F eminist and g ender t heories

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
on his mother, attachment to her, and identifica-
tion with her represent that which is not mascu-
line; a boy must reject dependence and deny 
attachment and identification. Masculine gender 
role training becomes much more rigid than 
feminine. A boy represses those qualities he 
takes to be feminine inside himself, and rejects 
and devalues women and whatever he considers 
to be feminine in the social world.
Thus, boys define and attempt to construct 
their sense of masculinity largely in negative 
terms. Given that masculinity is so elusive, it 
becomes important for masculine identity that 
certain social activities are defined as masculine 
and superior, and that women are believed 
unable to do many of the things defined as 
socially important. It becomes important to think 
that women’s economic and social contribution 
cannot equal men’s. The secure possession of 
certain realms, and the insistence that these 
realms are superior to the maternal world of 
youth, become crucial both to the definition of 
masculinity and to a particular boy’s own mascu-
line gender identification.
Freud describes the genesis of this stance in 
the masculine oedipal crisis. A boy’s struggle to 
free himself from his mother and become mascu-
line generates “the contempt felt by men for a 
sex which is the lesser”—“What we have come 
to consider the normal male contempt for 
women.”
Both sexes learn to feel negatively toward 
their mother during the oedipal period. A girl’s 
negative feelings, however, are not so much con-
tempt and devaluation as fear and hostility: “The 
little girl, incapable of such contempt because of 
her own identical nature, frees herself from the 
mother with a degree of hostility far greater than 
any comparable hostility in the boy.” A boy’s 
contempt serves to free him not only from his 
mother but also from the femininity within him-
self. It therefore becomes entangled with the 
issue of masculinity and is generalized to all 
women. A girl’s hostility remains tied more to 
her relationship to her mother (and/or becomes 
involved in self-depreciation).
A boy’s oedipus complex is directly tied to 
issues of masculinity, and the devaluation of 
women is its “normal” outcome. A girl’s devalu-
ation of or hostility toward her mother may be a