Womb Envy Trumps Penis Envy
Freud’s theory of penis envy can be exactly reversed and translated into a concept called womb envy, except womb envy is real.
Womb envy is constantly challenged and denied because it is arguably more powerful than penis envy. The womb’s potential is beyond the importance of a sperm because both bodies contain organs to create an embryo, but only one can hold, nurture, and birth a human. Yet, professional and informative textbooks indicate women’s body as passive, waiting, or dying. Emily Martin’s writing, The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical MaleFemale Roles, addresses the unquestioned concerns of the ideas and words used to describe the female body. Martin quotes, “The egg is also passive, which means it must depend on sperm for rescue,” these ideas have unfortunately translated and effected the identity and purpose of women. Martin also compares these beliefs to the movie, Sleeping Beauty (so essentially… all women are waiting for their knight in shining armor to fight the enemy and rescue them in their sleep?). These terms indicate women’s body to be waiting and dying in the process, therefore the glorious sperm needs to come to the rescue.
These descriptions of a “passive egg” or “dying egg” decreases the significance of childbirth labor. Gayati Chakravorty Spivak addresses the overlooked role of the womb and childbirth. Spivak correlates the theory, alienation of labor, to help understand childbirth labor and how it has been misrepresented and therefore devalued. She then makes the connection of childbirth and motherhood as a form of labor that is unpaid and unacknowledged, “… it does not take into account the instance of the womb as workshop, and the very different forms of alienation of product from labor represented by childbirth and by women’s domestic work as unpaid, and thus unvalued, labor”. Her claims are similar to the concept of the second shift, the shift that is taken by a parent (mainly women) to do house chores and look after children (that is, of course, unpaid labor) after their full-time jobs.
If men would take the role of women, there would be no second shift. Gloria Steinem’s If Men Could Menstruate, shares a hypothetical situation of how society would be different if roles were reversed. She states if men could menstruate, “The answer is clear — menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event”, if her theory is true, our gender is the only reason the womb has been disempowered and controlled. Penis envy believers have used gender to their advantage and created a patriarchal society to dominate and suppress women. And if men could menstruate, there would be no laws to stop them from doing what they know is best for their life and body.
The existence of womb envy is further proven through the laws that are proposed (and passed) to limit and/or decrease women’s rights. Womb envy is a powerful advantage and is it also constantly devalued through these laws. The Oklahoma House Bill 1441, effective starting November 2017, disables women to receive an abortion without the consent of the “father”. This bill not only takes away from women’s individual human rights, based upon their needs/wants for their body, but also fails to properly address the women and men within the written bill. Women are labeled as “pregnant woman” (jeez, might as well just be labeled “host”) and the men (sperm donor) are addressed as the father. There are so many following factors, such as women who have to prove evidence of rape or incest, that stirs controversies of the moralities and logistics of the bill. Women of all of circumstances will encounter issues and complications in regards to this bill. But if men could menstruate, these laws would not exist because men would not let their womb and unwanted pregnancies stop them from pursuing their career in this patriarchal society.
Similarly, many innocent women, particularly women of lower-class, have been negatively effected by The Hyde Amendment. The government that has finally legalized abortions, but made it technically impossible to receive one. These laws are basically speaking with tongue in cheek. The laws work to take away preexisting rights and privileges of women, as a human. The article, Whose Choice? How the Hyde Amendment Harms Poor Women, addresses the statistical impacts of The Hyde Amendment and provides actual stories of people along with issues that contradict the statute of the amendment. This amendment has not only made it almost impossible for women to get an abortion, but many times continue on with their unwanted pregnancies. These struggles lead women to seek more dangerous and invasive surgeries (many times women in the second trimester) and these restrictions keep the lower-class women hopeless. Not every case and situation is the same, but every reason is valid.
These efforts to control women’s bodies can be perceived as womb envy…
because womb envy is real.
