When hearing the phrase “penis envy,” most people assume it’s a male issue. But in truth, it’s also a concept that can plague women.
Penis envy, in a nutshell, is a person’s predisposition for wishing for a penis or a form of a penis that they prefer. It sounds pretty simple, right? But it’s not. There is more to penis envy than just wanting a penis. This is a subject that has been discussed for decades by the most renowned scholars, and one of them is someone that most people know very well – Sigmund Freud.
Sigmund Freud’s theory
According to the “Father of Psychoanalysis,” penis envy is a stage in female psychosexual development, wherein a young girl starts to develop anxiety about her lack of a male organ. Freud states that girls develop penis envy due to a number of reasons, which include: being jealous of their mother, developing latent heterosexual interest in their mother, and a perceived lack of attention from their father. Freud maintained that this was a necessary and inevitable phase in every female child’s life.
The theory is pretty complex and highly controversial, due to the rapidly evolving idea that women should be studied independent of comparisons towards men. Many psychiatrists and psychotherapists aimed to debunk the theory of penis envy by pointing out that the idea only gained ground due to Freud’s popularity and already existing theories.
At this point in time, no one can actually prove said theory, but neither can they absolutely debunk it. Is it important to know these facts? If you want to have something to talk about with psychoanalysts, then go crazy with Google. If you need to use it in your daily lives, I wouldn’t put too much stake in it.
How most people perceive penis envy
When you ask regular people what penis envy is, it’s possible that you might get a strange look from those people. If they decide to answer, most of them will probably answer that penis envy is when a man gets jealous of another man’s penis.
Due to the idea’s popularity, it is safe to assume that those people would be right. It’s not a crime to develop a new term using the same words, unless it was copyrighted. Was it? I’m not sure. Anyway, a lot of men develop penis envy in that sense when they see other guys’ body parts.
This can happen when a guy watches porn, undresses in a locker room or goes streaking with his buddies after a night out. Those are just some instances, but you get the point. It does not necessarily happen to every man out there, but it has a higher chance of happening to guys who have low self-esteem and to those who are having problems in the bedroom.
Do women also get penis envy?
If we dissect Freud’s idea of penis envy and simplify it for real life application, we might be able to determine whether or not the modern woman develops penis envy.
I would write the specifics of the theory if I could, but I don’t think the audience would be inclined to read the rest of the entry, after they see Freud’s theory in bullet-form. It’s pretty graphic and could make you feel mildly queasy. You can look it up if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the conservative and faint of heart.
Getting down to it, penis envy basically comes down to a girl wanting a penis or at least a life that requires a penis – meaning a girl might want to live like a man. There is no definite category where you can put any woman in, because there are so many different aspects as to why a woman might want a penis or at least an identity as a man.
Some women just like society’s preconceived ideas about what men like. Some women just want to look like men without needing a penis. Some women want to actually have a penis. No one actually considers these urges as “penis envy.” It is simply the closest explanation you can derive from Freud’s theory.
Why would a woman want a penis?
The idea that men could get vaginas and women can get penises started at around the same time. Science has allowed for this to happen, and the people who were given a chance for this radical change couldn’t be any happier.
Even though a huge percentage of the global population still can’t wrap their head around it, some people just aren’t happy with what they were born with. That’s not to say that they aren’t thankful that they’re alive. It just means that they know that they have the ability to change, and nobody has the right to stop them.
While scouring the web for answers to the question, “Why do some women want to have penises?” I came across many interviews and blog posts that explain the sides of the stories that most people don’t get to see or don’t open their eyes to.
Their answers, although phrased differently with various origins and backgrounds, all say the same thing: It made them happier. Staying in the body they grew up in made them feel awkward, trapped, sad and lonely.
Some people even took their own lives, because of the suffering they experienced, but the stronger ones endured. They fought for their rights, and they did what they could to adapt. Surgery or no surgery, the people who wanted different orientations managed to get through their pain, and finally showed the world that they were never envious of what other people had. They simply knew that they were meant to have something else.
Is penis envy a real concept that plagues women?
Judging from the research, we can’t say that it is. For now, people discuss the aspects of it using singular and isolated ideas. If someone does develop penis envy, any psychoanalyst would be hard-pressed to diagnose it as such, because there are no actual medical records that state that penis envy has ever been a problem.
The theories by Freud and its counterparts are quite complex and very well-versed, but it might be a better idea to develop tangible theories using those ideas as a backbone for new research that can help both men and women.
It is quite an engaging read, but all in all, it is not something that I would vehemently support, due to its lack of evidentiary support and the rapidly developing ideas that are coming to light from our current generation’s ideologies.
Penis envy might not be as simple as some people put it, but it helps to know at least a little bit about it. You can be jealous of people who have penises, and some men might be jealous of those who they think have better penises. But in the end, what matters is that you strive for what you want, whether it’s a real penis or to be perceived as male, without hurting anyone in the process.
