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In the international debate about gender differences, we see a renewed interest not only in defending equal rights, but also in understanding the specifics involved in the multiple conflicts over sexual and gender issues. It is as if the terrain of sexual and gender differences is fueled with anxiety and conflict following the sexual repression of the nineteenth century and the sexual freedom of the 1960s. It is not easy to overcome this sociological context and find a somatopsychic relational ground.
Alongside the growing recognition of equal rights for all sexual genders (F, M, LGBTQ) at a social level, there is a difficulty in recognizing the particularities of a woman's body and the complexity in elaborating these specific features: the breast and its attractive and nutritional functions are exalted, while the vagina remains in the shadows as a disturbing presence/absence. When the vagina remains so obscured, there is, as Winnicott (1964a) observes, a “failing to mirror what exists” (p. 105). I suggest we begin with this difficulty to help recognize and accept not only gender differences, but also what exists at a psychosomatic level with its relational implications: the vagina as an open space at the entrance to the other, a dark space to cross and be crossed to access generativity.
Difference resides within all genders, not only between the one and the other. It might be tempting to solve differences by denying and erasing one of the sexual body features of a woman connected to the enigmas of life: either the breast or the vagina — the source of biological and psychic nourishment upon which the newborn depends, or the obscure place of generativity from which we all pass through. It might be understood as a choice between black or white. In his work, “This Feminism,” Winnicott (1964b) locates this issue, using his developmental approach: