[1] Freud considered that at the phallic stage of early childhood development, children of both sexes attribute possession of a penis to the mother—a belief the loss of which helps precipitate the castration complex.
[2] Thereafter males may seek fetishistic substitutes in women for the lost penis in the form of high heels, earrings or long hair to alleviate the castrative threat[3]—terrifying phallic women such as witches (with their broomsticks) representing the failure of such substitutes to cover the underlying anxiety.
[6] The phallic mother can be (though need not necessarily be) an actively castrative figure, stifling her children by pre-empting all room for autonomous action.
[11] Soft porn marks out the phallus girl through such symbols as whips, bikes and guns;[12] while she also underpins the action heroine such as Ripley or Lara Croft.
[13] The twenty-first century ladette can be seen as a phallic girl—her emphasis on light-hearted, recreational sex serving as a passport to being 'one of the boys'.