15 May 2014updated 26 Sep 2015 8:46am

Caroline Criado-Perez on Judith Butler: What’s a phallus got to do with it?

In the late 80s, a new theorist emerged on the scene. She was called Judith Butler, and she was to revolutionise gender theory so fundamentally, that to write a paper on gender in the 21st century that does not at least reference Butler, is to almost place yourself outside of theoretical intelligibility.

By Caroline Criado-Perez

(Photo By Judith Butler believed we were all performing gender. Photo: Getty)

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once claimed that “woman does not exist”. Women, or as Lacan therefore puts it in his lecture “On Feminine Sexuality” , “~~Woman~~”, might be forgiven for double-taking at this outlandish claim, but don’t worry. This is only a symbolic claim, it only applies to which gender can have meaning in language, Lacan assures us, before going on to affirm that, “women’s sexual organ is of no interest”. Hmmm.

Man, on the other hand, well. Man is different. “A man is nothing but signifier”, Lacan proclaims. He is the originator of all meaning. Taking inspiration from Freud’s famous “penis-envy” theory, Lacan tells us that it is the “phallus” that is the signifier. (NB: the phallus, not the penis: we’re still in the realm of the symbolic which despite its odd obsession with sexual organs is in no way related to the realm of the physical. Keep up, people.) And the phallus, despite being only symbolic and not related to actual sex, is intrinsically male. As a result, a woman cannot signify. She is without meaning. Symbolically.