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Iam most appreciative of the perspective Harris has given me on my own work. It is an important opportunity for a writer to have another vantage point from which to view the ideas one is attempting to develop. I prefer to think of my current paper as less a departure from than a further unfolding of my thinking as elaborated in a series of papers (Elise, 1997, 1998a, b, 1999). The continuous thread of my work regarding female development has involved conceptualizing bisexuality and desire for the mother as a primal experience for both sexes. I have been examining and trying to work with literature within a number of psychoanalytic traditions in order to approach gender and sexuality from a multimodel perspective.
Harris is correct when she surmises that I attribute to analytic theory the power to construct and constrict subjective senses of gendered self and sexuality, and she and I agree that there are “many complex lines of mutual, interactive influence on theory, on theory makers,” and on personal and cultural understandings of gender. I intend my title, “Generating Gender,” to convey multiple layers of meaning (given the postmodern age we are in, nothing less would be acceptable!). I have in mind 1) the process by which theorists generate new ideas about what they believe gender to be; 2) the way in which theory actually creates or limits gender; and 3) the generation, and often reproduction, of gender within and by culture from one generation to the next. Or perhaps the concept of gender ought to degenerate—to undo itself, loosen up in a sort of entropy, allowing much larger spaces for individuals to express themselves across an infinite range versus within two loosely assembled, but recognizable categories. As we deliberate over fixed versus fluid senses of gender, core gender identity versus multiple and