Page 196 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 9: Gender and Stratification

rejection of choice by psychoanalysis is the real source of its failure to understand the woman’s Notes
problem in real life.
Freud’s psychoanalysis has been criticized from the feminist point of view and Simone de Beauvoir’s
argument has been taken by Shulamith Firestone and others. Millet’s book “Sexual Politics” raises
a number of objections against Freudian psychoanalysis. She points out that his circular method
consists in formulating penis envy by reporting children’s distorted impressions and finally
converting the description into a prescription.
The Marxist feminists like Juliet Mitchell are sympathetic to Freud. In her book “Psychoanalysis
and Feminism” Mitchell follows Althusser’s use of Freud and Lacan and gives more importance
to the concept of unconscious. In her opinion the crux of Freud’s teaching lies in showing that
femininity is neither innate; nor is it the product of cultural conditioning. She insists that we
should not ignore the fact that Freud’s discussion of femininity operates within the framework of
biosexuality. Maculinity and femininity for him were synonyms for active and passivity. She also
urges that Freud attempts not a description of woman’s nature but an inquiry into how a child
with a bio-sexual disposition becomes a woman. She criticizes the revisionist thesis that the
biological division of sexes was directly reflected in the mental life of each sex. For her psycho-
analysis is a theory about the ways in which culture is assimilated and transferred. It is not a
biological theory about masculinity and femininity.
But Janet Sayer charges Mitchell for misunderstanding Freud’s true position and for giving an
‘analytical’ rather than a ‘developmental’ account of Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud does mention
various stages in the development of a child in terms of oral, anal, genital and such other stages.
She says that Freud did regard psychology as given by biology.
Amy Gutmann argues that even though Freud’s explanatior of a woman’s subordination is not a
biological one (as Mitchel says) it still requires us to believe that the psychic and socia subordination
of woman will persist so long as the family exists. In addition Freud tried to tell us that civilization
would be threatened by the breakdown of the patriarchal nuclear family, since the foundation of
morality and culture—the male superego would lose its raison de etre. She does not accept the
pessimistic implications of Freudian explanation that woman will be secondary as long as the
family exists.
Gayle Rubin, following Mitchell, uses psychoanalysis for a general critique of a patriarchal culture
which is predicated on the exchange of women by men. Nancy Chodorow shifts from Freud to
later Object-Relations theory in order to explain how women’s child-caring role is perpetuated
through the earliest relationship between a mother and her child and she demands a fundamental
change in the organisation of child care.
Thus there are two different ways to interpret Freud’s views on femininity. The feminists have
charged Freud for defending traditional gender identities. On the other hand, some feminists
have maintained that psychoanalysis does provide a powerful critique of patriarchal society and
locates the roots of sexual oppression in particular social relations, such as mothering. The
contemporary debates in feminism not only include these two types of approaches but highlight
other aspects of psychoanalysis also.
Levi–Strauss on the Exchange of Women
Many anthropologists have tried to give a universal theory about the social roles of men and
women. Levi-strauss’s theory of the Elementary Structures of Kinship is one of such theories.
Levi-Strauss is interested in understanding the deep structures of the human mind. For him the
structure and the working of the human mind can be derived from the capacity to form and learn
language. Language is a distinctive capacity of the human species and is uniquely human institution.
Language is a system that functions in the socio-cultural world. It is with the help of language that

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