The Fear of Female Power: A Cause of Sexual Dysfunction*

Since sexual-role expectations differ from culture to culture, from generation to generation, it is more useful to ask which sex has what kind of power over the other, in which culture, at what historical time, and in precisely what way? Is it acknowledged and accepted or covert and hidden? We know that when there is rapid change, many readjustments are necessary, which cause anxiety. In historical periods, where sex roles were static and fixed, there was less individual choice, less ambiguity, a more stable equilibrium than we now have. Most women feared male power and bowed to it or played along with it. Many still do. The new effort to establish more equality between the sexes is beginning to destroy the old, patriarchal “balance of power” and there is more overt competition between them; many men fear the new assertion of women as shown, for example, by the new impotence in young men (Ginsburg 1972). Women also fear the growing emancipation from the home as illustrated by Matina Horner's observations on “women's fear of success.”

The main goal of this paper is to illustrate how the new feminism of the last decade has stirred up age-old fears of female power, which exist in both men and women. Much has been written about man's fear of the castrating bitch with the “dentate” vagina, but little attention has been paid to woman's fear of her own sexual power, her fear of “being castrating” rather than just