“The penis story” is a short story by Sarah Shulman. It starts by highlighting a troubled relationship between two lesbians in New York: Jessie and Ann. Then one day Ann wakes up to find out that she has a penis. Afterwards, the narrator takes us inside Ann’s thoughts, feelings and adjustment to her new life with a penis until the end of the story. The objective of my comment is to focus on Freud’s idea of “penis envy” in women in this story. In his essay “Some psychological consequences of the anatomical distinction between the two sexes”, Freud mainly talks about the difference between men and women and how women since their childhood up to adulthood have this “penis envy” which refers to their inner desire to have a penis to feel complete because they have something missing without it. Freud’s phallocentric perspective is noticed from the beginning of this essay as he takes the male child as subject of his investigation.
In “The penis story” from the beginning the narrator gives the reader the impression that something’s going wrong in the (sexual) relationship between Jesse and Ann, as if something were missing. This point is made clear when Jesse says: “I want to know that my lover is a man. I need to be able to say that”. Therefore, although, Jesse is a lesbian, she still thinks she needs a man in her life. Afterwards, we are transferred to a scene where dream intersects with reality, in which Ann was dreaming then suddenly woke up and saw that she had a penis. In this situation, Freud’s interpretation of dreams as “repressed thoughts” which come out in the form of dreams is to be considered because she longed for this. Besides, Ann’s reaction to this new organ in her life wasn’t negative which reflects that she unconsciously wanted this to happen. But the narrator points out that Ann’s penis was different: “It didn’t behave the way most penises do. It rather seemed to be trying to find its own way. It swayed a bit as she walked to the bathroom mirror, careful not to let her legs interfere…In fact, everything appeared to be the same except that she had no vagina” (212). This “different” penis description is represented as if it was an inner repressed desire which came out to discover a new world and this desire has the form of this organ. Ann felt it was fun to have a penis which again reflects the “penis envy” that Freud talks about because Ann’s feeling of acceptance of this new “male” organ was very positive as if she was lacking something before having it. Moreover, she felt proud to be “a lesbian with a penis”. Ann wanted to share this new event in her life with friends who she proudly showed her organ to. Ann attributes this “phenomenon” to her habit of usual masturbation which she feels thankful to. This is another point that Freud discusses in his essay as he explains that masturbation is a masculine act which is absent in women because it is mainly an act of penis not a clitoral one.
Then, the narrator takes us inside Ann’s subconscious where before having the penis, she has always fantasized sex with Jesse as between two gay men. This is another point which refers to Freud’s theory of that women have a sense of inferiority of clitoris to the penis which they consider as a punishment for them. Later on, we see Ann’s sexual adventures with a gay man with whom she felt great pleasure because she was finally able to say “suck my cock” and a female lover Muriel until in the end she decides that she wants to be a complete woman again, after living with a penis for approximately a month or more and undergoes surgery for this aim. On the other hand, we find out that she didn’t tell Jesse the reality of her penis but Jesse too confesses that back in her mind she thinks that mentally she has a penis.
To sum up, I could say that it’s quite an interesting story written in an ironic style whose two main characters as we saw in their subconsciousness had this “penis envy” in Freudian terms. We went inside the world of difference represented in the figure of a “lesbian with a penis” and how society reacts to this difference and how Ann as a person reacted to it. It’s a literary work that takes us to a world that combines between fantasy and reality to develop important issues as sexuality, identity, difference…etc.
Regarding the pride that men feel with their penis, it is clearly seen in the distinction between men and women’s washrooms where men get to see each other and sometimes they check each other penis’s sizes to feel proud. But in the case of ladies ones, each woman is trapped inside as if we don’t have anything to be pride of and this “enclosure” reflects our status of oppression as well.
This sounds like a very interesting story, and Freud’s article sounds like an important one. It sounds indeed very ironic and sarcastic. Not only do women, or lesbians, want to have a penis; they also want to have gay male sex and BE men. This makes it clear that according to Freud, being a woman is indeed an inferior status, just like the complex related to penis envy and insecurity regarding a clitoris. I realise that little research existed at this time on the subject of sexuality and even less on the subject of women’s sexuality, and this might one reason why Freud’s analysis of women is so negative. I wonder if he also might have been projecting the insecurity of his specific patients, who had grown up in a particular time and place and social class, on to his theories; and perhaps in this environment, women’s sexuality was particularly taboo. Taboos might be related to ignorance and misinformation. It is clear today that Freud was very misinformed on the subject of women’s sexuality. This analysis also reminds me of Gay Pride. I am always amazed and confused as the proportion of men in relation to women. It seems like Pride is dominated by something like 80 or 90% men. It is amazing that women are eclipsed even in this event. I do think lesbians are underrepresented during pride even if it is not intentional and this event probably intended t obe woman-positive.
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