Boy’s penis pride is a compensatory invention protecting against weaning loss

Evidence

A father told me that one of his sons at the age of three was still urinating sitting down; surrounded by sisters and girl cousins, he was a shy and sad child; one day his father took him with him to the toilet and said: “I will show you how men do it.” From then on, the child, proud to be urinating standing up, scorned the girls “who urinated through a hole”; his scorn came originally not from the fact that they were lacking an organ but that they had not like him been singled out and initiated by the father. So, far from the penis being discovered as an immediate privilege from which the boy would draw a feeling of superiority, its value seems, on the contrary, like a compensation—invented by adults and fervently accepted by the child—for the hardships of the last weaning: in that way he is protected against regret that he is no longer a breast-feeding baby or a girl. From then on, he will embody his transcendence and his arrogant sovereignty in his sex. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 682

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines transcendence as socially inculcated via the phallus, establishing the immanence/transcendence apparatus central to the whole work.
• XREF: Reverses the Freudian/Lacanian phallic privilege narrative; echoes Sartre’s account of value as projection. — connects to: The penis becomes a measure of worth because it embodies transcendence concretely — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128; Amplified masculinity functions as compensative symbolism for subordinate groups — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3002

Broader Connections

• Amplified masculinity functions as compensative symbolism for subordinate groups #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3002
• The penis becomes a measure of worth because it embodies transcendence concretely #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128