Female perversion  

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"This brings up the longstanding problem of why so few females are fetishists, a problem that has been solved by Greenacre and Boss. Their point is that the male, in order to fulfill his species role, has to perform the sexual act. For this he needs secure self-powers and also cues to arouse and channelize his desires. In this sense, the male is naturally and inevitably a fetishist of some kind and degree. The less self-power, the more terror of the looming female body, the more fetish narrowness and symbolism is necessary. The female does not have this problem because her role is passive; we might say that her fetishism is absorbed in the surrender of her body. As Boss says, women who shrink at the physical aspect of love, at the concreteness of the partner, can simply react with total frigidity (Sexual Perversions, pp. 53-54). Or, as Greenacre observed as well: "The sense of failure due to frigidity in the female is softened by the possibility of concealment" ("Further Considerations," p. 188. note). "Frigidity can be covered up to a degree which is not possible with disturbances of potency in the man" ("Further Notes," p. 192)." --Denial of Death

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Female perversion is a controversial term introduced by Estela V. Welldon used to describe cases where women deviate from the behavioral norms of their gender and commit violence, either against oneself or against others. Though the term can be used pejoratively and sometimes has sexual connotations, its strict definition is an instance of human behavior that deviates from what is considered orthodox or normal, and it is in this sense that the term is used by psychologists. The term is also controversial as according to Welldon there is a prevailing denial of the existence of female violence, throughout the legal and mental health community.

Contents

Model of female perversion

Welldon (1992) put forward a model of female perversion that introduced the term into the psychological nomenclature. The model covers several categories of violent behavior that can be directed at ones own body, against children, or against adults.

Freudian psychoanalytic theory suggested that perversion fell solely within the male domain, that it was related to the phallus, and that aggressive drive was unique to men. In her book Madonna, Whore: The Idealisation and Denigration of Motherhood, Welldon challenges this notion, and argues that women are equally capable of perversion. Though they do not use the penis with violence, they instead use the whole body.

"In doing so, they attack the whole body, and sometimes by extension the bodies of children. They are symbolically wreaking revenge on their own internalised, often cruel and perverse mother. They identify their own body with the body of the mother. Likewise when they attack their children, they express violence towards a narcissistic extension of themselves" (Motz, 2001)

The major forms it can manifest itself are:

Welldon argues that it can be seen as a form of sexualised aggression, and challenges the Freudian view that violence is a uniquely male phallic expression.

The reproductive functions and organs are used by both sexes to express perversion. Perverse men use their penises to attack and show hatred towards symbolic sources of humiliation..... If perversion in the man is focused through his penis, in the woman it will similarly expressed through her reproductive organs and the maternal representations of motherhood (Welldon 1991)

Anna Motz, in her book The Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes Against the Body suggests that the expression of this anger on the body or that of another is a communicative act, clearly sending a message of internal pain or of psychosis (Motz, 2001). She calls the message "the language of the body", and that the symbolic use of violence against the body can be likened to psychosomatic illness.

Violence against the self

Violence against the self can take several forms, including deprivation and starvation as is the case in anorexia nervosa and bulimia, self-injury or suicide attempts, or other forms of self-harm.

Violence against children

Violence against children often goes unreported, and is largely hidden from view. It can take the form of direct physical or sexual assault, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, or infanticide. Often the capacity of women to commit violence against children is denied, in the refusal to 'think the unthinkable'.

See also

Female Perversions




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