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One feature of this opposition is that the two terms do not function in an exactly symmetrical way. Masculinity is taken by Freud as the paradigm; he asserts that there is only one libido, which is masculine, and that the psychical development of the girl is at first identical to that of the boy, only diverging at a later moment. Femininity is thus that which diverges from the masculine paradigm, and Freud regards it as a mysterious, unexplored region, a ‘dark continent’ (Freud, 1926e: SE XX, 212). The ‘riddle of the nature of femininity’ (Freud, 1933a: SE XXII, 113) comes to preoccupy Freud in his later writings, and drives him to ask the famous question, ‘What does woman want?’ (see Jones, 1953-7:vol. 2, 468). Masculinity is a self-evident given, femininity is a zone of mystery:

Psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a woman is-that would be a task it could scarcely perform-but sets about enquiring how she comes into being, how a woman develops out of a child with a bisexual disposition.