Lesbians suffer psychological malaise from being neither complete woman nor virile man

Evidence

The lesbian would easily be able to consent to the loss of her femininity if in doing so she gained triumphant masculinity. But no. She obviously remains deprived of the virile organ; she can deflower her girlfriend with her hand or use an artificial penis to imitate possession; but she is still a eunuch. She may suffer acutely from this. Because she is incomplete as a woman, impotent as a man, her malaise sometimes manifests itself in psychoses. A patient told Roland Dalbiez, “It would be better if I had a thing to penetrate with.” Another wished that her breasts were rigid. The lesbian will often try to compensate for her virile inferiority by arrogance or exhibitionism, which in fact reveals inner imbalance. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1045

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is Beauvoir channeling Dalbiez and Krafft-Ebing’s pathologizing mid-century clinical view — worth holding against her later, more sympathetic psychology chapter where she rejects the biologism animating this framing.
• XREF: connects to: Lesbian masculinity stems from assuming male responsibilities, not from erotic life. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1077; Lesbian hostility toward men fuses feminine resentment with a masculine inferiority complex; Lesbian relationships resist neat virile-feminine role divisions and mirror heterosexual pairings in their variety — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1075 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Lesbian relationships resist neat virile-feminine role divisions and mirror heterosexual pairings in their variety #contradicts (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1075
• Lesbian eroticism lacks the dizzying estrangement but also the hostility of heterosexual coupling #contradicts (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1076