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PENIS_ENVY

                                                             December 23, 2014
One day the young teenage version of myself was              February 19, 2015
listening to a program on WBAI which was                     February 20, 2019
discussing the sexism inherent in the Freudian
theory of "penis envy".  The phrase was
completely unfamiliar to me at that point,
and I can but hope that we're living in an
era where it's unfamiliar to most:

Freud's idea of "penis envy" was that it was a
stage of development where young girls were
pissed off at their mothers for not giving them
a penis.  Or something like that.  If you like,
try to make sense of some of the material on the
net about it if you can.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy
  http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/freud_women.htm

There was something a little strange
about the way the phrase "penis envy"       A woman insisting that women
was echoing around in the intellectual      are "just as good as men"
discourse of the day-- possibly it was      might be accused of being
because Simone de Beauvoir took it on in    a mere victim of "penis-envy".
what may be the primary work of the         (And perhaps "hysterical".)
second wave of feminism, "The Second
Sex", from 1949.                            One of the more peculiar
                                            responses to all this was the
Overall, the influence of Freud and         attitude among the lesbian
psychoanalysis in general can't be          feminists of the day toward
overstated-- this was the great secular     things like "strap-on dildos".
religion of mid-century intellectuals.
                                               You wouldn't use one of *those*
Over the years in psychology there had         things, would you?  What, do
been a number of schisms and deviations        you have "penis-envy"?
from Freudianism, but it's really
remarkable that it wasn't until the 1990s          A_BRIEF_HISTORY_OF_SEX
that there was some *really* critical
work of Freud that was published that               
demonstrated how little in the way of            
anything like data he had going for him.         As late as 1982, I        
The great founder of psychoanlysis was           remember saying things    
little better than a con artist, and             like "Freud seems more     
Freudianism little better than a                 like a philosopher than   
cult... but if you tried to say that in          a scientist", but only     
1960, you'd find someone trying to               with some trepidation--
psychoanalyze why Freudianism made you so        I wasn't sure how        
uncomfortable and defensive.                     strong a case I could  
                                                 make for it.           
                                                 
                                                 

                                                 
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