ABSTRACT
Not long ago, a few analyst friends and I were talking. We were talking about another analyst of whom we all are very fond, when one of the analysts said that she liked this colleague because of the feeling she got when she was with her. “Some people,” she said, in a ªattering manner, “are just more gender-y than others.” We all shook our heads in acknowledgment and later said our goodbyes. I didn’t think of our discussion until sometime aŽerward, when I wondered about my friend’s statement that some people are more gender-y than other people. When I thought about it more, I was not sure exactly what would lead someone to make an attribution like “more gender-y” of someone else; who would get to be called “more gender-y,” and on what basis? More gender-y than whom? ‡en I wondered if anyone would ever use that description for me, and that is when something struck me: white, heterosexual men, such as myself, are not described in terms of gender. We are not included as a gender in the new paradigm of gender studies. Instead, our gendered existence is rendered through a doubling-a simultaneous absence and fullness of gender. We are at once the standard (of) gender, and its nonappearance. Since we are constructed as the gender, there has been no need to name us.
