Patriarchal Power's Impotent Acting Out

"This is my rifle, This is my gun"

"I really am impotent"

It is still fashionable today to mock the Freudian notion of phallus by ironically discerning everywhere "phallic symbols" - for example, when a story mentions a strong, forward-thrusting movement, this is supposed to stand for "phallic penetration"; or, when the building is a high tower, it is obviously "phallic," etc. One cannot but notice how those who make such comments never fully identify with them - they either impute such a belief into "phallic symbols everywhere" to some mythical orthodox Freudian, or they themselves endorse the phallic meaning, but as something to be criticized, to be overcome. The irony of the situation is that the naïve orthodox Freudian who sees "phallic symbols everywhere" does not exist, that he is a fiction of the critic himself, his "subject supposed to believe." The only believer in the phallic symbols is in both cases the critic himself, who believes through the other, i.e., who "projects" (or, rather, transposes) his belief onto the fictive other.===> Woman is Phallus