ABSTRACT
The word 'traverse' implies that the subject experiences sexual difference, not as a fixed opposition, but in a process of differentiation. The gender archaeologists have perceived that gender is a social construction, and concluded that 'rather than assuming that the term 'woman' has universal cultural characteristics, there is a need to examine the way in which gender constructions can vary'. Gender does not come to sex. It is not a question of the perverse coming to an originally virgin territory, to contaminate and infect. Biological sex is a composite concept, with several prerequisites. The two main classes male and female are not totally separated but rather two extremes on the same scale. The infantile sexual organisation is distinguished from that of the adult world, since it has yet to come under the sway of genital tyranny. Lacan's reading of Freud recasts his theory in the terms of structural linguistics.
