Sexual Difference and Equality

Prachi Wahi 3/12/2012 M. A. (prev.) English

In The Fecundity of the Caress, Irigaray offers a stinging and compelling response to Levinas Totality and Infinity, Phenomenology of Eros. Irigaray tries to reconstruct Levinas ideas on sexuality by patterning them in a caring, romantic relationship based on equality and transcendence for both partners despite the sexual differences. She brushes aside Levinas concept of the beloved woman, and establishes the notion of the female lover, in support of her argument. According to Irigaray, sensual pleasure in its beginning gesture the touch of the caress reverses the earlier conceptions and introduces the female as a loving woman. Unlike a typical feminist, Irigaray does not merely strive for the cause of womens emancipation from male domination sexually or socially. Irigaray propagates that in sensual pleasure, Together, the lovers *become+ creators of new worlds. One should say, the lovers. Since to define the loving couple as a male lover and a beloved woman already assigns them to a polarity that deprives the female lover of her love (170). Here, we would like to expatiate on this notion with reference to a motion picture, Woman on Top (2000). The movie depicts how a woman challenges the conventional position of a woman in her social role as well as in a sexual intercourse. As a social being, Isabella Oliveira is portrayed as a brilliant cook, but her talent is restricted to her husbands restaurant, where she did all the work. He got all the credit. However, she has to be on top to control her motion sickness, be it while driving, dancing, or love-making. On the other hand, this unconventional gesture is unsuitable to her husband, Toninho: Isabella, Im a man. I have to be on top sometimes. And the narrator comments: Ah, but some men must always appear to be man, no matter what it may cost. So far the movie portrays the typical man vs. woman confrontation - both struggling with each other to be on top for personal fulfilment, without caring about the other. This is the reason that Toninho feels emasculated by this and finds another sexual partner to remain on top. Similarly, Isabella too leaves him behind and pursues a thriving career as a chef. Irigarays perspective is in sharp contrast with the above explained situation, where one is the subject and other is the object. She postulates that the lovers should be Not divided into their alliances between highest and lowest, the extremes of day and night, but summoning these ultimate sites at the risk of union and fecundation of each by the other (172). This suggestion too is touched upon in the movie later, when Isabella is seen unable to slough off her wedding ring. She is unable to cook without thinking of Toninho. Similarly, Toninho is unable to run his restaurant without Isabella. The implication of need for union in equality between the two is suggested though on a social level, but is testified only in their physical union. They realise: But together, maybe we can find a way. This is what Irigaray too suggests: This union does not ignore sensual pleasure; it sounds out its most plummeting and soaring dimensions (172). Clearly, Irigaray proposes the idea of equality within sexual differences without submitting to sameness. There is a mutual understanding and respect for each others space between the lovers - difference and equality. Alison Stone in her book explicates this notion by saying that Irigaray in her later works insists that sexual difference, as a difference in rhythms which (among other things) regulate sexual energy and forms of perception and experience, remains culturally significant and erotically charged, and hence is a sexual, not narrowly biological, difference (5-6). This explains how equality and transcendence are possible within such a difference. However, Stone also admits that this

philosophy is heterosexist. Even then, as Stone clarifies later, among homosexuals as well differences can be acknowledged as particular members of a common kind (7). Thus, we may conclude by saying that Irigarays purpose in her later theories is to derive the possibility of equality, mutuality, and union between lovers despite their particularities and sexual differences, where the male lover is supposed to bring about with her, and not through or in spite of her (165). According to Stone, this proposal would invigorate a rethinking of sexuate culture as expressing a nature which necessarily also requires expression in its multiplicity . . . beyond the confines of fixed sexed identities (16).

Works Cited

Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Cornell University Press. Stone, Alison. Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Woman on Top. Directed by Fina Torres. 2000.