Feminist
Regarding the phallic-stage psychosexual development of girls, as a psychologist, Sigmund Freud believed it developmentally natural for a girl to center her libido (desire) upon her pudendum, especially the clitoris as her primary erogenous zone. He further proposed that upon reaching adulthood (sexual maturity), the vagina then became a woman’s primary erogenous zone. Nonetheless, Freud’s successors criticise the phallic stage theoretical constructs, because their logic presents women who are vaginally—and clitorally—orgasmic, as psychosexually immature.
Contemporaneously, Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual development theory is criticized as sexist, because it was informed with his introspection (self-analysis). To integrate the female libido (sexual desire) to psychosexual development, he proposed that girls develop “penis envy”. In response, the German Neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Karen Horney, counter-proposed that girls instead develop “Power envy”, rather than penis envy. She further proposed the concept of “womb and vagina envy”, the male’s envy of the female ability to bear children; yet, contemporary formulations further develop said envy from the biologic (child-bearing) to the psychologic (nurturance), envy of women’s perceived right to be the kind parent.
Read more about this topic: Phallic Stage
Famous quotes containing the word feminist:
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.”
—Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)