Week 6 Response – Anika Czander

I thoroughly enjoyed the readings this week, particularly that of the Feminine Mystique. I have always felt that there were many issues with the blind trust in Freudian analysis, the acceptance that anything and everything he thought must be true, simply because white male scholars have been saying so for decades. One quote that I found especially striking was “But when he dismissed woman’s yearning for equality as ‘penis envy’, was he not merely stating his own view that women could never really be man’s equal, any more than she could wear his penis?” This quote shows how Freud’s own views have created a bias in his theories. This reading makes me wonder how Freud would analyze the modern American woman, specifically when the modern woman is not defined by her genitalia. I’m curious because the concept of ‘penis envy’ seems strange to me when I, and many modern Americans, do not associate the penis with any specific gender.