English 67

This afternoon, I went to Jennifer Friedlander’s lecture, “Doing the Full Monty With Jacques Lacan.” On the whole, I found the talk to be engaging and informative. I am unfamiliar with Lacan’s work, and much of what Professor Friedlander said helped contextualize the bits of Lacanian theory I do know. But when Prof. Friedlander arrived at the concepts of the Phallus and sexuation, I found her message subverted by a detail of her interpretation. Her comparison of male and female sexuation was incomplete, and sexist in its incompleteness. Admittedly, I do not know enough about Lacan to tell whether my issue was with the psychoanalyst or the professor; I am only aware of Professor Friedlander’s words, and will attempt to deal with them as such. Her interpretation appeared to use feminist bias to make one null seem greater than another. I intend to present a masculinist counterpoint, and hopefully, in doing so, to expose this assignment of value as an irrelevant distraction.

The Phallus, as Prof. Friedlander described it, seems to be the discontinuity that prevents the formation of comprehensive sexual identity. It is the desire a child ascribes to his (or even her) Mother and longs to fulfill. The descendant of Freudian castration anxiety, it is that-which-is-lost, a “signifier without a signified,” a veil that veils nothing. It is the symbol from which we retreat into notions of man and woman. “Sexuation” is this retreat, the subconscious formation of our sexual identity, as contrasted with gender (the social) and sex (the physical).

The symbolic presence and actual absence of the Phallus thus weigh on both sexes, alienating them from simple solutions to the problem of identity. The two sexuated responses that this pressure provokes, Friedlander pointed out, are not exclusively bound to one sex or the other, but commonly align with sex and are accordingly termed “male” and “female.”

What Friedlander identifies as the male sexuation is an assumption of authority she likens to wearing a toupée to cover a bald spot. She presents the male saying, “the Phallus exists and it is mine. There is a central truth, identity is cohesive, and I am in control.” His is a lie based on completeness. The female response Freidlander compares to covering the same bald spot with a hat. It shrouds the question and its context in mystery. “The Phallus (really, its lack) does not exist. No one has it,” the woman says. Hers is a lie based on omission.

The more Friedlander talked about the distinction, the more she strained to a assign relative value to these positions. The male, she suggested, founds his identity on a delusion. A rough wind is enough to blow the toupée away, leaving nothing but humiliation where a false unity once stood. Likewise, Friedlander painted male sexual identity as tenuous and subject to easy demolition – thereby inferior to the less presumptuous, more stable female view.

But surely male sexual identity can be reconciled to the nature of the illusory Phallus without blowing apart. Confining masculine sexuation to the above definition merely sets up a straw manhood for Friedlander to knock down. Male sexuation could easily occur without incorporating such critical weakness. Consider a masculinist perspective:

Physical strength is the earliest and most primitive basis for authority. Thus, Western society came into existence with Phallic authority already pressed on men. This is hardly an act of assumption (or presumption). It burdens the male with the task of reconciling the emptiness of such authority with his own real position. The male is thus the mediator between the Phallus and reality. Female sexuation, in denying the Phallus, is a rejection of this necessary balance. It is a delusion that collapses as soon as reality or the Phallus intrudes. It is weak and untenable, and leaves the stable male to look after the well-being of both sexes.

By no means do I intend to say that this these are the correct values for sexuation. Rather, it should demonstrate the arbitrariness and inherent bias of such distinctions. The question of which mode of sexuation is superior will inevitably lead to circular, particularistic squabbling. The fact that these patterns are not confined to the sex with which they are primarily identified suggests that meaningful thought in this area could easily become a mere façade for the battle of the sexes. The challenge of reconciling the Phallus with identity leaves us with limited recourses, and by pitting our options against each other we create an environment equally hostile to any stable resolution.