In Freudian terms a girl’s sexual development can stall into frigidity or homosexuality.

Evidence

Nadia, a young girl from a wealthy and remarkably intelligent family, was stylish, artistic, and above all an excellent musician; but from infancy she was obstinate and irritable …: “She demanded excessive affection from everyone, her parents, sisters, and servants, but she was so demanding and dominating that she soon alienated people; horribly susceptible, when her cousins used mockery to try to change her character, she acquired a sense of shame fixed on her body.” Then, too, her need for affection made her wish to remain a child, to remain a little girl to be petted, one whose every whim is indulged, and in short made her fear growing up … A precocious puberty worsened her troubles, mixing fears of modesty with fears of growing up: “Since men like plump women, I want to remain extremely thin.” Pubic hair and growing breasts added to her fears. From the age of eleven, as she wore short skirts, it seemed to her that everyone eyed her; she was given long skirts and was then ashamed of her feet, her hips, and so on. The appearance of menstruation drove her half-mad; believing that she was the only one in the world having the monstrosity of pubic hair, she labored up to the age of twenty “to rid herself of this savage decoration by depilation.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 740 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

True, puberty transforms the girl’s body. It is more fragile than before; female organs are vulnerable, their functioning delicate; strange and uncomfortable, breasts are a burden; they remind her of their presence during strenuous exercise, they quiver, they ache. From here on, woman’s muscle force, endurance, and suppleness are inferior to man’s. Hormonal imbalances create nervous and vasomotor instability. Menstrual periods are painful: headaches, stiffness, and abdominal cramps make normal activities painful and even impossible; added to these discomforts are psychic problems; nervous and irritable, the woman frequently undergoes a state of semi-alienation each month; central control of the nervous and sympathetic systems is no longer assured; circulation problems and some autointoxications turn the body into a screen between the woman and the world, a burning fog that weighs on her, stifling her and separating her: experienced through this suffering and passive flesh, the entire universe is a burden too heavy to bear. Oppressed and submerged, she becomes a stranger to herself because she is a stranger to the rest of the world. Syntheses disintegrate, instants are no longer connected, others are recognized but only abstractly; and if reasoning and logic do remain intact, as in melancholic delirium, they are subordinated to passions that surge out of organic disorder. These facts are extremely important; but the way the woman becomes conscious of them gives them their weight. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sexual frigidity can stem from emotional mismatch rather than physical constitution — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1626; Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835; Girls’ early fears of sexuality often crystallize into a refusal of marriage (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Girls’ early fears of sexuality often crystallize into a refusal of marriage #exemplifies (0.80)
• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835
• The need for affection can make a girl fear growing up. #responds-to (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 740
• Freedom of pleasures independent of sexual development stripped sexuality’s explanatory power. #complicates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 4203
• The Freudian unconscious may be a historically contingent artifact, not a timeless structure #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 406
• Sexual frigidity can stem from emotional mismatch rather than physical constitution #qualifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1626
• Puberty transforms the girl’s body from familiar self into strange flesh. #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738
• Repression, not awareness, is what upbringing imposes on girls’ sexual development #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 791
• The Freudian unconscious is a historical product of disciplinary society, not a timeless formation. #complicates (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 91
• Dismantling prohibitions eliminates the psychic repression that generated Freudian symptoms #complicates (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 109
• A girl’s earlier temperamental choices shape how she responds to becoming feminine. #expands (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 844