Clara Coria - The Secret Sex of Money

This book develops the hypothesis of an internal, unconscious conflict between the desire to attain the ideal woman – responding to the maternal image and all the characteristics that patriarchy attributes to it – and the woman’s need to interact effectively and autonomously in today’s world, where they enjoy greater access to the public realm and to money.

I go on to describe the gruelling and silent struggle that women unconsciously endure and from which they emerge with differing outcomes.

This hypothesis is complemented by an analysis of certain phantasms,7 chiefly the phantasm of prostitution, which attempts to explain many of the difficulties that women encounter in their daily dealings with money.

The section given over to men outlines their ensnarement in the “money-making” trap. Associated with sexual prowess, money becomes almost an indicator of masculinity. It analyzes a particular model of sexual power based on quantity – which is linked to consumerist demands of capitalism8 – and how the expression “time is money” is representative of a trap for men that promotes the omnipotent illusion of inexhaustibility. It is an illusion that seeks to counter the anxiety of castration, understood in its broadest sense as finitude and death.

This first book on the subject attempts to explain and convey the following ideas:

1 Money is a taboo subject in our culture. It is omnipresent but is omitted in reflections. Beyond the economic context, it is shrouded by complex interpersonal contracts. Strikingly, though money interests everyone, it has no room for debate without the usual pressures.

2 Money is sexually differentiated in our culture. In widely diverging ways, for men money denotes potency and virility, verging on an indicator of male sexual identity.

3 Patriarchal ideology endorses this sexual differentiation, thus perpetuating women’s economic subordination.

4 Sexual differentiation is not innocuous to men either: money is intimately associated with “virility” while its absence questions a man’s sexual identity.

5 It is possible to contribute to the transformation of these conditioning factors through consciousness raising. For women, awareness of economic marginalization and the lack of autonomy. For men, awareness of the association of money and virility. In this respect, consciousness-raising groups are exceptionally beneficial to this end.

When I embarked on my research into this question I restricted my field of action, meaning that I had to leave out an infinite number of others.

Curiously, when I set out my reflections on money, people almost invariably asked me about the aspects that I had omitted.

Anyone with common sense, unless they are omnipotent, should accept that “everything” is a lot and generally exceeds what is “possible”.

In fact, I did not omit certain aspects that I deemed to be irrelevant.

I hasten to add that the reflections raised herein are not intended to be universal. They have their point of departure in the middle class,9 because the focus of this book is centred on financial empowerment within a patriarchal society . And with this goal in mind, the middle class is particularly suited to this end for two main reasons:

First, because economic independence is a necessary condition for autonomy. In this respect, the poorer and wealthier classes include variables that make this research extremely difficult or impossible.

It is a great deal more difficult to research autonomy in the poorer classes, whose economic hardships allow them no economic independence. Besides their economic privations, if we start from the premise that economic independence is a necessary condition for autonomy, we would have to address the former instead of the latter.

As regards the wealthy class, the surplus of economic resources may conceal false autonomies, which is difficult (though not impossible) to debate given the possibilities that these resources give them.

I should add that patriarchal ideology is much more deeply ingrained and more manifest in both the poor and rich classes, making these two classes by far the more challenging to research.10

Moreover, to my mind, the exposition of the hidden patriarchal mechanism in the supposed parity between the sexes in the middle class – not least after the woman’s entry into the workforce became especially significant – is immensely attractive and helpful.

The purpose of this book is to play a part in breaking the taboo surrounding this omnipotent, ancient, contemporary, and yet omitted issue, and to foster further inquiry that may respond to the countless questions to which it gives rise.

Lastly, I wish to point out that reflecting on this theme is not innocuous. It is as if we had hastily brushed the dust under the rug because we didn’t know what to do with it. We must inevitably face what we have hidden.

We might even venture, as some movies warn us, that this is not a subject for the faint-hearted.

To discuss money is to enter many realms: couples, children, the family of origin (parents and siblings), friends, lovers, creeds, ethical and aesthetic principles, plans, assessing the past…

It is a deeply moving and exceptionally enlightening subject. We could sum it up by saying that it is one that brings to the surface and holds up to the light all the tacit and implicit agreements that invariably underlie our relationships .

This is why I say that money is a matchmaker.

This book is for sharing, especially with people of a questioning nature, who are encouraged by the enticing and unsettling quest for that which has been omitted, who dare to query stereotypes and believe it is possible to build new alternatives over old problems.

1 Pichon Rivière, E. (1971). Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social. Buenos Aires: Galerna.

2 Bion, W.R. (1966). Aprendiendo de la experiencia. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

3 Dellarossa, A. (1979). Grupos de reflexión. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

4 Bonder, G. (1980). Los Estudios de la Mujer: historia, caracterización y perspectivas. Buenos Aires: Publicación interna del Centro de Estudios de la Mujer..

5 Romero, J.L. (1984). La cultura occidental. Buenos Aires: Legasa.

6 Hamilton, R. (1978). The Liberation of Women: A Study of Patriarchy and Capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin.Figes, E. (1970). Patriarchal attitudes: women in society. London: Faber.Oakley, A. (1977). La mujer discriminada: biología y sociedad. Madrid: Debate.Mitchell, Juliet (1973). Woman’s estate. New York: Vintage Books.Zaretsky, E. (1976). Capitalism, the Family & Personal Life. New York: Harper & Row.Groult, B. (1978). Así sea ella. Barcelona: Argos Vergara.Astelarra. J. (1980). Patriarcado y Estado capitalista. Madrid: Zona Abierta, No 25.Borneman, E. (1979). Le patriarcat. París: P.U.F.

7 Pichon Rivière, E. (1971). Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social, Tomo II, pág. 268. Buenos Aires: Galerna.

8 Mitchell, Juliet, ibíd.

9 Sullerot, E. (1979). El hecho femenino. En Los roles de las mujeres en Europa a finales de los años setenta. Barcelona: Argos Vergara.

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