I think Freud tends to be quite hypocritical when he depicts women. He states that psychoanalysis alone couldn't define a woman, but then describes how both men and women develop and come in being. He clearly believes there are many differences between men and women, but he argues that both sexes are first in love with their mother and women quickly grow out of that stage and begin to "love" their fathers. How do women go through that first stage of loving their mother's and on to loving their father's? I don't think his theory on how women are "biologically destined" to live in a feminine stage has enough evidence. Going along with that theory, I also don't agree with his theory on how women are born bisexual. Is he just going against "the Oedipus complex"?

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"As commodities, women are thus two things at once: utilitarian objects and bearers of value. (p. 175)"
Breakdown: The object is the body. The utilitarian object is the body in relation to the way it is used by men. The exchange of women abstract her body. The physical material "woman" has no value by itself, only once the female body is put in relation to another female body can a woman be appraised. But how are two women to be compared? They are put in "a relation of equality with a third term that is neither the one nor the other. (p. 175)" "It is only her measurement against a third term that remains external to her, and that makes it possible to compare her with another woman, that permits her to have a relation to another commodity in terms of an equivalence that remains FOREIGN to both. (p. 176)." Okay, so women are not actually "bearers" of their own value. Their value is activated in the moment of transaction (gain, expenditure). Much like oil and calories, the value of a woman does not "lie within itself. (p. 176)."
I am interested in Irigaray's discussion of the differences in exchange value between the mother, the virgin, and the prostitute (all "social roles imposed on women"--p. 186). I would like to explore these differences in greater depth. It seems to me that there are greater similarities both between the mother and the prostitue, and the virgin and the prostitute, than between the mother and the virgin. And it seems that the prostitute, although on the surface perhaps the most male-determined or man-made if you will, is actually the truest semblance of a woman. Do I think all women are whores? No, no, bear with me.
The virgin is "pure exchange value. She is nothing but the possibility, the place, the sign of relations among men. In and of herself, she does not exsist...(p. 186)." The virgin is defined by what she has not done (or what has not been done to her), the term is completely negative, it does not describe

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