>>1716058If the vagina is to serve also, but not only, to take over for the little boy's hand in order to assure an articulation between autoeroticism and hetero eroticism in intercourse (the encounter with the totally other always signifying death), how, in the classic representation of sexuality, can the perpetuation of autoeroticism for woman be managed? Will woman not be left with the impossible alter native between a defensive virginity, fiercely turned in upon itself, and a body open to penetration that no longer knows, in this "hole" that constitutes its sex, the pleasure of its own touch? The more or less exclusive-and highly anxious-atten tion paid to erection in Western sexuality proves to what extent the imaginary that governs it is foreign to the feminine. For the
most part, this sexuality offers nothing but imperatives dictated by male rivalry: the "strongest" being the one who has the best "hard-on," the longest, the biggest, the stiffest penis, or even the one who "pees the farthest" (as in little boys' contests). Or else one finds imperatives dictated by the enactment ofsadoma sochistic fantasies, these in turn governed by man's relation to his mother: the desire to force entry, to penetrate, to appropri ate for himself the mystery of this womb where he has been conceived, the secret of his begetting, of his "origin."
