femininity

1. The quality or condition of being feminine.
2. A characteristic or trait traditionally held to be female.
3. Women considered as a group.
4. Effeminacy.

noun

1. The quality or condition of being feminine: femaleness, feminineness, womanliness. See gender.
2. Women in general: distaff, muliebrity, womanhood, womankind, womenfolk. See gender.
3. The quality of being effeminate: effeminacy, effeminateness, sissiness, unmanliness, womanishness. See gender.

Definition: girlishness
Antonyms: masculinity

Physical and behavioural characteristics, such as tenderness and consideration, which tend to be perceived by society as being in greater abundance in women, but which many regard as qualities desirable in both sexes. Compare masculinity; see also BEM sex role inventory.

Freud refused to put forward a definition of femininity: "In conformity with its peculiar nature, psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a woman is . . . but sets about enquiring how she comes into being" (1933a [1932], p. 116). He posits a primary bisexuality as the starting point for this process.

In Freud's view, the genesis of femininity differs from the genesis of masculinity because its linearity is interrupted. In the pre-oedipal phase, the girl's libido, instead of taking the opposite-sex parent as its object, as the boy does, is directed at the mother as object. This period is difficult to investigate because of the "inexorable repression" (1931b, p. 226) that overshadows it.

Therefore, the development of girls' sexuality is studied in an indirect way based on the process that the boy undergoes. In the early stages a similar path is traced: "the little girl is a little man" (1933a, p. 118), with the clitoris being interpreted in the phallic phase as a miniature penis. Then there are two shifts in perspective, shifts in which there is an explicit moral imperative. The girl has the duty of turning from the mother to the father (1939a [1934-1938]): the zone of sensitivity moves from the clitoris to the vagina, and there is a change of object to the father.

Reconversion is made possible by the differential impact of the castration complex on boys and girls. In boys, the castration complex puts an end to the Oedipus complex. But for girls, the castration complex makes the Oedipus complex possible.

The girl sees her mother as castrated, while her love is "directed to her phallic mother" (1939a, p. 126). This gives rise to a penis envy that later radiates beyond the desired object to imbue the woman's psychic life with envy and jealousy. The girl then chooses the father as object because he possesses the envied organ, and this new libidinal orientation is superimposed on the orientation of the mother as object, without replacing it entirely. The woman often transfers her early relationship with her mother onto her male partner. The need to anticipate from someone else what the woman once wanted to possess herself makes her dependent in a way that leads both to masochism (with the castigation she receives relating to her position in coitus) and to narcissism (which is expressed in her greater need to be loved than to love). Presenting another perspective in "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914c), Freud stated that following puberty, women, "especially if they grow up with good looks, develop a certain self-contentment" that exercises "a great attraction for those who have renounced part of their own narcissism" (p. 89).

Although the texts that present a synthetic view of femininity are focused on lack, Freud's incursions into mythology and literature emphasize something beyond the phallic stage in girls. This something is a place in the female body characterized by its internal nature (the "jewel-case") or by disorientation, as in the sense of the uncanny. The woman then appears not as an externally definable form but as a "hollow space" (1916-1917a [1915-1917], p. 156) that can receive what penetrates it. The spatial disorientation is coupled with a temporal disorientation, in which the representation of femininity becomes confused with the notion of birth linked with the fear of death, as if the third of the Fates had come to embody a femininity that governed all of destiny. Freud's study of femininity thus diverges into a theoretical synthesis derived from phallic logic and a representation of femininity that mythologizes woman as a place—whether of birth or death—where the processes of life are played out for every human being.

The idea of taking a foreign element into the self appears as the crossroads where the representations of psychoanalysis intersect with those of female sexuality. When Freud noted how the transference configuration enabled a repressed element to be taken in, he usually gave an example—Elisabeth in Studies on Hysteria (1895d) or Irma with her dream about the injection—of a patient struggling against accepting a proposed solution or repressed representation (1900a). Recourse to these terms had a clear impact on the paper "Negation" (1925h), because acceptance into the ego enabled repression to be effectively lifted.

Freud noted the conjunction between such acceptance and the outcome of female sexuality in "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908c), where he referred, in connection with the mother representation, to the discovery of the "cavity which receives the penis" (p. 218). In the moment of affirmation associated with the lifting of repression, the psychic apparatus has to receive the repressed element just as the female "hollow space" has to receive the penis. This correlation reappears in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937c), where Freud describes the man's refusal to accept the cure from the psychoanalyst as his rejection of femininity. Does a refusal of this kind arise from the fear of losing masculinity or the fear of invasion occasioned by opening the self as a "hollow space"? Two different definitions of femininity clash at this juncture.

Post-Freudian psychoanalysis both extended and revised Freud's lines of approach to femininity. The phallic primacy attributed to both sexes became a matter of dispute. Karen Horney asserted that the girl discovers vaginal sensations early on. As a result, recourse to the penis takes on a defensive significance. Ernest Jones did not consider woman as a form of failed man, and he related female anxiety not to castration anxiety but to aphanisis anxiety, the fear of losing her internal sensitivity. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel challenged the passive concept of the vagina. She saw the vaginal aim of incorporation as conferring a capacity for mastery, as with anality.

Conrad Stein sought to define a specifically feminine outcome by positing "castration as a negation of femininity." He argued that insofar as masculinity carries a "symbolic representation of itself," it is a guardian of identity. In contrast, the female pole, situated close to being, is governed by a tendency toward "destruction of the self's identity," which, when it gives rise to anxiety, "is negated by the act of regarding woman only as a castrated being." The risk of destruction to which the woman is exposed leads to a focus in the analysis on the dimension of invasion (André; Schaeffer).

Is there a fundamental difference between masculine protest and feminine protest organized around a receptive hollow space? In accordance with some of Michèle Montrelay's theories, François Perrier emphasized the girl's relationship with her mother, in which her fantasy involvement does not involve risking a part of herself but diving in head first. To reduce the risk of being sucked in, the girl appeals to the male organ, on which she confers investigative properties. Penis envy is thus governed not by rejection of femininity but by the girl's desire to orient herself in this space.

Wladimir Granoff examined the tendency for theory to construct femininity in negative terms. He regards femininity as a defense that resembles the child's decision to prefer the father to the mother. In this view, thought needs to turn away from femininity to construct an intellectualized universe. This turning away resembles the son-in-law's prohibition against turning toward his mother-in-law in Freud's analysis and is related to Freud's invitation to explore, beyond classical Greek culture, cultures that have been repressed by "turning from the mother to the father" (1939a, p. 114).

Because the female genital opening is feared as a place of absence, pubic hair has been ascribed the function of a veil, though it can equally well belong to fantasies surrounding fertility and growth, reminiscent of Demeter (Schneider). Marcel Detienne's observation concerning the dual character of the founding sites of Greek culture—"Eleusis is the counterpart of Athens"—can be used to inform the study of femininity. Freud's Moses and Monotheism (1939a [1934-1938]), drawing on Aeschylus's Eumenides, belongs in the mythical tradition that began with the founding of Athens. Accordingly, it pays tribute to Athena, a virgin born without a mother. It might well be appropriate to unearth those underworld entities that Athena proposes at the end of the tragedy, to lead "Into the earth/The cavern timeless as the tomb."

Bibliography

André, Jacques. (1995). Sur la sexualité féminine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine. (1970). Feminine guilt and the Oedipus complex. In her Female sexuality (pp. 94-134). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (Originally published 1964)

Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. SE, 4: 1-338; 5: 339-625.

——. (1908c). On the sexual theories of children. SE, 9: 205-226.

——. (1914c). On narcissism: an introduction. SE, 14: 67-102.

——. (1916-1917a [1915-1917]). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 15-16.

——. (1925h). Negation. SE, 19: 233-239.

——. (1931b). Female sexuality. SE, 21: 221-243.

——. (1933a [1932]). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 22: 1-182.

——. (1937c). Analysis terminable and interminable. SE, 23: 209-253.

——. (1939a [1934-1938]). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. SE, 23: 1-137.

Freud Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1895d). Studies on hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.

Granoff, Wladimir. (1976). La pensée et le féminin. Paris: Minuit.

Horney, Karen. (1967). Feminine psychology. New York: W. W. Norton.

Jones, Ernest. (1950). Early development of female sexuality. In his Papers on psycho-analysis. London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox.

Montrelay, Michèle. (1978). Inquiry into femininity. M/F, 1, 83-102.

Schaeffer, Jacqueline. (1997). Le refus du féminin. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Schneider, Monique. (1992). La part de l'ombre: Approche d'un trauma féminin. Paris: Aubier.

Stein, Conrad. (1977). La castration comme négation de la féminité. In his La mort d'Œdipe (pp. 155-183). Paris: Denoël.

Further Reading

Dahl, Kirsten. (2002). In her mother's voice: reflections on femininity and the superego. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 57, 3-26.

Kulish, Nancy. (2000). Primary femininity: Clinical advances and theoretical ambiguities. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 48,1355-1380.

Richards, Arlene K. (1996). Primary femininity and female genital anxiety. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44(S), 261-282.

Stoller, Robert J. (1976). Primary femininity. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 24, 59-78.

—MONIQUE SCHNEIDER

"Feminine" redirects here. For other uses, see Feminine (disambiguation).

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2007)

In some cultures, cosmetics are associated with femininity.

Femininity (also called womanliness) refers to qualities and behaviors judged by a particular culture to be ideally associated with or especially appropriate to women and girls.

Distinct from femaleness, which is a biological and physiological classification concerned with the reproductive system, femininity principally refers to secondary sex characteristics and other behaviors and features generally regarded as being more prevalent and better suited to women, whether inborn or socialized. In traditional Western culture, such features include gentleness, patience, and kindness.^{[citation needed]}

Femininity should not be confused with feminism, which is the belief that women deserve political and economic rights equal to men.

Contents 1 Feminine attributes 2 Feminine physical attributes 2.1 Cleavage 2.2 Corsets 2.3 Foot binding 2.4 High heels 2.5 Eating disorders 2.6 Neck rings 2.7 United States 3 Femininity in women 4 Femininity in men 5 Feminist views 6 See also 7 Notes

Feminine attributes

These are often perceived as being associated with personality traits such as nurturing, life-giving qualities, creativity, and an openness, or yielding, to other people.^{[citation needed]} The modern social stereotype of a woman is perceived as the complementary opposite of a man.^{[citation needed]} A feminine woman may have physical attributes different from those of a masculine male. These attributes result from the relationship between an individual's biology and the socialization she receives as a result of that biology. However, theories of femininity explored in the field of Gender Studies propose that femininity and masculinity are essentially constructed or 'performed' through a process of social construction.

Feminine physical attributes

Some research has indicated that heterosexual men may be aroused by child-like smooth skin, big eyes, and small noses and chins, though there are cultural differences in those preferences.^[1] Research has also indicated that a 0.7 waist-hip ratio arouses most heterosexual men.

These studies have led the media to speculate that these are evolutionary indicators of feminine fertility, although such speculation has yet to be proven. Long eyelashes or high-pitched voices may also be considered feminine by some heterosexual men in the West.^{[not in citation given][2][3]}

Women throughout history have sometimes gone to extremes to meet exacting cultural standards of what is considered attractive.

Cleavage

For more details on this topic, see Cleavage (breasts).

Larger breast size, a trait considered feminine, is suggested by visual clues, such as the cleavage between the breasts. Many women in western culture will emphasize cleavage to enhance femininity. They may do so by means of the cut of the outer wear, and by brassieres (bras) that push the breasts upwards and together. Special pads and inserts in the bra can also be used to aid in the positioning of the breasts higher.

Corsets

For more details on this topic, see Corset.

In the early twentieth-century United States and Europe, women wore corsets that restricted their movement and caused a variety of health problems, including shortness of breath, malformed organs, atrophied back muscles, and difficulty in labor.

Foot binding

For more details on this topic, see Foot binding.

For centuries in Imperial China, foot binding produced unnaturally small and deformed feet, where toes often rotted due to lack of circulation.^{[citation needed]}

High heels

Modern women often wear high-heeled shoes. The discomfort commonly associated with high-heeled shoes is endured for the visual effect of elongated legs.

Eating disorders

For more details on this topic, see Eating disorder.

Many women in the West also restrict their food intake in an effort to achieve what they consider an attractively thin body, which in extreme cases can lead to eating disorders.

Many people criticize the fashion and entertainment industries for promoting underweight,^[4][5] unrealistic, and arguably unhealthy ideals of feminine beauty.

Neck rings

For more details on this topic, see Neck ring.

In parts of Africa and Asia, neck rings still signify femininity, in rare cases leaving their wearers crippled and dependent on their husbands.

United States

In the United States, film, television, newspapers, and magazines have promoted dieting, clothing, makeup, and hair products, as well as cosmetic surgery^[6][7][8] and drugs^[9] as ways to achieve feminine beauty.

Femininity in women

In China until 1911, tiny, unnatural feet were aristocratic, lady like.

The Kayan people of Northern Thailand associate the wearing of neck rings with aristocratic femininity.

High-heeled shoes.

Corsets.

Femininity in men

Main article: Effeminacy

Femininity in men, as masculinity in women, is often considered to be negative due to its contradiction of traditional roles. It is a stereotype that homosexual men tend to be very effeminate, although this is not always the case. Drag culture, often associated with homosexuality, makes a virtue of male femininity.

Feminist views

Although feminism is widely divergent, generally feminists believe that there are positive and negative characteristics of femininity. Many believe women should be able to dress and look as they wish and not be harassed for dressing in certain ways, or for showing anger. Some advocate female ownership of the 'masculine' trait of assertiveness. Others argue that men should take on nurturing roles.

Feminine appearance is a matter of preference. Some women like to exercise, yet others prefer only to diet. Men also are not all the same in their preferences about appearance. Many men and women suffer from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) by feeling insecure about their body image. However, Naomi Wolf argues in The Beauty Myth that there is particular external pressure on women, regarding appearance, from the media and advertising.

See also

• Feminine psychology
• Feminization (sociology)
• Gender studies
• Marianismo
• Mitochondrial Eve
• Nature versus nurture
• Sociology of gender

Notes

1. ^ "Interpersonal Relations and Group Procceses" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2006-11-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20061120012355/http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/lkellner/Research+Methods/Cross-Cultural+Perception+of+Attractiveness.pdf. 
2. ^ "Voice Academy: text only". http://www.uiowa.edu/~shcvoice/textonly.html. 
3. ^ "Sara Wasserbauer, M.D. - The quest for perfect eyelashes". http://wasser.sitewizard.biz/thequestforperfecteyelashes_.html. 
4. ^ "ABC News: New Message to Models: Eat!". http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=2450069&page=1. 
5. ^ "BBC NEWS". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5341202.stm. 
6. ^ "Beautynet.com - home". http://www.beautynet.com/ViewStories.html?Id=665&catagory=Spa%20and%20Health&rec=8. 
7. ^ "cbs13.com - Fat Grafting: Latest Trend In Breast Augmentation". http://cbs13.com/health/Fat.Grafting.Breast.2.485278.html. 
8. ^ "Is bigger better? Breast surgery linked to boost in self-esteem and sexuality". Archived from the original on 2007-06-07. http://web.archive.org/web/20070607192851/http://sheknows.com/about/look/7949.htm. 
9. ^ "Cruel price of trying to be 'feminine forever' - Second Opinion - MSNBC.com". http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16397237/. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)