Sexual Development - Dynamics of Erotic Life by Robert J. Stoller

Author:Robert J. Stoller
Language: fra
Format: epub, mobi

9

Lovely

Belle was driven, as we saw in regard to her exhibitionism, by her preoccupation with being lovely. What caught my attention was that “lovely” was not, for her, an adjective describing behavior that revealed a sense of herself but rather was a noun, a specific “substance” within, that was drawn on when necessary and could be depleted by too many withdrawals or with age. Her “lovely” was a commodity. On rising in the morning, she had to put on her “lovely”; she could only hope as the day unfolded that if she had “lovely” then she was lovely.

Her mother, of course, had lots of “lovely,” had had it since childhood, had never earned it, and could not lose it no matter what happened in the way of physical or mental deterioration. This was a source of the greatest envy for Belle, who felt she had to work constantly to keep up her own depletable reserves. Being Mother’s daughter entitled her to a certain amount of “lovely,” but Mother made it clear that Belle had not been assigned the same amount by fate, could never acquire it by effort, would have it only as a part of physical attributes (external appearance and internal organs), and would have a “lovely” that—at best—was contaminated. Mother and women like her might sweat, but their sweat was “lovely”; such women, perhaps, had bowel movements, but of course their bowel movements were somehow “lovely”; when “lovely” women made love, every movement was lovely, while Belle was always in danger of fucking.

What contributed to “lovely”? At birth Belle was unequivocally assigned to the female sex.* This was a piece of good luck, for all the women in her mother’s family openly liked femaleness; it was purely and simply to Belle’s credit. Mother was happy to have borne a daugh-

*This seems obvious and beyond needing mention, but when we recall the effects of this assignment, we immediately see that it is a necessary first step in creating a female core gender identity.

ter. With father and his relatives perceived as inferiors by mother’s family, an infant male would be at jeopardy simply because he was male. In Belle’s case, with an ineffectual father and no brothers, no maleness was present to contradict the evidence of female value. That became a lifelong theme: her femaleness was fine.*

The problem was that she was a flawed girl and woman. The family did not say this was due to femaleness, however, but rather that it was the product of her being her mother’s child. Although such solid acceptance of the baby’s sex does not preclude feelings of inadequacy, we should not be tempted by analytic theory to extrapolate these feelings of defect as necessarily the result of penis envy. I am not implying that little girls, including Belle, do not experience penis envy. The evidence that they do is clear. What I am saying, rather, to restate my theory of primary femininity, is that penis envy may not be the earliest stage in

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