The body 

leaking with 
a new world 

by Julie Reshe, PhD

from: Psychoanalysis
and Femininity (edited
collection), New York:
Routledge, 2018 (draft
version)

We got used to being classed as an identity, defining ourselves within the sphere of
sexuality — whether categorizing ourselves as belonging to a certain gender or trapped
in the soul-search to determine our sexual orientation.

Among other approaches psychoanalysis has instilled in us the habit of comprehending

ourselves with reference to the sphere of sexuality, the highest achievement we
managed to accomplish so far was to make this sphere a little more diffused and a bit
less hierarchical. However we still persist within the basic identificational structure of
sexuality, not yet daring to overthrow it.

Preservation of sexuality as the basic point of reference in our self-determination no

matter how hard we rock the boat, compels us to keep at the basis of our

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self-comprehension the hierarchical and non-diffused perspective which the concept of
sexuality originally retains.

It was emphasised long ago that conception of sexuality is phallocentric, that is to say it
was constructed around a subjective masculine experience. Among many others Iris
Young recognizes that sexuality is male-centred and male-defined: “[a]ctive sexuality is
the erected penis (…)” (2005, 82).

However, somehow we are not daring to face what we already understand.

Paradoxically, we still keep the hope that construction formed around this center can be
radically modified. There is no more logic in this than in attempts to preserve slavery or
racism and to build equality within it just by radically transforming it.

Because sexuality is phallocentric, all other elements of human reality, when seen
through the prism of sexuality — are just different levels of emanation of the phallus.
Everything placed within this perspective, even if it is placed there in order to negate it
and claims to oppose the centrality of the phallus, ultimately only reaffirms it.

The woman within the scope of sexuality (and it exists only within a scope of sexuality)
is someone who has no phallus. We can proudly claim that the concept of ‘woman’ is of
a constitutive absence, but there is not much to be proud of since apart from been
constitutive, this perspective affords nothing except the thinking it first of all as absence.
The vagina is the absence of the phallus, and nothing more than the blunt object-tool
with which to satisfy men's desires. We can define it as a central point of human
sexuality, but we end up projecting phallocentric perspective, struggling to descend it
from its rightful place and by this very movement to affirm its centrality.

Because sexuality is constructed around the phallus, “Intercourse is the true sex act”
(Young, 82). From the pansexualistic perspective sexual intercourse — the act of
satisfaction of the phallus — is the central ontological point of human reality. The fact is
if we dare to face it that there is only one true kind of sexual intercourse — heterosexual
— homosexual intercourse is a construction that reflects it and even if it bears the
subversive potential at the most basic level it only reaffirms the centrality of
heterosexual intercourse.

Within the pansexualistic perspective all types of attachment are a transformed desire
for sexual intercourse. Pregnancy, defined within the scope of sexuality, is a residue
from the phallus satisfaction. Breastfeeding and maternal care are transformed or
repressed sexuality. The child is either a male child, that is someone whose penis is not

2
erected yet, or a female child, the one who is deprived of the prospects of erect penis
and whose life's events are the result of this deprivation.

Among all the necessary elements of human life-sustaining processes there was
chosen one — the phallus and everything else was explained around it. This spreading
away from the phallus we call sexuality. All other necessary elements of the human
life-sustaining processes — vaginas, children, lactation, care — within the field of
self-identification through sexuality are conceptualised as secondary with regard to the
claimed center.

As long as we persist within perspective of pansexualism there is no way out of this —

whether we claim that penis and phallus are principally different, or claim that it is simply
that symbolic order, not material reality, is organized around it, such line of thought and
the very necessity of such justification reaffirms initial central point of sexuality.

***

Monique Wittig was certainly right to claim that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are only categories
founded upon heterosexuality. Wittig recognizes that heterosexual perspective is
hierarchical, it envisages man as the centre and constitutes woman into different/other.
She even goes to equate woman to slaves, “Men are not different, whites are not
different, nor are the masters, but the blacks, as well as the slaves, are” (55). Thus, she
asks, “Can we redeem slave? Can we redeem nigger, negress? How is woman
different? Will we continue to write white, master, man?” (55).

Wittig calls to renounce the ‘woman’ and ‘man’ for the reason it is a basic concept of
heterosexual normativity. She explains “If we [...] continue to speak of ourselves and to
conceive of ourselves as woman and as men, we are instrumental in maintaining
heterosexuality” (55).

The task she formulates is to overthrow the entire discourse on heterosexuality, the
language that attributes one of two sexes as an essential and defining attribute of
humans. The renunciation of ‘a woman’ is a necessary part of her strategy of
transformation of the key concepts — in order to open a space of the other order of
materiality — it has to be arranged with new strategic concepts. This she claims is
impossible in the case where we stay in the initial perspective of heterosexuality. “For
us, this means there cannot any longer be women and men, and that as classes and as
categories of thought or language they have to disappear [...]”(55).

3
Wittig suggests to renounce the heterosexual perspective by undermining it with the
concept of lesbianism. She explains “Meanwhile the straight concepts are undermined.
What is woman? Panic, general alarm for an active defence. Frankly, it is a problem that
the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective, and it would be incorrect
to say that lesbians associate, make love, live with woman, for “woman” has meaning
only in heterosexual system of thought [...]. Lesbians are not women” (57).

However, I claim that the replacement Wittig offers doesn’t solve the basic problem it
was intended to solve, since she still remains within the human-defining sphere of
sexuality. It is not heterosexuality, but the very concept of sexuality presupposes the
texture of delineation of two sexes — sexual beings are sexed beings.

Word “sexual” initially meant “pertaining to the fact of being male or female," (Online
Etymology Dictionary 2017), it derives from Late Latin sexualis "relating to sex", while
word “sex” derives from Latin seco as division or 'half'", which is related to secare "to
divide or cut" (Online Etymology Dictionary 2017). We can only talk about “same sex” or
“opposite sex” since there are no other sexes. Thus the roots of the word sexuality
implied this difference as crucial and basic in comprehension of human beings.

Since sexuality is based on initial differentiation of sexes understood as two opposites,

within pansexualistic perspective, there cannot be other true type of sexuality except for
heterosexuality. Thus, it is not the heterosexual mind that has to be undermined but
pansexualistic perspective in general.

Female homosexuality is the reflexive structure of the heterosexuality. There is no other

way to define it, except for deducing it from heterosexuality. In addition, it does not
abandon, but affirms the notion of a woman. In this respect Butler analysing Wittig’s
account reveals that ”there is no clear way to read this description of a female
homosexuality that is not about a sexual desire for women” (Butler 67).

In order to talk about lesbians one is condemned to lean on first of all the concept of a
woman — as a participant in this relationship. In other words, the phenomenon that the
concept of lesbianism defines is constructed with respect to heterosexuality, they are
inter-defined and there is no way to define each of them without reference to the other.
Thus, the concept of lesbianism carries all the load of heterosexual mind discourse. It
keeps it at its heart as a necessary source of negation.

To put differently, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are not concepts on which just heterosexuality is
based, but sexuality in general. ‘Woman’ cannot be eliminated by replacing it with

4
‘lesbian’, since the concept of lesbianism entails the concept of woman and entails all
other gradation of the penis emanation, simply because it is the part of the scope of
sexuality. This means that there cannot any longer be women, but same goes for the
lesbian.

Monique Wittig saw psychoanalysis as a prime mover of heterosexual mind. She

sharply criticized it for universalization and “over-mythification” of its concepts in order to
systematically heterosexualize personal dimension (56).

According to Wittig psychoanalytic discourse is oppressive, because it is initially

centered around heterosexuality. Even in its transformed forms and being depicted as
referring to a symbolic field it preserves its oppressive nature. It oppress in the sense
that it prevents from speaking unless one speaks in its terms. “Everything which puts
them into question is at once disregarded as elementary. Our refusal of the totalizing
interpretation of psychoanalysis makes the theoreticians say that we neglect the
symbolic dimension. These discourses deny us every possibility of creating our own
categories” (53).

According to Wittig, the one who doubts heterosexuality is denied the right to speech
because their assertions are claimed to be on the wrong level of analysis or such that
confuse discourse and reality, or simply too naive.

Even if Wittig recognises the repressiveness of psychoanalysis she limits its scope of
repressivity with imposition of heterosexuality, failing to recognize repressivity of a
sexual mind. Wittig, thus, remains in the trap of sexuality, preserving human being
within the spectrum of sexuality, habitually defining a person as first of all a sexual
being. Maybe we should be even more radical than Wittig suggests and instead of
renouncing heterosexual mind, renounce a sexual one?

Modern theorists of psychoanalysis either remain within the trap of sexuality. Alenka
Zupancic recognizes that “not giving up on the matter of sexuality constitutes the sine
qua non of any true psychoanalytic stance” (2008, 6).

A comparatively recent trend in the theory of psychoanalysis is comprehension of

sexuality by way of its negation and through exposing its constitutional non-coincidence
with itself. Such style of negation may indicate that the concept of sexuality if opted as a
basic point of reference in interpretation of humans, doesn’t allow to construct new
diffused and plastic conceptualizations of the human reality. They are only possible

5
within the sphere of sexuality as the game of negation — as the ultimate claim that
sexuality is not sexuality or deviation from itself.

Sexuality has a rigid initial sense and it does not allow us — no matter how much we
expand or deviate it — to fully renounce it. Different layers of apophatic statements by
their very apophaticism lead to the center.

In other words, it is because of the rigidity and imminency of initial meaning of sexuality
we are facing the problem when we want to construct more diffuse definition of human
reality — if we remain within the framework of sexuality — all we can say is that
sexuality is not really sexuality or it’s a deviation from itself. For the time we will remain
within the field of sexuality as basic for our self-definition we will be forced to retain only
the terms of negation.

The main delusion in our attempts to reinterpret sexuality is that we believe we can
preserve the scope of sexuality as a main instance of our self-identification and remove
all the hierarchy and repressiveness, but those are something sexuality is based upon,
there is no sexuality outside of its repressive hierarchical basis.

In our attempts to subvert sexuality from inside we in a more refined form replay Freud’s
doomed to failure attempts to overcome the concept of normative sexuality, while
nonetheless still articulating it.

Freud declares that he opposes psychoanalytic theory to the banal understanding of

sexuality claiming that

Popular opinion has quite definite ideas about the nature and characteristics of this
sexual instinct. It is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in a the time
of puberty in connection with the process of coming to maturity and to be revealed in the
manifestations of an irresistible attraction exercised by one sex upon the other; while its
aim is presumed to be sexual union, or at all events actions leading in that direction
(1905, 135).

However it is precisely on this banal understanding of sexuality that he relies throughout

his writings, facing the impossibility of its subvertion within pansexualistic perspective.

Freud’s pansexualistic approach in comprehending humans, despite his attempts to

move away from this initial thought and similar attempts of later theoreticians of

6
psychoanalysis, is based on the initial assumption that the main driving force of human
activity is sexual instinct understood in the most banal sense of the word.

Freud simply presupposed that the distinctive and defining property of humans is the
overdevelopment in the sexual instinct. He claims that, “[T]he sexual instinct […] is
probably more strongly developed in man than in most of the higher animals” (quoted in
Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, 432).

Freud himself didn’t deny that his theory is pansexualistic and is based on the banal
understanding of sexuality. He sees himself as a successor of more recent
pansexualistic perspective. In his Preface to the Fourth Edition of his Three Essays on
the Theory of Sexuality he asserts:

People have gone so far in their search for high-sounding catchwords as to talk of the
‘pan-sexualism’ of psycho-analysis and to raise the senseless charge against it of
explaining ‘everything’ by sex. We might be astonished at this [...]. For it is some time
since Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher, showed mankind the extent to which their
activities are determined by sexual impulses - in the ordinary sense of the word. It
should surely have been impossible for a whole world of readers to banish such a
startling piece of information so completely from their minds (1905, 134).

Freud is certainly right mentioning Schopenhauer as his predecessor, since he

proclaimed that "Man is incarnate sexual instinct" (1966, 134).

Freud further agrees that the operation that was needed to establish his pansexualistic
perspective is simply ‘‘stretching’ of the concept of sexuality (1905, 134), without
claiming that sexuality he is stretching is not the one understood in the ordinary sense.
Similarly, when he summarizes his “Three Essays”, he points out on the book's
insistence on the “attempts that it makes at enlarging the concept of sexuality”(43).

Stella Sandford confirm that in numerous instances Freud’s attempts to redefine

sexuality “fall quickly back on the popular conception of sexuality”, simply because the
vocabulary of “the sexual always inevitably suggesting the popular conception even as
Freud tries to twist away from it” (Sandford 92).

Common understanding of sexuality (which is the only possible understanding of it) that
Freud was in broadening is the male-centred, the heterosexual and the coital. Jonathan
Katz, the historian of human sexuality, testifies that Freud’s model of sexuality remains
heterosexual-supremacist (Katz 81). According to him in his theory Freud appears in

7
two guises: at the same time, the denier of the heterosexual normativity and its
guardian.

According to Katz, despite Freud's attempts to transcend normative sexuality throughout

the twentieth century Freud and the Freudians remained the most influential promoters
of the heterosexual norm. In his own words,

Freud proclaims the "normal" sexual intercourse of "normal" men and "normal" women
as the "normal" object, the "normal" aim, and the "normal" end of these "normal
individuals' "normal" sexual development [...] the term normal is repeated over and over
in reference to the sex-love of woman and man for each other. While rebel Freud often
devastatingly questions the idea of normal sexuality, conformist Freud was normal
sexuality's prime mover (81).

The mistake Katz make is the presupposition that in our newer theoretical
developments based upon sexuality we can preserve only rebellion Freud and get rid
from conformist Freud. What he fail to recognise is that two guises of Freud are two
sides of the same coin.

Katz acknowledges that within Freud's model women and men were constituted as
essentially different and unequal. The figure of the man represented an active position,
while the figure of woman was ascribed a passive role (Katz, 31). Freud himself wrote
"Women [...] receive passively, and add nothing of their own" (1927, 137). Later Lacan
confirmed that in Freud’s theory “there is only masculine libido” (Lacan, 80).

The point of departure of Freudian thinking is exclusive attribution of primal sexual

desire to adult masculine character, he only stretches the popular conception of
sexuality in such a way that it started to include the figure of a child and a figure of a
mother.

Because the figure of the male remains in the centre Freud perceived childhood
sexuality as a preparatory stage for adult sexuality. Thus, he adopts a generally
accepted understanding of normal sexuality as confined to heterosexual genital
intercourse, what he adds to this view is that the development of this sexuality begins at
birth. Accordingly, in his view child’s sexuality is not self-sufficient phenomena, it is
rather an underdeveloped form of adult normal sexuality, and it’s goal is to eventually
develop into adult sexuality (Freud 1905).

8
In the course of the development of sexuality, child sexuality turns from something
deviated into something normal. Freud's view is teleological since it proclaims normal
adult sexuality to be the goal of childhood sexuality. Accordingly, childhood sexuality is
only seen as a preparatory stage, sexuality which is not yet normal.

The figure of woman and the figure of mother in Freud’s system of thought are also
always secondary in comparison to the figure of man. The account of femininity and
motherhood is developed in Freud’s theory as deviation from masculine pattern of
development which Freud implicitly presupposes to be basic and associated with
normal undeviated development.

The key concept in Freud's thinking about femininity is penis envy. In his attempt to
answer question how woman "comes into being, how a woman develops out of a child”
(Freud 1933, 116) he comes to the conclusion that once girl discovers the difference
between boys and their own genitalia, they develop envy presupposing that boys enjoy
more sexual pleasure. Freud believed that as soon as girls experience

the sight of the genitals of the other sex [...] They at once notice the difference and, it
must be admitted, its significance too. They feel seriously wronged, often declare that
they want to ‘have something like it too’, and fall a victim to ‘envy for the penis’, which
will leave ineradicable traces on their development and the formation of their character
and which will not be surmounted in even the most favorable cases without a severe
expenditure of psychical energy (Freud 1933, 125).

From Freud's theory follows that girls body being deprived of penis is initially castrated
and signifies the absence of penis. Thus in Freud’s account female body is defined in
reference to a male body and accordingly is marked as not self sufficient and
incomplete.

According to Freud, woman reaches the peak of her femininity transforming penis envy
into her wish to have a baby. In Freud’s view, she wishes to have a baby as a
substitution of a penis. The womans suffering from her insufficient body can only be
satisfied by becoming a mother, “the feminine situation is only established… if the wish
for a penis is replaced by one for a baby” (Freud 1933, 128).

The figure of mother-child attachment is also defined in Freud’s theory as derivative

from the center of sexuality: the infant’s attachment to her caregivers is a manifestation
of perverse sexual desire, while the mother’s tenderness towards a child is a redirected
and masked sexual desire. Freud asserts, that “The person in charge of him [the baby],

9
who, after all, is as a rule his mother, herself regards him with feelings that are derived
from her own sexual life: she strokes him, kisses him, rocks him and quite clearly treats
him as a substitute for a complete sexual object” (Freud 1953, 223).

As seen, since pansexualistic account presupposes the centrality of the figure of adult
heterosexual man, it turns out that all other figures once entered the sphere of sexuality
— women, mothers, children, mother-child attachment — are necessary considered as
deviations from this center.

***

In my opinion the most radical turn towards the way out of the pansexualist perspective
of psychoanalysys was suggested by Elizabeth Fisher in her book Woman’s Creation
(1979). However because she herself still remains within the pansexualist perspective,
her thinking lacks just one logical step to complete it.

Fisher offers a feminist view of human evolution suggesting that the “alpha couple”
determined the direction of human evolution was the mother-child couple, not the
male-female one. Although such switch promises the revolutionary shift of perspective,
this revolution cancels itself on a halfway, since Fisher’s argumentation still relies on
pansexualistc conceptualisations.

Echoing Freud, she consideres mother-child bond to be sexual and claims the need of
emancipation of mother’s repressed sexuality. By trying to show that the pair of mother
and child is primal, she fully inherits the structure of Freud’s theory, trying to show this
pair as primal within the field of sexuality, not daring to move them outside of it.

Fisher claims,

In our culture, where civilization and brain have begun to control physical and purely
emotional responses and where the patriarchy has ruled these thousands of years,
there is rejection and fear of maternal sexuality. […] Maternity is culturally defined and
differentiated form sexuality, so that women are asked to deny the evidence of their
senses by repressing the sexual component of infant care. … It is to men’s advantage
to restrict women’s sexual gratification to adult heterosexual intercourse, thought
woman and children may pay the price of less rewarding relationships. (37–8)

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This is more or less intuitive for our thinking, we tend to struggle to liberate sexuality –
woman sexuality, maternal sexuality. But the very struggle of such liberalization means
we remain within male-centred worldview — without overthrowing it. We fight on its
terms, from the place where it allocates us and reaffirm it by our very opposition. It is a
trick male-centered mind plays on us, and through this trick it further establishes and
spreads pansexualistic perspective.

For Fisher sex remains everything, the most intimate dimension of human interaction
and the essence of human carnality. Thus, within her account assigning a primary role
to the mother-child couple implies that this couple was the primal bearer of sexuality,
whereas the patriarchal view unfairly attributes sexuality exclusively to the couple
male-female. Although ​Fisher’s idea and her aspiration to turn the view on evolution by
shifting the male-centered perspective can be rightfully considered as revolutionary, yet
it is still a part of Freudian pansexualistic perspective. For this reason the trick playing
which Fisher attempted to accomplish this revolution contradicts her objectives. The
very fact that she describes physical relationships between mother and child as sexual
already inscribes her thinking into a perspective, which reveals men and coitus at the
basis of all the phenomena that constitutes human reality.

To put it more sharply: she explains relationships between a mother and her child by
projecting on them ‘normal’ sexuality, that is, the one which is originally associated with
heterosexual genital intercourse where the man is initially inscribed active role. What
Fisher loses sight of is that pansexuality — which she employs assigning sexuality to
mother-child relationships — is itself male-centered.

Even the modern feminist theorist of psychoanalysis does not go beyond the
perspective centered on sex. Another more recent example is Kristeva’s paper
“Reliance, or Maternal Eroticism” (2014), in which she claims that after Freud's
scandalous statement that sexuality is inherent to a child, the next step would be to
discuss that sexuality is also inherent to the maternal. In her own words: “[t]o love and
to think the maternal as erotic, wouldn’t that be as provocative as to speak of infantile
sexuality” (69).

The solution that Fisher and Kristeva, among others, offer is to liberate women and
mother by subtracting sexual power from the figure of the male and to assign it to the
figure of the woman, mother or mother-child bond. However such solution remains
within pansexualistic perspective, thus contradicts and cancels itself.

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The very term ‘sexualty’ inevitably implies male-centricity because it is originally
constructed as centrated around the figure of adult male, and thus, no matter how much
effort we put forth into its reconceptualization and shifting sexual power from adult male
to other potential bearers of sexual power it will be assigned to them only secondarily,
as stolen and not rightfully theirs.

By preserving woman, mother, child or mother-child attachment in the context of

sexuality, we are forced to consider them as secondary in relation to male figure and
coital relationships, since no matter how wide a meaning we ascribe to sexuality, the
term itself implies primal role of a male figure.

But what if we take another route and suggest that that mother-child relationships are
not sexual (meaning either not-yet-sexual, nor sublimated, nor even either-sexual), but
at the same time not less determinative in comparison to sexual relationships?

While — in order to rehabilitate the status of mother-child relationships — post-Freudian

theorists attempt to show that they are not less sexual than adult heterosexual
relationships, I suggest another possible possible line of thought: instead of theorizing
mother-child relationships as either-sexual, we can presume that they are not sexual but
at the same time no less archaic and carnal in comparison to sexual relationships.

An experience of breastfeeding provides with reasonable grounds to associate

breastfeeding with sexual pleasure, since sensations during breastfeeding and
sensations during sexual interactions are alike and many recognize that while
breastfeeding they feel a pleasure similar to sexual pleasure.

Roy Levin’s study revealed that between 33% and 50% of respondents find
breastfeeding sexually pleasurable (Levin 2006). According to earlier conducted
studies, 71% answered in the affirmative when asked "Did you experience, while
breastfeeding, pleasurable contractions in the uterine region?" (Levin 2006).

To explain this similarity, we can turn to one of the early researchers in the field of
sexuality and breastfeeding. In 1973 anthropologist Nils Newton published her article
"Sexual Responsiveness, Birth, and Breast Feeding", in which she suggests that there
are two basic interrelated acts of reproduction – coitus, aimed at the conception of life,
and breast-feeding, aimed at maintenance of life. Since evolution is always utilizing the
most economic means available, it has not generated two fundamentally different
mechanism for supporting processes of conceiving and maintaining life, it rather
generated a complex system that underlies both processes. For this reason, evolution

12
promotes both acts equally crucial to survival, through same mechanisms of sensual
pleasure. Newton claims that, “[t]he survival of the human race, long before the concept
of "duty" was evolved, depended on the satisfactions gained from two voluntary acts of
reproduction – coitus and breast-feeding” (Newton and Newton 1967). “These had to
be sufficiently pleasurable to ensure their frequent occurrence” (Newton 1973, 81).

Another scholar and a follower of Newton's theory, Dale Glabach clarifies how the close
connection of acts of reproduction is seen through the following description applicable to
both:

Tactile stimulation produces an erection on an erogenous bodily protuberance

accompanied by excitation of both participants’ genitals … Subsequently, a white,
life-promoting fluid (one, life-creating; the other, life-sustaining) is ejected from the
protuberance into an orifice of the other participant. The process has two effects:
sensual pleasure in both participants and the promotion of human life. Now, to connect
the two processes sequentially, it is essential to human reproduction that, first, a human
life is produced (coitus), and, second, that this human life is preserved (breast-feeding)
(Glabach 2007, 33).

Same as Fisher, Glabach implies that from the evolutionary perspective mother/child
bond is at least as important, as male/female bond, and same as Fisher Glabach also
slips into a pansexualistic perspective, claiming that sexuality should not be reserved
only for the male/female bond, but also be recognized as a rightful constituent of
mother/child bond.

Revealing the common biological basis for two allocated by her acts of reproduction
Newton concludes that both of them are sexual in their nature, thus, she tends to
explain one of them (breastfeeding) by analogy with another (sexual intercourse),
claiming that the former is also sexual.

The question is why among these two ​equally important acts – life-creating and
life-sustaining – the first one always has to be opted as the central and the second one
should be explained by analogy with it, why not the reverse?

Of course, the answer might be that our language is constructed in such a way that
sexual act was initially theorized as primal, while breastfeeding remained on the back of
the field of theorization. But isn’t it a suitable ground to initiate generation of a new
language, such that would not serve the pansexual perspective anymore.

13
Levin also reported that breastfeeding mothers experience anxiety, shame, or guilt
because of the fact that pleasurable sensations during breastfeeding resemble sexual
pleasure and many women decide not to breastfeed because of the recognised sexual
quality of the experience (Levin 2006).

The very logic of thinking of those, who feel anxiety and guilt when they conclude that
sensation during breastfeeding has the quality of the sensation during sexual
intercourse is pansexualistic, since from the same experience they could either
conclude the opposite, that it is the sensation during sexual intercourse that has the
quality of the breastfeeding.

Similarly, if we attempt to do the opposite of projecting the penis on breast, like Glabach
does in a cited description, we would be able to comprehend the penis as deprived of
an evil power attributed to it and reveal it as not more harmful than breasts bursting with
milk begging to satisfy and be satisfied by a hungry mouth.

***
I'm not trying to suggest here a new feminocentric perspective. This would be the
projection of phallocentrism. Instead I'm trying to find the basis for getting out of the
pansexualistic perspective.

Leaning from the revealed similarity of the sexual act and act of breastfeeding, through
revealing they’re equal in life-sustaining, we can, in the framework of a theoretical
experiment, transfer the ground for perspective construction from the act of coitus to the
act of breastfeeding. Once we'd mastered this trick will become witnesses of all our old
perspective falling ​into ​collapse, even more drastically than Wittig could have dreamed
of.

If the human reality is comprehended through the act of breastfeeding instead of sexual
act — this overthrows pansexualistic perspective and cascades into oblivion all the
layers of its center emanation.

There are no more woman and man, since they were defined as different functions
relative to the alleged centrality of the phallus.
If there is no woman, there is no mother, since she was understood as the ultimate
expression of femininity.
There is no more child, that is, a human with underdeveloped sexuality.

14
There is even no act of breastfeeding itself, since it was constructed as the projection of
a heterosexual act.
There are no heterosexual and homosexual humans, since this categorization is based
on differentiation of sexes.
Finally, there is no category of human itself, since the human is understood as the
embodiment of a sexual instinct.

I renounce the name of human, I renounce the name of woman, I renounce the
name of mother, I hear a cry and my body begins to leak with milk, washing out
old myths and allowing new ones to emerge.

References
Butler, Judith. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New
York: Routledge.

Fisher, Elizabeth. (1979). Woman's Creation: Sexual evolution and the shaping of
society. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Freud, Sigmund. (1927). Some psychological consequences of the anatomical

distinction between the sexes. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 8, 133–142.

Freud, Sigmund. (1933). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Lecture 33:

Femininity. Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press, 1953, 111--134.

Freud, Sigmund. (1953). “Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality.” In The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, edited by
James Strachey, 136-243. London: Hogarth Press.
Glabach, Dale. (2007) “Natural Breast-Feeding: Lovemaking Between Mother & Her
Baby” in Breastfeeding Is Lovemaking Between Mother & Child, edited by Rasa Von
Werder, U.S.: Lulu.com, 27-67.

Katz, Jonathan. (2007). The Invention of Heterosexuality. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Kristeva, Julia. (2014). “Reliance, or Maternal Eroticism.” Journal of the American

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