Oedipus Lives: Socialization & Sexualization

Well, woman, the way the time cold I wanna be keeping you warm
I got the right temperature for shelter you from the storm
Oh Lord, girl, I got the right tactics to turn you on, and girl I
Wanna be the Papa, you can be the Mom, oh-oh!

Sean Paul, "Temperature"

Content warning for the topic of childhood sexual assault. Thank you to my partner for talking about this with me in the early hours of the AM, for the opportunity to complain about heterosexuals together, and for pushing me to never before seen levels of orthodox Freudianism.

Psychoanalysts usually consider the Oedipal Complex from the vantage of the patient-child, the symbolic role that they occupy opposite their opposite-sex parent (most famously the son and his mother, or the daughter and her father). The child’s desire is shaped by their relationship to this parent, modeled after the same-sex parent which they are not and cannot be. Of course, the opposite-sex parent cannot be an appropriate object of desire, and so can only be the template for substitute objects with which the child compensates for their lack of the opposite-sex parent (which is the same as the impossibility of being or replacing their same-sex parent). This is the typical drama already played to death, abstracted into the symbolic realm by Lacan and criticized as teleological by Deleuze and Guattari. Like, we fucking get it already!

There is an unsavory implication of the Oedipal Complex less often considered, however: where does the child ‘learn’ or internalize their desire for the parent of the opposite-sex? Butler helps us out a little, following Freud’s suggestion that a person is bisexual by default, by hypothesizing that the incest taboo is preceded by a homosexuality taboo by which the child internalizes their symbolic sex prior—marking the same-sex parent as inappropriate for desire. This makes more or less sense in the context of abstract gender performance, the imposition of gendered norms upon individuals by social forces beyond anyone’s control. However, I can’t help but feel like this is a toothless or at least vague analysis. Freud derived the Oedipal Complex not from vague social forces, after all, but from widespread child sexual assault whose significance its victims repressed and thus internalized (echoing in their dreams and desire).

Therefore I want to suggest, carefully, that the foremost factor in heterosexual socialization is necessarily (obviously?!) the specific relationship between the child and their parents. Moreover, this is not just a matter of environmental exposure but an active if unconscious effort on the parents’ part as an extension of their own complex. The parent initiates the child’s complex by indulging their own fantasy, taking it upon themselves to role-play the template of what the child should desire. Is this really a neutral social function of parenthood, or is it not caught up in the parent’s want for their own parent, transferred to the child? Who else teaches the child to desire, as it were, to become a parent? And what constitutes the desire of the parent if not the desire they had internalized since they were a young child?

There’s a reason that daddy’s girls and mommy’s boys sound (socially) normal, but daddy’s boys and mommy’s girls sound kinky. Childhood sexualization is central to heterosexual socialization, and—most importantly—this sexualization is not of the child’s own volition, but it is imposed upon them by their parents and other close adult figures. Keep in mind that 30% of child sexual assault cases are by family members and 60% are by trusted adults [source]. One study even poses, more specifically, that 82% of perpetrators were involved in a heterosexual relationship with a close relative of their victim [source]. Let’s do the math: if 25% of girls and 5% of boys experience sexual assault before adulthood [source], how much more likely is it that these cases are exceptions to some norm rather than symptoms of an overwhelming and coercive sexualization of children that exists socially but operates personally?

“A Relationship That Will Last A Lifetime”

Shout-out to Irigaray.

The father-daughter relationship has quite obvious roots in patriarchal property, so it goes without saying that the Oedipal Complex and the resultant heterosexual desire cannot be divorced from the social-material context of patriarchal society. That being said, leaving it at that does not cover any new ground. We know that the female child is molded from birth to internalize heterosexuality by relation to her father, and that this is a microcosm of patriarchal relations in society at large. It is to say nothing of the father except that he may have a vested material interest in his daughter’s actual or performed desire. What of his own desire? In our increasingly modern world where “all that is solid melts into air”, where patriarchal relations have less stake in our liberal society, what does the father have in it for himself?

The father is a father and he knows what a father should want and so he does what a father should do. If being a good father is to serve as a role model for suitors in his daughter’s life, the father necessarily puts himself in the role of his daughter’s suitor based on what he has internalized that a man should be for a woman. By extension the daughter learns what a (heterosexual) woman is, that is what is expected of one, by identifying her desire with that of what her father wants from her. Her ideal love is her father whose ideal love is his mother. Heterosexuality is a funhouse of heirloom mirrors.

Let’s read some passages trying their best to explain the significance of the father-daughter dance, this first one being a social event for adolescent girls (let’s be real) and their fathers:

The Daddy Daughter Dance is fashioned after the traditional debutante ball as a tribute to those men who have chosen fatherhood and proudly present their daughters to the world with love, support, and guidance. Each year hundreds of men and ladies of all ages converge into the dance floor for a magical evening of music, entertainment, Princesses, and Kings.

The main objective of this event is to strengthen the relationship between fathers and daughters, thereby decreasing teen pregnancy, social dysfunction in girls, early substance abuse, as well as the instances of domestic violence. This connection also inspires fathers and father figures to take a more active role in the development of girls and women. Ultimately, our goal is to strengthen families.

We are aware that girls without positive father figures are more likely to become sexually active at a younger age and have a child outside of marriage. 76% of teenage girls said that their fathers (or positive male role models) were influential with sexual decisions. Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse and are twice as likely to drop out of school. Fathers and positive male influences are the leading factor in developing positive social behavior in children.

We invite Fathers, Uncles, Grandfathers, Step-Fathers, Male-Mentors, Male-Coaches, Male-Caregivers, and all other men that have a daughter that you love and care for. This evening is designed to transform each girl/woman into the Princess she was meant to be, as she spends a magical evening with her “first” Love! It is a night that will change both dad and daughter-for a lifetime!

The passage, especially the bolded bits, speaks for itself. It’s straight from the horse’s mouth. I can’t paraphrase any of this passage without making it seem less literal than it goes out of its way to be. The father is his daughter’s first love! He is the guardian of her virginity and the man to which all other men compare! Again, this obviously derives from pre-modern relations of patriarchal property, but the relationship between father and daughter is so laden with interpersonal sexuality that it feels as if every psychoanalyst has been avoiding the question of how “real” this desire is—except Freud himself. The father grooms his daughter to become a heterosexual woman by posing as her ideal man. Forget unconsciousness. You know how many girl friends have expressed that their ideal man is their father? Damn, if only he were single!

This next one explains the significance of the father-daughter dance at weddings, which are very common in the American South if nowhere else.

The origins of the Father-Daughter Dance are hard to trace, but it does stem from a time when arranged marriages were more common. The Father and Daughter would join in dance together, and then midway through the song the bride would be handed off to her new husband. This transition symbolized the father’s trust and acceptance of his new son-in-law, as well as the husband now being the most important man in the daughter’s life.

This one recalls more immediately the patriarchal basis of marriage as the transfer of property from the father of the bride to the bridegroom. That is obvious. But the dance also encodes the game of substitution that constitutes the wedding: the transition from girlhood to womanhood is marked by the hesitant acceptance that her father cannot be the woman’s man, so she finds an acceptable substitute for him. Then the dance takes place, as the father hands off his daughter to her proper man (her husband, her owner, even her daddy). Again, forget unconsciousness. How can this dance be any more literal than it is? Freud theorizes that it’s the traumatic experiences of childhood sexuality, forced upon them, that are repressed. However, the symptomatology of that repression is clear as day—maybe less so when looking at symptoms of conversion disorder (a.k.a. hysteria), but definitely more so when looking at how the woman experiences her own sexuality. Her desire seeks or produces metaphors in the forms of other men, but it is not itself metaphorical. It knows what it wants and why, even if she might not.

In my experience, it’s mostly liberal heterosexual women who outright refuse the role that their father played in forming their sexuality. For conservative heterosexuals, grooming is basically a science, one of social engineering and interpersonal role-play. There are probably all kinds of reasons why liberal heterosexual women disavow what conservative heterosexual women embrace, whether it’s the result of liberal ideology declaring her free will as sacrosanct or modern capitalist society making patriarchal social relations vestigial. One could say that the conservative woman is less repressed than the liberal woman, but the opposite is true: the conservative woman fully engages with her sexualization without ever taking incest as an appropriate vehicle for her desire; the liberal woman, on the other hand, is offended by the thought and would not touch the topic of her sexualization with a ten-foot pole. It is the liberal heterosexual woman whose Complex is malformed, but neither missing nor inoperative.

The Classic Oedipus

Male children experience sexual assault five times less than female children do. Women take the brunt of both social and biological reproduction, so of course girls also take the brunt of childhood sexual assault which is a violent expression of both those dimensions. This means we see the impact of the Oedipal Complex less in male trauma than in their behavior, the practical application of their desire.

You’ll be his first kiss, his first love, his first friend.

You are his mom, and he is your whole world.

He’s your little boy. 🤍

@lexirenee37

Here's what I think, from experience and observation: the standard-issue heterosexual man, conservative or liberal, wants nothing more than a mommy. Not his mommy, since he obviously can't have her and so doesn't want her, but a mommy. It doesn't take a queer to tell you that. Just ask any heterosexual woman because she knows that the biggest determinant of how a potential husband will treat her in marriage is how he currently treats his mother, which is something he learned from his father (whether he is like him or resolves to "be a better man" than him—for whom other than for his mommy or mommy-substitute?).

Like with the father-daughter relationship, this is on one hand a socioeconomic matter in terms of the gendered division of domestic labor. The mother's job is to raise children, cook food, wash laundry, and whatever else, so it makes sense that the boy-child wants to marry someone who executes those tasks for him just like his mother did for him and his father. However, those material interests are entangled with emotional needs whose parameters are set by and navigated through heterosexuality. The man does not just want a wife to fulfill his needs, but to fulfill his duties as a man in doing so. Remember the formula that the woman is the man’s (symbolic) phallus. It’s not metaphorical but entirely descriptive of her function. It’s through his wife that the man fully realizes his manhood, which is to emulate his father by substituting his unattainable mother.

When you get replaced by your mini me so you make a mini him

@annasaccone (can’t be that mad at her bc she has a trans female daughter so honestly?! werk + put a pin in it)

As for the mother, that’s her little boy we’re talking about. I’m all too familiar with the phenomenon of the Latina mama, whose little boys apparently do no harm while they shit-talk her to her face. The product is a grown ass man-child who entitles himself to a wife that he simultaneously needs (because he can’t do anything himself) and hates (because she reminds him that he can’t do anything) just like he did his own mother. The relationship castrates the man, i.e. it forces him to recognize his own lack, by its nature! Freud suggests that women have a greater proclivity for narcissism than men and, although that obviously has misogynist undertones, it also makes sense in a heterosexual context: unless the woman feels responsible to make up for her man’s lack, she may not necessarily feel lack at all until (he supposes) she births a child and externalizes part of herself in the same way a man does through her (as he previously had done through his mother). The child incarnates the narcissistic woman’s phallus through which she fulfills her “purpose” as a mother, the only mirror in which she recognizes herself.

I never thought I would be a toxic boy mom. I love all my four kids equally, but that last little boy (laughs) just hits different. He hits his sisters, he punches them, and like maybe he’s having a rough day. But when I think about my daughters getting married, I get excited—right?—planning their wedding. When I think about my son’s wedding, I want to cry.

@annasaccone (deleted—you can tell she makes the rounds but again it’s not like she’s a bad person. just weird in a very typical way that's symptomatic of heterosexuality!)

Boy-mamas are notorious for making fools of themselves on social media since, unlike girl-daddies, they are more upfront about the emotional fulfillment that they receive from their sons. (Men don’t have feelings, I guess, so they must formalize or institutionalize their fantasy in order to express it.) This manifests often as anxiety that the boy-mama will be replaced by her son’s future girlfriend or wife, which is simultaneously an impossibility (if a tantalizing one) since no other woman can measure up to the man’s real “first love” in the mother's mind. There is no mistake here. The heterosexual woman understands literally and intimately the reality of her son’s desire as well as her own, that she is the (hopeful) model of what he wants from a woman, that she derives satisfaction from this as a woman, and that she perceives other women as rivals for her son’s attention. It’s definitely deranged, but it’s also certainly normal (or at least one possible product of “normal” parent-child relationships in heterosexual society).

Homos & Trannies

I’ve been watching a lot of House lately! Can you tell?

The above analysis centers on ‘normal’ heterosexual cis-sex individuals. To put it wokely, it’s cisheteronormative. That does not make it incorrect, but it means that homosexual or trans-sex individuals have different circumstances: they responded to their conditions in a different way, or they were shaped into something different. I don’t think it’s appropriate to psychoanalyze how a wide group of people differ from a norm when we should expect them to deviate in multivarious ways unpredictable from the standpoint of that norm. One conclusion I appreciate from Deleuze and Guattari is that we should not take the Oedipal Complex for granted as the default or successful outcome of socialization. It is a specific mental configuration resulting from a specific social-historical context, meaning that other configurations need not be understood as failures (as most straight male psychoanalysts do) or even as deviations (as Butler does).

That being said, we can look at the response to these 'non-standard' configurations from the standpoint of the Oedipal Complex as something that impacts not only the socialized but the socializer (who is themself a desiring subject who was once socialized according to the norm). I always feel, anecdotally, as if an individual’s homosexuality or transness is met with betrayal by the parent of the opposite (assigned) sex and disgust by the parent of the same (assigned) sex. The liberal tendency is to chalk this up to a vague challenge of the parent’s reality, that now they have to readjust to someone they love being someone entirely different than they expected. However, given the entanglement of socialization with sexualization, and that the parents have a very personal stake in the process, I would be inclined to think that their emotions run deeper than confusion.

Betrayal and disgust are not impartial and arbitrary but impassioned and asymmetrical. They are deeply structured by the subject’s patterns of desire. A heterosexual parent with a same-sex child expects that child to be or become like them, to take them as a role model, to take their position in the same drama. One with an opposite-sex child, however, is endowed with responsibility to model that child's desire, and they are tantalized by this responsibility because it locates themself as the Other. It is stricto sensu perverse as Lacan defines the term, in that the parent identifies themselves as the end-all be-all of the child's enjoyment: the child in their fantasy does not desire but demands the parent to feel satisfied (initiating the Oedipal Complex on the child's side as they reckon with the impossibility of fulfilling their parent in the same way). If a father is his daughter's "first love" or if the mother is the first Other, don't you think they feel it too? Where could the child have possibly learned this? From society?

For the child to turn out homosexual or trans-sex is a reversal of terms that challenges either heterosexual parent's own Complex of enjoyment (fulfillment, satisfaction, jouissance) centered on that child. The previously same-sex parent finds that they now occupy the opposite-sex position, whether in terms of the child being attracted to the same sex as the parent or in terms of the child transitioning to the opposite sex (from the vantage of heterosexuality, sex is sexuality, so one term breaks down when the other does to the same overall effect). This parent feels disgusted for being implicated in non-heterosexual desire, whether that means failing to be a proper role model or being potentially the child's model of desire. The previously opposite-sex parent, on the other hand, now occupies the same-sex position and would seem entitled to feel betrayed as if they were cheated on. "Don't you love me? Why would you lie to me?" The parent never fulfilled the child after all, at least not in the way they thought they did. Their understanding of their own self-identity falls apart. Their very being is betrayed and offended. It's a literal Oedipal tragedy.

It's why violently heterosexual fathers tend to perform corrective rape on homosexual daughters or trans sons, whereas they exercise mortal violence on homosexual sons or trans daughters. It's about their assigned sex, where the important part is not the 'sex' per se but the assignment. It's not about who the child is but what the parent was promised, and how they never got their due. (This is, obviously, not the only malady impacting trans women and men in society at large, and this is specifically about the parents' response to their coming-out.) Less extreme reactions, such as feeling as if one’s child has died, still constitute mourning: the loss of a particular desired object. Anna Saccone Joly, one of the most prominent boy-mama vloggers on Tiktok, actually had something strikingly beautiful to say about the process of accepting her trans-female daughter after grieving the loss of the boy-child she initially “had”:

I have a trans daughter, she’s 9, she transitioned socially when she was about like 5 going on 6. One thing that I learned along the way was to get a box. Obviously when you are trans, your deadname does not reflect who you are as a person anymore. However, Edie has said to me that she likes to hold onto things just for the memories. Even though it’s been a few years now, I still sometimes find things that I need to put in the box. I also found her stocking with her deadname on it, things like that.

So I was putting them into the box and I started thinking about the things that I would have wanted to hear as a mom of a trans child back when she first transitioned. Even if you are the most supportive parents in the world, there is going to be a grieving process. I don’t care what anyone tells you. I remember I went into her wardrobe and I just looked at all her clothes and I just bawled my eyes out.

Now looking back, it seems so silly, but at the time it wasn’t. Also as moms, I think we beat ourselves up about every single little thing. [It’s] so normal to go through a grieving process, no matter how you feel about the subject. Just because you’re putting these things in a box and closing it does not mean that that person your child was is gone. You’re just closing a chapter that gives you the space to open a new one.

Such a beautiful experience to watch them blossom into the person that they’ve always been.

@annasaccone

This is to reiterate, again, that it is not about assigned sex as such but about the assignment itself, the loss of a child in one box transforming into the gain of a child in another box. As soon as Anna accepted her trans daughter, she became just another daughter paling in the light of her eventual younger brother, the long-awaited and true boy-child which fulfilled Anna’s fantasy to be a boy-mother. It's all about people slotting into symbolic functions.

This case should also serve as an example that parents 'diagnosed with Oedipus' are not necessarily bad people, but that Oedipus seeps into every aspect of their relationship with their children. The most extreme cases are just the ones that prove the norm, in that they are not abnormal but hyper-normal. Freud agrees: "If you take up a theoretical point of view and disregard the matter of quantity, you may quite well say that we are all ill—that is, neurotic—since the preconditions for the formation of symptoms can also be observed in normal people." Such is heterosexuality; such is Oedipus.

Conclusion

A woman’s husband is her daddy (substitute) while a man’s wife is his mommy (substitute). Heterosexuality is not just a straightforward sexual orientation or attraction towards the opposite sex, especially resulting in biological reproduction, but a method of social reproduction on a cellular level (i.e., on the level of the individual as a single cell of society at large). It is definitionally coercive, that is, it is a widely accepted type of grooming, social and sexual.

Many of the cases discussed above are rationalized by onlookers as edge cases of especially brain-rotted heterosexuals, but their prominence in society together with widespread childhood sexual assault should yield the opposite conclusion: that heterosexual socialization is imposed onto children through their active sexualization by society at large as well as by their heterosexual parents, whose fantasies are entangled with parenthood as a ritualized repetition of their own childhood.

Oedipus lives. It is not a neutral or 'natural' phenomenon, but an active social force of coercion and desire. Any critique of heterosexual or patriarchal society, and any program to overcome it, needs to reckon with Oedipus as the base mechanism of family formation and the atomic force of social patriarchy.