ABSTRACT
Beyond pink and blue, dolls and cars, and playing house and roughhousing, one wonders, how does a child begin to identify unconsciously as a girl or a boy? The imaginary identication promoted by gender theory is insufcient to account for the unconscious dimension of sexuality. The subject’s sexual identity does not depend on an identication with an image (which would fall under the category of performativity) but on a symbolic position (thus closer to performance) that is related to what psychoanalysts call phallusthe tool to negotiate the Real that eludes us. The phallus is an obstacle. It is nothing other than a failed answer to the conundrum of sexual difference. This difference cannot be fully grasped (it is just speculation constructed on the real of the impossibility of a sexual rapport). Situating oneself as a man, or a woman, is a complex process, directly connected with the symbolization of the law and castration. The transgender phenomenon proves that there is nothing natural that would direct us to the opposite sex. Sexual identity is a secondary nature. Since the unconscious has no representation of masculinity or femininity, we cannot speak with certainty in terms of sexual identity of being a man or a woman, but only of an assurance, a happy uncertainty.
