On “Femininity”. Some Notes on the “Inhibition of Thought”(*)

In “Civilized” Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness (1908), Freud says: “I think that the undoubted intellectual inferiority of so many women can rather be traced back to the inhibition of thought necessitated by sexual suppression”. I would suggest that it is also an over-sexualization of women's lives which has coincided with the repression and consequent inhibition of thought: I am referring to that mixture of idealization and repression which, on the one hand, limited women's allowed or required activities to the sexual sphere, and on the other, was most firm in repressing any personal autonomy in that very sphere. In fact, the sentence quoted above comes after a discussion of this mixture: “Their upbringing forbids them concerning themselves intellectually with sexual problems though they nevertheless feel extremely curious about them, and frightens them by condemning such curiosity as unwomanly and a sign of a sinful disposition. In this way they are scared away from any form of