Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

image of her while being an external reality from which he canseparate and through which he can relate to the whole world ofreality, still, according to Becker, the infant/he will not be happy:“The infant’s long period of helpless dependence fills him with onegreat anxiety: the anxiety of object-loss, the fear of losing thesuccoring maternal object. ” 8 This clarifies, at least, the sense inwhich the object is alive: she is an object that/who succors, which,in its Latin past, meant “runs to help. ” He is afraid that he will losethe object that runs to help: and here one finds the chattel sense ofmotherhood as it resonates in the modem realm of male-supremacistpsychology—she is the first object that belongs to the male inhis life, movable property that runs to help.Like any human chattel without a revolution in which to fight,her rebellions will be personal, small, sometimes mean, andrelatively ineffectual. Since the infant/he is dependent on her—asmasters are on servants and slaves—she will subvert her malechild’s rights over her, his very masculinity, to make him less hermaster and more her equal. The indignity implicit in the futileeffort of this actual adult to establish an equal authenticity withthe infant dependent on her should be obvious. She will havethe bizarre idea that she is an adult person, an idea that prohibitsthe demands of service required of her as a mother in a malesupremacistcontext. She will perhaps think that the child, as hegrows, will come to know and love her for herself, for her ownqualities as a person. But the father and/or the society built on hisreal power will step in and destroy the subversion inherent in thisidea by requiring her son to define himself in opposition to her, asher opposite. He cannot have her qualities; she cannot have his. Ifhe is to be a person, she must be regarded as an object. She will bedamned and cursed for any attempt, small or large, to step outsidethe bounds of this valuation of her; and the boy will be encouragedto carry out the male revenge on her. As Bettelheim counsels:There is no need for the child to repress [revenge] fantasies;on the contrary, he can enjoy them to the fullest, if he is subtlyguided to direct them to a target which is close enough to the