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

234 Pages·2018·1.38 MB·English

by  Mari Ruti

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.
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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