Feminist Theory of the 1980 and 1990s « Clarissa's Blog
If you accept Freud and his idea that women are castrated men, it is a perfectly logical corrective to suggest that women should make a big deal of their own genitals and not see them as merely a sign of the missing penis.
That is the logic behind French feminism, anyway.
But, actually, I find the Freudian premise untenable as science.
Sure, there are a lot of things we cannot readily observe. We don’t see the dark side of the moon, or black holes, or the colors at the far sides of the spectrum. Female genitals are also hidden and complex.
Let’s take the issue down to the level that Freud does. A child thinks the moon is made of cheese or that there is a man in the moon. A child may also think that girls are castrated boys, since their genitals do not appear to us in the same way as those of boys.
Should we develop a theoretical response to these kind of naive and culturally conditioned responses of children?
We could supplement the mythologies by asserting that the moon did not only contain cheese, but “wine and cheese”. Also that there was not just a man in the moon, but a woman as well, who happened to be his wife.
Alternatively, one should perhaps not put too much stock in the views of naive observers.
If you accept Freud and his idea that women are castrated men, it is a perfectly logical corrective to suggest that women should make a big deal of their own genitals and not see them as merely a sign of the missing penis.
That is the logic behind French feminism, anyway.
But, actually, I find the Freudian premise untenable as science.
Sure, there are a lot of things we cannot readily observe. We don’t see the dark side of the moon, or black holes, or the colors at the far sides of the spectrum. Female genitals are also hidden and complex.
Let’s take the issue down to the level that Freud does. A child thinks the moon is made of cheese or that there is a man in the moon. A child may also think that girls are castrated boys, since their genitals do not appear to us in the same way as those of boys.
Should we develop a theoretical response to these kind of naive and culturally conditioned responses of children?
We could supplement the mythologies by asserting that the moon did not only contain cheese, but “wine and cheese”. Also that there was not just a man in the moon, but a woman as well, who happened to be his wife.
Alternatively, one should perhaps not put too much stock in the views of naive observers.
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