Of Sex, Gender and… Stars. What Psychoanalysis Can Tell Us about Masculine and Feminine? A Lacanian Reading

On the Gender Studies debate over the meaning of being woman or man psychoanalysis has a lot to contribute. But its message is easily misunderstood if one doesn’t speak its language. Its acquisitions can only be evaluated within the context of clinical listening, which considers what is really produced in the unconscious rather than what is believed or wished for. Within this context sexuality and sexual identity are posed as “lack” and the impasses generated by the function of enjoyment (jouissance) are the only ones operating in the unconscious instead of the illusion of a relation existing between the masculine sexual position and the feminine sexual position. The speaking being (parlкtre) can only “play man” or “play woman” in contrast, for example, with the common transgender narrative of “believing oneself to be a woman” or “believing oneself to be a male”. Masculinity and femininity are not intrinsic characters. Rather they result from how the sexes relate to each other.