ABSTRACT
The distinction between the two dimensions male/female and masculine/feminine is very important, but is not always easy to express; it depends on the language that people use. It was to some extent as a result of the invention of gender that it became obvious that the male/female dimension had to be differentiated from the masculine/feminine one. Intersexed does not mean belonging to both sexes. For Freud, all human beings possess features that belong to both sexes; he argued that the terms "man" and "woman" are mere abstractions. Civil status regulations do not refer to "gender" but to "sex", though they put it thus: masculine or feminine sex. Freud spoke as though being a woman was merely negative in content, as though women did not have their own sex organs, as though they were characterized by the simple fact of not possessing the only organ that mattered, as though they were nothing more than a hole.
