Womb and Vagina envy--a primary disease of the woman-hating gestational slavers
Womb and vagina envy
The feminist psychoanalyst Karen Horney (ca. 1938).
In feminist psychology, the terms womb envy and vagina envy denote the unexpressed anxiety that men may feel in natural envy of the biological functions of the female sex: (pregnancy, parturition, breast feeding) — emotions which could impel their social subordination of women, and to drive themselves to succeed in perpetuating their names via material legacies.[clarification needed][1] Each term is analogous to the concept of female penis envy, derived from the theory of psychosexual development, presented in Freudian psychology; they address the gender role social dynamics underlying the "envy and fascination with the female breasts and lactation, with pregnancy and childbearing, and vagina envy [that] are clues and signs of transsexualism and to a femininity complex of men, which is defended against by psychological and sociocultural means".[2]
Womb envy denotes the envy men may feel towards a woman's primary role in nurturing and sustaining life. In coining the term, the Neo-Freudian psychiatrist Karen Horney (1885–1952) proposed that men experience womb envy more powerfully than women experience penis envy,[neutrality is disputed] because "men need to disparage women more than women need to disparage men."[3] As a psychoanalyst, Horney considered womb envy a cultural, psychosocial tendency, like the concept of penis envy, rather than an innate male psychological trait.[1]
Furthermore, in Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History (2000), historian Robert S. McElvaine extended Horney’s argument that womb envy is a powerful, elementary factor in the psychological insecurity suffered by many men. He coined the term non-menstrual syndrome (NMS), denoting a man's possible insecurity before the biologic and reproductive traits of woman; thus, womb envy may impel men to define their identities in opposition to women. Hence, men who are envious of women's reproductive traits insist that a "real man" must be "not-a-woman", thus they may seek to socially dominate women — what they may or may not do in life — as psychological compensation for what men cannot do biologically.[4]
Vagina envy denotes the envy males may feel towards females for having a vagina. In Psychoanalysis and Male Sexuality (1966), Hendrik Ruitenbeek relates vagina envy to men’s desire to be able to give birth and to urinate (higher flow rate)[dubious – discuss] and to masturbate in ways physically different from those available to men, and that such psychological envy might produce misogyny in neurotic men.[5] Moreover, in Vagina Envy in Men (1993), the physician Harold Tarpley elucidates the theoretic differences among the constructs of "vagina envy," "womb envy," "breast envy," and "parturition envy," emotions wherein men suffer envy — "a grudging desire for another's excellence or advantage" — of women's female biologic capabilities of pregnancy, parturition, breast feeding, and of the social-role freedom to physically nurture children.[
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womb_and_vagina_envy
I was reading one of Amanda Marcotte’s recent posts over at Pandagon. It’s about the misogynistic language used by the anti-choice movement, and this passage jumped out at me.
What they fail to understand is that “life begins at conception” is a misogynist statement. It’s the erasure of a woman’s role in making new people, and a claim that the only effort that counts is the effort a man put into ejaculating. Abortion is horrifying because it’s a reminder that men do not actually make babies, but that women do through a 9 month process, and that if a woman chooses to interrupt that process, there will not be a baby. Which is pretty conclusive proof that men don’t make babies. Which directly contradicts the misogynist belief that only men are capable of really doing jobs worth doing.
What Marcotte is describing here is the phenomenon that psychoanalyst Karen Horney (1885-1952) called “womb envy.” Basically, boys and men are jealous of women because women have the ability to go through pregnancy and nursing. Women can find fulfillment from creating new life and from enhancing their own lives through work outside the home. Since men can’t give birth, they can only turn to the outside world for personal fulfillment. She believed that the womb envy that is experienced by males is the source of denying women equal rights, blaming women for the perceived downfall of society, and demonizing women’s sexuality. Whatever your feelings about pregnancy, I think Horney makes a clearly pro-choice, pro-woman point. “Life begins at conception” is a way for anti-choice men to claim a piece of the womb they secretly covet by claiming sole responsibility for the creation of the next generation. I think Marcotte applies the concept of womb envy beautifully in the passage I quoted, even if she didn’t mean to.
But what about anti-choice women? They have wombs, so do they experience womb envy too? I think so, but in a different way. On the subject of misogynistic women, Marcotte explains the benefits of hating your own gender, like moral superiority and being one step closer to being part of the powerful patriarchy. But to be a misogynistic woman, one has to sacrifice the ownership of one’s own womb. Anti-choice women are caught between gaining a slice of the patriarchy pie and having control of their own reproduction. I’ll give anti-choice women the benefit of the doubt and say that they haven’t been completely brainwashed and don’t really like having more children than their bodies, minds, and budgets can handle. Most anti-choice women don’t have “as many children as the good Lord gives,” and they’ll explain away the dozens of kids they would have if they practiced what they preached by pushing abstinence. So, the womb envy that anti-choice women feel is directed toward feminist women who have managed to find social influence and personal fulfillment while feeling entitled to control their own wombs. How do we do it?
http://feministing.com/2009/01/24/taking_womb_envy_one_step_furt/
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Horney often criticized the work of Sigmund Freud. For instance, she opposed Freud's notion of penis envy, claiming that what Freud was really detecting was women's justified envy of men's power in the world. While penis envy might occur occasionally in neurotic women, she said, womb envy occurs just as much in men. Horney felt that men were envious of a woman's ability to bear children. The degree to which men are driven to succeed and to have their names live on, she said, is mere compensation for their inability to more directly extend themselves into the future by means of carrying, nurturing, and bearing children. She did not understand why psychologists found the need to place much emphasis on men's sexual apparatus. Furthermore, Horney desexualized Freud's oedipal complex, claiming that the clinging to one parent and jealousy of the other was simply the result of anxiety caused by a disturbance in the parent-child relationship.
In her personality theory, Horney reformulated Freudian thought and presented a holistic, humanistic perspective that emphasized cultural and social influences, human growth, and the achievement of self-actualization. Though she was often considered to be too outspoken, Horney often has the distinction of being the only woman whose theory is included in personality textbooks.
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http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/horney.html