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Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life PDF

234 Pages·2018·1.38 MB·English
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PENIS ENVY AND OTHER BAD FEELINGS PENIS ENVY AND OTHER BAD FEELINGS THE EMOTIONAL COSTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE MARI RUTI Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-54676-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ruti, Mari, author. Title: Penis envy and other bad feelings : the emotional costs of everyday life / Mari Ruti. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017049985 | ISBN 9780231186681 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Critical theory. | Negativity (Philosophy) | Emotions—Social aspects. | Neoliberalism. | Feminist theory. Classification: LCC HM480 .R88 2018 | DDC 128/.37—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049985 A Columbia University Press E-book. CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup- [email protected]. Cover design by Julia Kushnirsky Cover photo by Geoff Spear This book is dedicated to those who threw the lifeline: Sean Carroll Doreen Drury Jess Gauchel Steph Gauchel Alice Jardine Marjorie McClung Jean Russo Josh Viertel CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Creed of Pragmatism 2 The Rationalization of Intimacy 3 The Obsessions of Gender 4 The Reinvention of Heteropatriarchy 5 The Specificity of Desire 6 The Age of Anxiety Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index INTRODUCTION F or a long time, Sigmund Freud has been accused of being a misogynist because he claimed that women suffer from penis envy. I remember that when I first came across this idea in college, I threw Freud’s book across my dorm room and declared him “a fucking idiot.” I don’t blame anyone for having the same reaction: surely there’s something outrageous about claiming that when a little girl sees her brother’s penis, she instantly starts to covet it because she recognizes her own inferiority.1 But after studying feminist theory and related fields for three decades, I’ve come to see that it’s possible to spin Freud’s claim differently: in a society that rewards the possessor of the penis with obvious political, economic, and cultural benefits, women would have to be a little obtuse not to envy it; they would have to be a little obtuse not to want the social advantages that automatically accrue to the possessor of the penis, particularly if he happens to be white. Because Freud (who was otherwise a pioneering thinker) wasn’t always able to transcend the blatant sexism of his nineteenth-century cultural context, his wording at times implies that it’s the penis itself— rather than the social privilege it signifies—that’s the object of envy. Nevertheless, it’s possible to read his argument about penis envy as an indication that women in his Viennese culture, who didn’t have many public outlets for their frustration or rage, were aware that femaleness carries less social currency than maleness. In other words, what many have taken as a mortifying insult to women—Freud’s notion of penis envy —can be reinterpreted as an embryonic sign of female dissatisfaction; it can be reinterpreted as a precursor to feminist political consciousness.2 Given the historically subservient status of women in Western societies—as in most other societies—we might wonder less about the existence of penis envy than about why it’s not more pronounced. To this day, our society implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) codes the possessor of the penis (the man) as “having” something while coding the one who doesn’t have a penis (the woman) as “lacking” something. This in turn suggests that a man is an active subject whereas a woman—the one who “lacks”—is a passive object: a nonsubject who requires completion by the subject (the man). Why, then, aren’t women screaming bloody hell? Why isn’t every woman an ardent feminist? Later in this book I’ll examine some reasons for this state of affairs, including the possibility that women have been taught to eroticize—and therefore find pleasure in—their subordination. But first I want to assure my male readers that this book is aimed at them as much as it’s aimed at women. In part this is because it touches on other bad feelings besides penis envy, such as depression and anxiety. But in part it’s because I believe that many men suffer from penis envy just as much as women do. This claim is less counterintuitive than it may at first appear, for if the penis functions as a socially valorized emblem of phallic— heteropatriarchal—authority, then even those who possess the organ may feel like they aren’t able to exercise its authority; they may feel like there’s a discrepancy between this icon of robust confidence and the insecure realities of their lives. In this sense, if the cultural mythology surrounding the penis can make women feel deficient, it can make men feel like frauds. But if phallic authority is a mere fantasy-infused cultural mythology, why would anyone be stupid enough to feel bad about not having it? In response to this question, I want to suggest that the mythological status of the phallus may actually increase its appeal. After all, many people routinely desire things that they imagine others to have, such as the good life, happiness, peace of mind, perfect relationships, mansions with no heating problems, and so on. That these things may not in reality exist— that the lives of those who are envied may in reality be less enjoyable than they appear from the outside—in no way prevents them from being objects of envy. In the same manner, phallic power doesn’t need to be empirically “real” to function as an object of envy; the fact that the (“masculine”) social prestige of the phallus is illusory—more on this topic shortly—doesn’t change the reality that we still live in a heteropatriarchal society that conditions us to want this prestige. The penis as a signifier of phallic power is a collective fetish, a magical totem pole that’s meant to protect us from danger, including any and all “enemies of the state.” This is why the pissing contest between the American government and its opponents is unlikely to end any time soon. Yet this contest also highlights the purely fantasmatic nature of phallic authority that I’ve just called attention to because it reveals that this authority frequently can’t deliver what it promises: no matter how many missiles the government accumulates, it can’t keep the other guy from pissing in its backyard (or hacking into its computer systems). This is also the personal predicament of those men—by no means all men—who make the mistake of thinking that their penises automatically make them powerful: there will always be times when their power falters, when they’re forced to reckon with the inherent fragility, precarity, and vulnerability of human life. This is why those of us who recognize the imaginary nature of phallic authority mock their red convertibles, flashy belt buckles, enormous cowboy hats, ostentatious hairdos, gilded high- rise residences, bombastic gestures, and exaggerated finger jabbing; we know that they’re caught up in a delusion of power, that their posturing hides a shakier reality. In stressing the imaginary (mythological, fantasmatic, illusory) foundations of heteropatriarchy, I don’t mean to suggest that its impact on women isn’t real. Much of the time, it feels all too real, whether one is walking down the street, working in an office, or trying to have a romantic relationship. This is why this book has more to say about the persistence of heteropatriarchy than is considered polite in our (allegedly) postfeminist world, a world that has supposedly reached gender equality. In entitling this book Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings, I wanted to signal that I mean it to function as a biting feminist critique of heteropatriarchal society, the kind of society where “penis envy” still persists as a bad feeling among others, although admittedly—partly because of its Freudian baggage—it’s often not called that; instead it

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Mari Ruti combines theoretical reflection, cultural critique, feminist politics, and personal experience to analyze the prevalence of bad feelings in contemporary everyday life. Proceeding from a playful engagement with Freud's idea of penis envy, Ruti's autotheoretical commentary fans out to a broa
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