‘BEING’ AND ‘HAVING’ THE PHALLUS
According to Lacan, a defining moment in sexual development occurs when the infant perceives that its mother desires a phallus that she does not possess.
‘The child wishes to be the phallus in order to satisfy that desire’, writes Lacan, but whereas the little boy actually ‘has’ the phallus, the little girl must ‘be’ it for someone else (when she grows up this will include her male partner who desires her phallic body). For Lacan, this is what differentiates the sexes: whereas ‘having’ the phallus seems fairly unproblematic for the lucky little boy, Lacan asserts that ‘being’ the phallus requires a sacrifice of femininity on the part of the girl: ‘in order to be the phallus, that is to say, the signifier of the desire of the Other . . . a woman will reject an essential part of femininity, namely, all her attributes in the masquerade. It is for that which she is not that she wishes to be desired as well as loved’ (Lacan 1958: 290) (Salih 2002. p 85-86).