Nowadays, the term gender is used more and more frequently. It regularly comes up in what are sometimes stormy societal debates. For its part, psychoanalysis is questioned and challenged by the same societal issues and by the concept of gender itself, at the theoretical, clinical and even political levels. Thus, in order to shed some light on the challenges that gender presents for psychoanalysis and to refocus (and perhaps take the passion out of) the debates, this article begins by revisiting the definition of the concept of gender and the question it raises for psychoanalysis. Next, it seeks to put the clinical experience of gender and its specificity in context and attempts to define gender in psychoanalysis, particularly within libidinal development and metapsychology. Finally, to conclude, a hypothesis is put forward concerning the difficulties, debates and discord that gender continues to raise in psychoanalysis, without tangible results.