In the family, such power was granted to the father not only because custom demanded but also because, from ancient times, it was his accepted responsibility to protect his family from physical danger and to provide food and at least minimal comforts, and because, as the strongest member of the family physically, he had life-and-death control over each member. This power, ultimately derived from the reality of physical strength, was institutionalized in society, from the ruler down into the family.
Freud, coming from a culture in which this authority still manifestly resided in fathers, did not have to question his principle “anatomy is destiny.” Any theory, however, in which this idea was an essential building block is weakened if the principle is incorrect.
Freud’s enthusiasm for the position that men are superior fitted in with what he considered observable fact: that women are secretive and insincere (24, p. 151). more masochistic (33, p. 116), less self-sufficient (p. 117), more dependent and pliant (p. 117), more envious and jealous (p. 125), have defective superegos (p. 129) and little sense of justice (p. 134), are more bisexual (p. 113), more narcissistic (p. 132), weaker in social interests (p. 134), have less capacity for sublimating instincts (p. 134), and become more rigid and unchangeable at an earlier age (pp. 134-135). They are intellectually inferior because biologically created for the nonintellectual task of motherhood; they are morally inferior because, already without a penis, they cannot easily be threatened and because they are bound more concretely to the real world and so are less concerned with such aesthetic issues as morality (that is, they obey the command of biology rather than a more ethereal call).
It is a corollary of the thesis of male superiority that the prime feature of maleness, the penis, is a superior organ physically and symbolically—and Freud could point to phallic worship, in its myriad forms, as proof to those who did not listen to the dreams of men and women. In the concept of castration anxiety, he found reason to believe that men considered the penis the prime organ of the race, and in penis envy, he found the proof that women also agreed on the primacy of the penis. That it is visible, can change size, is shaped like a weapon, can penetrate, frightens women, and is a source of such intense sensation from infancy on also demonstrates its superiority. When it is contrasted with the female genitals, the case is again made. The female phallus, the clitoris, is much smaller, is not usually visible, cannot penetrate, has not seized mankind’s imagination, is never symbolized or exalted, and—Freud thought—is not a competent source of pleasure. Its significance is further weakened in that it must share its fate with another organ, the vagina, which Freud felt was universally considered an inferior organ: hidden, dark, mysterious, uncertain, unclean, and undependable in bringing pleasure.
That is a lot of evidence; wherever he looked in the outer world or in mental life, the primacy of the penis seemed proved.
Offered against Freud’s argument is the exciting new research alluded to earlier. In mammalian species the function of cells is female in both sexes until androgens are added in fetal life. In fact, except for the chromosomes, one cannot talk about two sexes until the androgens have been added; there is only femaleness. Freud, who always had a nose for mystery and who found so many of his mysteries at the most fundamental levels— cell function or even more primitive—would have been nonplussed by this finding. And he would have been even more disturbed in his argument to learn that this female cast to tissue extends into the central nervous system, where, as has now been demonstrated in mammals other than man, future masculine behavior in the male requires the organizing only androgens produce, while in the female nothing need be added for femininity. So the new research would seem to put Freud’s argument in a most precarious position; and since he chose to extend his beliefs from the realm of psychodynamics into morality and other cosmic issues, in the last few years he has been well beaten about the head.
Nonetheless, we ought not yet to find in the new data a proof that mankind does not believe in the primacy of the penis; one can still ask where in the child’s psyche resides this knowledge of embryology or tissue capability. It is not to be found. But we can easily detect boys’ and girls’ attitudes about penises; they still find them impressive. Is this primacy? Some no longer think so, but instead feel it is too bad Freud did not emphasize more strongly that children of both sexes are also deeply stirred by the significance of breasts and womb; reproductive power is more difficult to represent visually, but, if measured by the mystery it creates, is more important even than the penis.
In addition, the observations of Masters and Johnson (102) have had a great effect in diminishing Freud’s ideas about femininity. Freud said a girl is masculine until she gives up her hope for a penis; as long as she hopes, she retains her fixation on her clitoris, as if it were a penis. Only if she shifts her erotism to the generative inner space, the vagina and pelvic organs, will she be feminine. But Masters and Johnson have found that all female orgasms originate in the clitoris;* they have not observed vaginal orgasms. So Freud’s argument seems disproved.
And I believe it is—but not at all by Masters’ and Johnson’s work. Innumerable women have sensed that they have two sorts of orgasms, one clitoral, the other vaginal; they have no trouble distinguishing the two. Just because gross vaginal changes at the moment of orgasm are not visible to these observers, this does not prove the absence of vaginal orgasm. Perhaps its physiology—as can happen with intense pain or itch, in muscle or skin —is only not grossly visible; or perhaps vaginal orgasm requires penile intercourse with a meaningful man and is not producible in a laboratory; or perhaps there is so much action in the vagina at the moment of an orgasm produced by penetration that the view is obscured. Their work has not disproved that there is an orgasm experienced deeper in the body than is a clitoral orgasm. So their argument does not dislodge Freud. Another does: too many feminine women have been known who do not have vaginal orgasms (111), and too many women do have them who, by Freud’s definition of maturity, cannot be feminine—schizophrenics, neurotics of all types and degrees, and even grossly masculine women.
But this is a nonscientific discussion masked by pseu-
*No one seems to remember that Freud also said this: “When at last the sexual act is permitted [for the first time] and the clitoris itself becomes excited, it still retains a function: the task, namely, of transmitting the excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts, just as— to use a simile—pine shavings can be kindled in order to set a log of harder wood on fire" (34, p. aai).
doscientific rationalization (106, 127). How can one prove one sex superior to the other if one does not first state the categories to be measured? If superiority is measured by body size, phallic dimensions, skill in football, fatherliness, or production of sperm, females are unequivocally inferior; the differences can be measured. Likewise, if superiority is measured by size of bosom, gestational capacity, longevity, resistance to illness, motheringness, or capacity to ovulate, women have a great edge. In the middle lie innumerable skills at which neither men nor women inherently excel, such as weaving, growing rice, solving problems in psychoanalytic research, running an advertising agency, or bickering. And then there are imponderables such as: Is a woman superior if she can have limitless orgasms? Is a man superior if he is completely satisfied after one or five? This sort of foolishness, so intensely argued these days, proves nothing. Instead of pontificating about superiority, we might simply try to observe the development of males and females and masculinity and femininity. Let us relieve ourselves of the burden of deciding which is the better sex.