Introduction

In constructing feminine/masculine as a reversal, however, authors remained inside the relationship the dichotomy implies. And as well they told a lie the kind of lie that representation always is. Representation-making something appear, to stand for something else, which exists-is real. ‘Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything that can be significantly taken as substituting for something else’. A feminism of equality, in working within the current patriarchal order, arguing for equality of women and men within that order, leaves the phallocentric duality of mind and body firmly in place. This happens because in working against arguments that the biology of women’s bodies both justifies and explains the position of women within that order, a feminism of equality is always forced into the position of denying the importance of sexual difference in order to argue for mental equality.