Feminism Revisited: Luce Irigaray

For Luce Irigaray, writing in This Sex Which is Not One, woman resists adequate definition. Female sexuality has been conceptualized on the basis of masculine parameters. The female sex organs were placed secondary to the male, existing for the purpose of pleasing man. Woman was defined as atrophy, lack, and having penis envy. Irigaray puts forward woman as already being two, "but not divisible into one." (p 24).

Female sexuality has its own language, with an alphabet different from that of the male sexual imaginary where woman is only a "more or less obliging prop." (p 25) The logic that has dominated the West since the Greeks neglects woman's desire. Women defy the visual predominance of this logic, being more inclined toward touch. Even though her desire is submerged, it is still the source of her masquerades of "femininity" as is expected of her. Within this logic, the one supplants two.

Maternity fills gaps in the repressed feminine sexuality. This is connected to the Oedipal complex, which raises doubts for Irigaray as it perpetuates the authoritarian discourse of fathers. The social roles of "mother" and "father" are regressive emotional behaviors detached from sex.

Irigaray studies the female imaginary as a sexuality that is at least double, and always plural. The female imaginary does not have to choose between activity or passivity, and finds pleasure almost everywhere. It is both more subtle and complex than the male imaginary, and appears contradictory and even incomprehensible. To understand the feminine, another ear would be needed "as if hearing an 'other meaning' always in the process of weaving itself." (p 29)