'Sexual Differences'

Unlike any other feminist pieces that we've read, if I'm not mistaken, 'Sexual Differences' in particular attempts to point out the root or origin of patriarchal societies as well as the significance that God has in all of this.

"For the work of sexual difference to take place, a revolution in thought and ethics is needed. We must re-interpret the whole relationship between the subject and discourse, the subject and the world, the subject and the cosmic, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic" (p. 236). Here, Irigaray signals out several relationships that can pinpoint why it is that a phrase such as sexual difference even exists. For starters, Irigaray writes that God (in Western culture) has always been referred to as a male being...I still wonder why that is. She later goes on to explain that there exists a difference between the arts and sexual difference, which can be analyzed beginning with space and time, which were of course, created by God. Further reading Irigaray's analysis, she basically goes on to say that feminity can be related to space while masculinity to time and thus we have the beginning of sexual difference and such. Although there exists a vast difference between the two, male and female, space and time, we must not confuse the two, as Cixous' 'Sorties' points out, there exists "qualifiers of sexual difference" but they must not be confused, "man/masculine, woman/feminine: for there are men who do not repress their femininity, women who more or less forcefully inscribe their masculinity" (p. 232); there are women that clearly address their masculine characteristics as there are men who cannot control their female characteristics.