This essay is concerned with the Civil Rights issue of the equal treatment of women.
Irigaray says that although culture seems to explain itself, it is actually quite indefensible to treat women the way women have been historically treated. She explains that even in the modern environment, her own culture tends to view women in two ways: As utilitarian objects (tools which can be used for specific purposes) and bearers of value. She says that by viewing women this way, the entire class of women becomes oppressed.
She explains that the oppressed state is essentially a class warfare issue, where women are being treated as an inferior people group. They are limited to three roles in society, says Irigaray: the mother, the virgin, and the prostitute. She says that in these roles, women is forced to exist in a way that is disrespectful to her potential as a human being.
She elaborates on the roles, explaining that a woman as a mother is tolerable in society, because she raises boys, and the virgin is tolerable, because as property, she is highly valuable because her virginity is a powerful commodity. But once a woman's virginity is lost, if she does not become a mother, Irigaray says society automatically casts her in the role of the whore.
She says that because humans learn through mimicry, the only real way to change these broken aspects of Western culture is to start singing a different song, so to speak. She says that women should collaborate to construct a new voice for themselves that they can share and celebrate alongside open-minded men who agree that women are equal to men. She says women's voices need to be heard.
