Let’s begin with an indecent joke:

There is a little boy who has been playing with his widdler for a while. His little sister is also present and she is having furtive envious glances at this little exercise. Then their mother arrives at the scene and she immediately scolds the boy:

— You had too much fun with your widdler. This is not fair! Now give it to her so that she can have the same enjoyment.

The boy reacts with extreme puzzlement. Her indecent command yields an unfortunate consequence: The boy is further aroused and the girl suffers even more.

Isn’t postmodernity mankind’s age-long puzzlement about how to properly ‘give it to her’ under the command of the phallic mother?

The paradox is that if the boy obeys the mother and attempts to ‘give it’ to his sister, he ends up ‘giving it’ (phallus) to his mother by authorizing her command.

This paradox lends the phallic woman an imaginary existence:
1) She can only exist on behalf of the ‘deprived’ other woman.
2) Her interference can only weaken the case of the other woman.
The phallic woman has to mark her difference: She can assert her state of fulfillment (it’s either motherhood or one of its various substitutes) only by bringing up the ‘deprived’ other woman.

But receiving the mark of ‘needing help’ does not actually help the other woman. It instead feeds intrusive fantasies about ‘giving it to her’ disguised under the manufactured imaginary nobility of ’empowerment’.

It is obviously impossible to ‘give it to her’ but this will not discourage the boy so easily. He can just stick to his fetishistic disavowal (of the lack in the Other) and carry on his fruitless endeavor.

The greatest issue is that the impossibility of the command just feeds the boy’s enthusiasm (and this is why psychoanalysis accurately calls this tendency ‘perversion’) because it lets him project arbitrary fantasies over an empty screen (which was at first TV and then social media). He can use this empty screen to eagerly construct the Religion of Phallic Woman [1].

These considerations are not purely theoretical.

Just observe Joss Whedon who constructed Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few decades ago. He was a crucial reformer in the Religion of Phallic Woman. But his religion got ahead of him and eventually deposed him because he didn’t conform to its latest codes of conduct. He obeyed the phallic mother and attempted to ‘give it to her’ but after achieving ‘great success’ he inevitably failed, because it was an impossible endeavor, which is why it was (and still is) so fun.

Or observe J. K. Rowling who constructed the myth of Harry Potter. She thought she was ’empowering’ the next generation by giving them ‘magic wands’ [2] through her stories and films. But the next generation got ahead of her and eventually deposed her because she didn’t conform to their latest codes of conduct. Just like Whedon, Rowling at first ‘succeeded’ and then failed in this endeavor which is impossible but fun.

The fact is that there is a lack in the Other: No can ‘give it to her’. Of course, this won’t stop anyone from trying their hand at ‘giving it to her’ for another century; if we are lucky, that is.

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “The Religion of Phallic Woman: Penis or Child or Success or Identity”

[2] See “Why Hermione Chose Ron in Harry Potter”, “From Hogwarts to Slogwarts”