 Beauvoir’s challenge to the philosophical tradition was part of the existential-phenomenological project. Her challenge to the patriarchal status quo was more dramatic. It was an event. Not at first, however, for at its publication The Second Sex was regarded more as an affront to sexual decency than a political indictment of patriarchy or a phenomenological account of the meaning of “woman”. The women who came to be known as second-wave feminists understood what Beauvoir’s first readers missed. It was not sexual decency that was being attacked but patriarchal indecency that was on trial. The Second Sex expressed their sense of injustice, focused their demands for social, political, and personal change and alerted them to the connections between private practices and public policies. The Second Sex remains a contentious book. No longer considered sexually scandalous, its analysis of patriarchy and its proposed antidotes to women’s domination are still debated. What is not contested, however, is the fact that feminism as we know it remains in its debt. 