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5/5/17
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Sexuality, rightfully so, has become a central topic of debate in Western society in
modern times. This can be seen perhaps most obviously in the recent controversy surrounding
trans individuals and public restrooms. On the supportive side, the prevailing argument is that
public restrooms should be gender inclusive, which is grounded upon the idea that individuals
who dont identify with the gender assigned to them at birth should be permitted to use the
bathroom which fits their gender identity. Even more radically, we see the supportive group
advocating for public restrooms designated specifically for trans individuals, as opposed to the
binarism present in the male/female choice presented in the vast majority of public restrooms.
On the oppositional side, we see a reaction predicated mostly on a fear of sexuality, specifically
based on the notion that under the guise of being transgender, male subjects will be able to view
or, even more worryingly, film women in a private environment for the purposes of scopophilic
pleasure.1 What is most problematic in both of these mainstream discourses is their fundamental
grounding in how they conceive of gender. On the oppositional side, we see a conception of
gender based on biology: people with the biological material traditionally associated with male
or female genders are fundamentally just that: a male because of the presence of the penis or a
female because their possession of a vagina. The (mainstream) supportive side challenges this
1
Warner Todd Huston, Top Twenty-Five Stories Proving Targets Pro-Transgender Bathroom Policy Is Dangerous
to Women and Children, Brietbart, April 23rd, 2016. http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/04/23/twenty-stories-proving-targets-pro-transgender-bathroom-policy-danger-women-children/.
and states that there some people, due to an essential part of their being (which is also typically
rooted in biology or, even worse, neuroscience2), do not conform to the symbolic identity
imposed on them because of the cultural association with their genital makeup. What, I claim,
demonstrate this with a summary of the viewpoint on sexuality offered to us by the article
Psychoanalysis, Alenka Zupancic. The central point regarding the Lacanian position towards
sexuality Zupancic illustrates is best captured this quote from her piece: [sexuality] is a
nonexistence in the real that, paradoxically, leaves traces in the real. It is a void that registers in
the real. It is a nothing, or negativity, with consequences.3 In this essay I aim to make the
meaning of this statement clear and demonstrate how because of this argument, from the
psychoanalytic position, any explanation of human sexuality which justifies itself on essential
The popular conception of psychoanalysis which we see in much of our media is a kind
of science of sexuality, one which promises us to reveal the secrets of our sexual activity and
desires. The proper psychoanalytic response to this demand is perhaps best captured in Jacques
Lacans infamous statement that there is not sexual relationship. How is such an ambiguous
assertion to be interpreted? Here we must look to Alenka Zupancics Sexual Difference and
(Lacanian) psychoanalytic stance on the structure of sexuality as such. It may be fair to say that
the majority of modern gender studies is usually in line with Judith Butlers theory of
2
Francine Russo, Is There Something Unique about the Transgender Brain?, Scientific American, January 1st,
2016, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-something-unique-about-the-transgender-brain/.
3
Alenka Zupani, Sexual Difference and Ontology, e-flux 32 (2012), February. http://www.e-
flux.com/journal/32/68246/sexual-difference-and-ontology/
performativity, which is hinged upon the notion that linguistic constructions create our reality in
general through the speech acts we participate in every day.4 What this means in terms of our
sexuality is best captured in Sara Salihs statement that that gender is not something one is, it is
something one does, an act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts. How we should interpret this
is that in the current perspective, gender is not given a stable ontology (there is no eternal
category of male or female for example), and instead essential or binary categories of gender
are things which persist via reification, meaning that although there is no real justification for
their existence, essentialist categories like male or female continue to be created by individuals
performing these roles over time. This element of time is critical to Butlers theory, as pointed
out here by Zupancic: sociosymbolic constructions, by way of repetition and reiteration, are
becoming nature.5 What this means is that due to repeated actions which are identified as
and, over a period of time, seen as essential or natural. In many ways, this standpoint is in
conformity with Lacanian theory, which tells us that language [is] constitutive of reality and of
the unconscious.6 What is interesting is that, as Zupancic tells us, Lacanian psychoanalysis is
nonetheless fundamentally incompatible with Butlers thesis. The reason for this necessitates a
For Lacan, a social construction begins with a signifying notion, which is to say that
from the real of the matter which is the recipient of linguistic signification. In this act of
signification, what is opened up is the field of the Symbolic, or the realm of linguistic meaning,
4
Dino Felluga, "Modules on Butler: On Performativity." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. January 31 st, 2011,
Purdue U. http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformativity.html.
5
Zupani, Sexual Difference and Ontology.
6
Ibid.
which is fundamentally disconnected from the things which it places meaning on to. A simple
example would be to think of looking up a word in the dictionary. When I look up tree, for
example, in the dictionary, I obviously dont simply find the actual thing which tree refers to,
instead what I find are other signifying words which give further meaning to tree than just the
word itself. This is the structure of the Symbolic in general: a never ending chain of signification
which is fundamentally disconnected from the things it gives meaning to; effectively creating a
space which is separate from what Lacan calls the Real, which is the reality of things that exists
outside of signification. Zupancic describes the Real particularly well in her statement: [the
Real] is neither a symbolic entity nor one constituted by the symbolic; rather, it is collateral for
the symbolic.7 How we should read this is that when we use language to identify or think about
a thing, we are fundamentally thinking about something other than the signified content, that
being our universe of linguistic meaning surrounding the actual thing we are talking about. What
this means is that when we linguistically identify something, and therefore create a new place for
this thing within the symbolic order, something else is created along with this identification, that
being the Real. For further explanation, we can look to Zupancics statement that The signifier
[which is to say the material component of linguistic identification] does not only produce a new,
symbolic reality (including its own materiality, causality, and laws); it also produces, or opens
up, the dimension that Lacan calls the Real.8 Thus, the Real can only exist in relation to the un-
reality of the Symbolic. Because the Symbolic must fundamentally be separated from the
content which it seeks to describe, it is this lack in the Symbolic order which effectually creates
the Real, staining the entirety of signified content. The Real then is not only to be understood
as that which exists before the signifying act, but also as a surplus effect of signification itself; in
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
the fundamental un-reality which the Symbolic is situated in, the Real is created by those
inevitable gaps which resist signification, or in other words the points where the fundamental
division between the Symbolic and that which it seeks to signify are laid bare.
How are we to apply this notion to sexuality? Here is where the psychoanalytic viewpoint
is at its most radical: sexuality is the Real, which is to say sexuality exists solely as
the curving of the symbolic space that takes place because of the additional something produced
with the signifying gesture.9 This rather complicated sentence should be interpreted as such: the
antagonism of sexual difference doesnt just resist signification; instead the lack inherent in the
act of signification exposes the irreducible antagonism of sexual difference itself. What this
means is that the binary opposition of the discursive categories of male and female is not the
fundamental problem in sexuality, rather, these categories (which are themselves firmly rooted in
the Symbolic) are a reaction to the much more structural crisis that is sexual difference. To make
this more clear, we may think about the situation in this way: in biological sexual difference, we
are not presented with two corresponding opposites in the sense that one is a pure inversion of
the other (a situation which the male/female binary creates), instead what we are met with is a
opposites, a project which is doomed to miss its mark. The biologically male body does not
find its inversion in the biologically female body, and vice versa; the two remain, again
irreducibly, different. Zupancics quote from Mladen Dolar may help illustrate this point:
sexual difference poses the problem of the two precisely because it cannot be reduced to the
binary opposition or accounted for in terms of the binary numerical two.10 The creation of
horizontal sexual duality then, that of man and woman, should be read not as the linguistic
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
manifestation of biological opposites, but instead as the linguistic creation of opposites in the
face of the biological Real, that which exists outside of the linguistic realm of binary opposition.
This poses some problems for how gender identity is currently understood. While, of course,
people will not identify with the discursively-created gender category the state assigns to them at
birth (in my personal, properly Lacanian, opinion, it is fundamentally impossible for any subject
to really identify their being with a symbolic category such as gender, considering the gap
between the Symbolic and the Real), what the psychoanalytic viewpoint tells us is that the
movement grounded in the same idea of multiplicity which the male/female binary arose out of.
In other words, new gender categories may be seen as the logical conclusion of the symbolic
difference of multiples which gave rise to the division of male and female; they are still engaging
in the ultimately impossible act of assigning sexuality to a symbolic category, when in reality the
entire creation of symbolic categories arose out of this resistance to signification which sexual
difference presents to us. Here we should refer back to Zupancic: Sexuality does not fall into
two parts; it does not constitute a one. It is stuck between no longer one and not yet two (or
more); it revolves around the fact that the other sex doesnt exist (which is to say that the
difference is not ontologizable), yet there is more than one.11 This applies to the creation of
performatively-constructed genders in the following way: they are correct in their rejection of
identification with the socially constructed categories of male and female, however they falter in
their identification with extra-binary categories which are, for psychoanalysis, presupposed by
the division of male and female. In psychoanalysis, the ontological status of male and female
genders is ruptured by the Real of sexual difference, meaning that the problem of sexuality is not
defined by an antagonism between ontologically stable male and female identities, but rather by
11
Ibid.
the sexual difference as such, the antagonism which provokes the tricky business of symbolic
This relates to the idea of gender multiplicity in the following way: essentialist,
complementary gender binarism is a failure of the Symbolic to register the irreducibility of the
sexual difference as such, however the solution to this may not be reached by an identification
with gender identities outside of the traditional male and female, since these are still rooted in the
notion of an ontologically stable Symbolic register for gender identity, they in no way effect the
ontological status of entities called genders.12 In other words, these new subjectivities could be
said to be founded upon the same shaky ground as essentialist categories such as male and
female, due to their impossible goal of locating the real sexual essence of the subject within the
It is critical to note here that the psychoanalytic perspective in no way mitigates the
instead what we may learn from psychoanalysis is a new way to consider the crisis of sexuality
which the trans community has successfully brought to the attention of the mainstream. What
avoids the traditionally liberal (and, in a sense, essentialist) stance which tells us that transgender
or gender non-conforming individuals are only a marginalized subgroup which have for whatever
reason, be it chemical, genetic, behavioral, etc., deviated from the heteronormative standard (of
oppression based on their identity on an obscene level, they absolutely do). Instead,
psychoanalysis gives us a viable way to approach the problem which transgenderism poses to the
12
Ibid.
entire notion of gender itself by situating it in the Real of sexual difference. Trans people, in
their everyday struggles, are not to be seen as exceptions to the bourgeois, cis-gendered,
heteronormative hegemonic sexuality which much of our culture participates in and helps create,
but rather as the logical conclusion of the faults of this symbolic order. The trans experience,
then, should not only be understood as the plight of a group which the majority of culture doesnt
accommodate for, but also as constitutive of the structure of heteronormative culture itself. To
solution: rather than the creation of new bathrooms to accommodate for the variety of gender
etc. categorizations in favor of something like a bathroom for general gender. This reasoning is
made most clear in the genius behind the term LGBT+. Its in this +, for psychoanalysis,
where the predicament of human sexuality is situated. Our actual, traumatic, experience of our
own sexuality is a thing which fundamentally resists a formal symbolic identification; its
something which we will always perceive as incompatible with the normative gender categories
offered to us by the Symbolic. For the purposes of an emancipatory gender politics, this
psychoanalytic insight is crucial. To refer back to Zupancics quote I offered at the beginning of
this essay, there is no reality of our sexual experience because, as things currently stand, it is
rooted in the discourse of the Symbolic, and will remain linguistically disconnected from its
material essence of real sexual difference. Nonetheless, this predicament of sexual un-reality
simultaneously creates serious issues in the Real, one need to look no further than the disastrous
ramifications of the patriarchal structure or the violence committed in the name of transphobia
for proof of this. Perhaps we are here met with an instance where psychoanalysis as a method of
social critique remains more relevant than ever. For psychoanalysis, the courage of the trans or
gender non-conforming community is twofold: not only are they willingly putting themselves at
risk in the public sphere by choosing to express their identity, they also are confronting a
contradiction of human subjectivity which the rest of the populace has yet to face.