Has anyone on here ever read any of the excellent books by acclaimed radical feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler? When I wrote to Gloria Steinem when I was 22 she wrote me back a great response and suggested I read Women And Madness by Phyllis Chesler and that I would find that it made me feel less alone.
I was only 7 when that book came out and I had never heard of her, so I read it and it's great powerful information as are her other books that I went on to also read, her great book About Men, which came out in 1978, and (Gloria also gave a great review on the cover) and I read it about 15 years ago for the first time. She interviewed 100's of men and many of them were married. In her chapter called Wombless Men, she has pictures of sculptures and paintings by famous male artists like Salvador Dali, and Michaelangelo etc and she demonstrates and talks a lot about men's subconscious fear and envy of the womb and men's (crazy!) hatred of women. 1 of her references in her extensive bibliography is psychiatrist Wolfgang Lederer's 1968 book, The Fear Of Women in he which explained the same things.
She also has a chapter called Phallic Sexuality and in the beginning of it she has a little boy interviwed by a Dr.Richard Green about Sexual Idenity Conflict in Children and Adults and he was asked if he ever wished he had been born a girl, and he said yes. Dr.Green asks him why does he wish that, and the little boy says, girls they don't have to have a penis. The doctor says they don't have to have a penis? The little boy then says they can have babies. The doctor then says to him why do you think girls don't have to have a penis?
And the little boy says Cause they have to have babies ... and babies can't come out of a penis... babies come out of a vagina... The doctor then says to him , your penis gives you a nice feeling doesn't it? You're not scared of it when it gets big and stiff are you ? The boy says no. The doctor says good ! It's supposed to do that when you tickle it. That's one big advantage for being a boy cause girls can't do that you know. The boy says Um hum. The doctor then says to him, sure they can have babies but only boys can have a penis stand up like that.
In the beginning of her chapter Wombless Men she has woman hater Freud interviweing a 5 year old boy patient and Freud says to him, But only women have children. Hans the little boy says he's going to have a little girl. Freud says you'd like to have a little girl.Hans says yes next year I'm going to have one. Freud says to him but you can't have a little girl. Hans says, Oh yes boys have girls and girls have boys. Freud says, boys don't have children only women , only Mummies have children. Hans says, but why shouldn't I ?
She also has a chapter on Pornography and Other Male Sexual Fantasies. And she says in the chapter Wombless Men that it is no accident that books of pornographic or erotic art are also the source of many expressions of womb envy. In Dr.Chesler's great 1994 book, Patriarchy Notes Of An Expert Witness she explains that both wife beaters and serial killers of women were addicted to pornography. She also explains that serial killers are mainly white male drifters obsessed with pornography and woman-hatred who sexually use their victims, either before or after killing them and who were themselves *paternally* abused children, and as adults they scapegoat not fathers but mainly women , sometimes children , sometimes male homosexuals who are seen as "feminine" or vulnerable. She then says that serial killers may be responsible for the daily and permanent , disappearance of 1000's of prostituted and non-prostiuted women each and every year all accross the US.
She also talks a lot about how sadly, women have been taught to hate themselves and each other because of the crazy male dominated woman hating society! She has many good reviews for her book, Woman's Inhumanity To Woman which I also want to read.
Also in 1997 ( I also wrote to Dr. Chesler at this time and she wrote back a note and sent me some articles she had written) I spoke with her secretary who was in her 50's or early 60's and she told me that she read several chapters in one of Dr. Chesler's books, and that it was very interesting. I told her that I read several of her whole books. I said to her how unreal and crazy it is that men hate women for *no* rational reasons and that they are born and nurtured by *women* that their mothers are *women* and that most women have been kind to their sons, husbands and to men in general even though they have hated and discriminated against us, and have been doing all of these horrible injustices to women for 1000's of years ! And she said, it's crazy and unreal but it's true!