TRANSSEXUAL DESIRE AND CIS-SEXUAL DEFENSE

The desire of trans-sexual patients to appropriate the physical attributes of the opposite sex via hormone treatment or surgery confronts psychoanalysis and sex research with problems that are not only psychological in nature. Sigusch uses the term ''defence'' here not only in a technical sense but also in an epistemological, discourse-analytic and disposition-analytic register. The general dispositions determining the reality of gender and gender difference are ''cis-sexual'' in nature. The polarity they display extends to the physical and manifestes itself in the form of sexual binarism. The author coins the consciously neologistic term ''cis-sexual'' to describe individuals where physical gender and gender identity are completely and ''naturally'' co-extensive. Only the realization that ''second-nature'' is in reality primary can trigger the detotalization of so-called trans-sexuality that Sigusch is concerned to call into question.