Chapter 2, Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix, Section II, Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade and Section III, Freud and the Melancholia of Gender Summary and Analysis

Lacan's theory of language forbids looking for the 'being' of gender or sex because his theory of language disputes the idea that there is a concrete ontology for these ideas and that language is often misleading because it reflects a Western metaphysical view that thinks asking "What is X?" is sensible. There is no direct access to being. Ontology requires that appearance matches reality and is not mediated by representations. The symbolic is the only known universal and it is always affected by power structures, language, social...