Psychoanalytic feminism
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Subtypes Topics Waves of American Feminism Lists |
Psychoanalytic feminism is a social movement based on the work Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories. It maintains that gender is not biological but is based on the psycho-sexual development of the individual. Psychoanalytical feminists believe that gender inequality comes from early childhood experiences, which lead men to believe themselves to be masculine, and women to believe themselves feminine. It is further maintained that gender leads to a social system that is dominated by males, which in turn influences the individual psycho-sexual development. As solution it was suggested to avoid the gender-specific structurization of the society by male-female coeducation.
The philosophy that gender isn't innate and that an individual will become whichever gender they are raised has led to the sex reassignment of infants for various reasons, including intersexuality or an injured or absent penis. It was thought they could live happily as females, but not as males with imperfect genitals. One famous instance of this was David Reimer, who was raised as "Brenda" after losing his penis due to a botched circumcision but strongly rejected the femaleness his doctors and parents imposed on him. Critics of psychoanalytic feminism maintain that cases such as his provide undeniably strong evidence to the immutable and inborn nature of an individual's sense of being a boy or a man, or girl or a woman, the individual's gender identity.
