FIRST SEX is the author's assertion that prehistory was matriarchal and that women are physical, mentally, and morally superior to men. Her aim is already questionable, for who would want to say one half of the human race is superior to the other, and her manner of carrying out the argument is ineffective.
The problems with the book are manifold, and the difficulty in describing them all lies in where to even start. For one, Davis does not appear to have been qualified to write a book based on archeological and historical data, for being a common librarian she had no specialized training in the subjects. With no proficiency with, for example, Latin she has to interpret ancient sources by translations, and in one bizarre passage suggests that only women translators are capable of producing reliable results. While later saying that Christianity was made up entirely, she takes everything written in other ancient sources as dry fact insisting, for example, that the Amazons existed while most experts would now hold that they were a mere fanciful myth.
Within the field of biology, her limited knowledge of the field and the outdatedness of her sources results in tired assertions such as that all children regardless of gender begin at conception as female, which modern science has shown to be a misconception based on visual appearance when there is always a clear genetic distinction.
Davis makes a number of curious sidetracks into areas for which she simply has a personal distaste, even if they have no relation to her thesis. Christianity and Judaism particularly suffer. Her feelings for Judaism appalingly approach anti-semitism, with Jews being portrayed as distasteful and shifty barbarians whose ideas, introduced to the civilized (i.e. matriachal) world resulted in its downfall. Then with Christianity she does what she can to belittle it, calling it "the barbarous religion" and reducing all the sundry denominations of the faith into one single doctrine of evil. At times, this results in obvious contradictions, as when she writes that Christians made up stories of persecution and were really treated well in Rome, and then a mere couple of pages later notes that several Roman emperors persecuted Christians to a great degree.
Finally, Davis drops a long expected bombshell in her afterword by proclaiming that we are now "on the threshold of the new Age of Aquarius", reducing what wasn't even a passable academic work to mere new-age claptrap.
THE FIRST SEX, in the three decades since its appearance, has been extensively debunked, and thankfully contemporary readers are more likely to approach it through first hearing that it is nonsense. Cynthia Eller's THE MYTH OF MATRIARCHAL PREHISTORY is the most detailed of these critical examinations and essential reading if you intend on perusing Davis' book. Eller's book is admirable in that it shows how these crank ideas, by basing hopes upon an imaginary past, are actually harming the possibility of creating a just and equal society in the future.
Davis' is a book of already objectionable premise made terrible by its spiteful tone and disregard for academic standards, and the ease by which it has been debunked. I really cannot recommend THE FIRST SEX; even for those looking for opposing voices in anthropological study there are better, more trustworthy works.
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