The subversive method of psychoanalysis allows us to resist essentialist, unexamined notions of gender and sexuality as well as shift our investigation from an interest in origin to an emphasis on meaning. Masculinity, femininity, and bisexuality are examined as culturally produced categories inscribed in a symbolic order. I attempt to show how seemingly stable and coherent categories of gender and sexuality obscure the ongoing psychic work of self to hold the tension between normative recognition and diverse gender and sexual subjectivities. I ask what can be gained by using gender analytically as a symbolic resource rather than an inherent cultural imperative.