Abstract
This essay argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis and trans studies can indeed accommodate each other rather than appear incommensurable. It first acknowledges the problem of Lacanian transphobia via the recent work of Slavoj Žižek and Jacques-Alain Miller, and organizes their arguments around three related psychoanalytic concerns: demand, desire, and the real of sexual difference. In showing how Žižek and Miller orient their arguments around these axes, the author shows that they misread trans subjects solely as subjects of demand, as those who refuse to cope with, and instead misrecognize or cancel, the real of sexual difference. After indicating the role of countertransference in these interpretations, the author then turns to accounts from trans persons and trans affirmative Lacanians to resituate trans subjects as subjects of desire rather than of demand. This shows requests for trans medical care to be in the name of facilitating, rather than stopping, desire.
