Portal empowers women?

[innocent42]

The Oedipus thing is all about sons' relationships to their fathers, not daughters'.

Would that be true? Would it not be a son's relationship to his mother.... It could be argued here that it would be father to son, but the only support for that is Oedipus killed his father... Than again he didn't know it was his father thus there was no relationship to him...
I don't think it's valid to point any form of relationship logic between Glados and Chell.
The only ideas that would present themselves would be that Glados is a friend who betrayed you.
Closer to the idea of Judas if anything.

EDIT: That in itself however may be an entire other discussion...

Well, the thing the Freud took from Oedipus was that all boys have a subconscious desire to kill their fathers and posses their mothers. He often calls the mother's breast the one item of comfort, and says sons are jealous of their fathers for possessing their mothers. Some people take this idea a bit too far. It doesn't really explain everything, and I've long thought that phallic symbolism was mostly bullshit anyway. There are many long cylindrical objects in most people's lives, but that doesn't mean that they are metaphors for the penis.

Extra fun fact: some people take this idea way too far. I once saw an analysis of Snakes on a Plane (Snakes on a Plane, I kid you not), that called the whole movie a conflict between snakes, as flaccid penises, and planes, as supercharged, 500 mph penises. To be fair, snakes are an ancient phallic symbol, but the makers of the movie were more concerned about reptiles biting people at 30,000 feet than Freudian imagery.