In the program "Sans Rendez-Vous", the sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc answers Christelle, 37, who wonders about her femininity.

Raised by her father, due to the death of her mother when she was still a young girl, she wonders about a possible lack of transmission. 

How to define your femininity?

What does it correspond to?

Christelle wonders at the dawn of her forty years.

Her mother having died when she was still a young girl, she makes the link between this disappearance and her questions about her femininity.

In "Sans Rendez-Vous", on Europe 1, Catherine Blanc, sexologist, answers him.

She reminds in particular that the mother is not the only model of reference for a child, who is built through a multitude of references offered by society.

In addition, femininity is a multiple idea, just like masculinity.

Notions with which everyone can do their best.

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Christelle's question

“I lost my mom when I was a young girl and I was raised by my father. Today, I realize at 37 that I find it difficult to define my femininity. What do you think? Is the mother decisive in the transmission of femininity? "

Catherine Blanc's response

"Yes and no. If this mother was still in this world, that would not mean that she would be competent to transmit a peace regarding her position as a woman and her competence to transmit signs, values ​​or strengths to her child. We do what we can each other, with our femininity and, in the best case, we manage to distill an idea of ​​the power of this feminine gender. An idea of ​​the codes of the feminine, of the skills that he opens. 

When a mother is no longer, it is the father who takes care of the education.

But it is not exempt from a look at women either.

It is not enough to have a model to be fixed or to be modeled on this model.

By his essence of man, the father will bring his reading of the masculine, but he will also look at the world and look at the world of women.

And suddenly, pass on his values ​​to his child. "

A plurality of models

"There is of course the family sphere which allows us to build ourselves in our femininity, but we are also in a society where it is possible, according to our curiosity, to seek external models to lean and s 'To enrich Society's view of women is not just a family story. 

Our parents are adults, especially in a society where we live in small groups.

We are no longer, or little, in models of families, made up of several generations, between grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins ​​and cousins, living in close proximity and offering a large number of models.

So, fortunately, there are the teachers, there are the other adults, the parents of our friends, who will also play an important supporting role.

The more we are in small networks, the more we advance, the more we are limited in our repositories.

But the child is curious and let's give him the freedom to grow up.

For example, a little girl educated by two dads will have two paternal models, two different visions of virility.

And the latter have sisters, mothers, friends.

It will not make this child a "tomboy".

Besides, there are no 'tomboys', only 'successful girls'. "

What is femininity?

"There is not a single model, obviously. Femininity is first of all to be at peace with your body, with your sex and creative in your competence to enjoy it, not only sexually. It is also to decide. of what my sex, my gender, allows me: to have children, for example, but not necessarily either.

Readings of femininity do not boil down to a function.

It is simply to be at peace with what we are, not in denial, without having the feeling that it is a permanent injunction, coming from the outside which forces us to limit ourselves.

The mistake is to think that there are emotional and skill attributions to one sex, not another.

Christelle makes the link between the disappearance of her mother and the questioning of her femininity.

And perhaps rightly so, but it is above all her doubts about herself: her tranquility or uneasiness in her love bond, in her sexuality, in her ease ... The impression of a lack of legitimacy because she lacks referents, because she had the feeling that she was limping a bit forward since she lacked a referential parent and, suddenly, she made it an idea of ​​incompleteness.

It is the lot of all: we evolve in our life, growing and nourishing ourselves.

Our competence to feel ourselves as a man and a woman throughout our existence is not acquired from the start. "