Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist philosopher whose work draws on her multiple doctorates in the areas of linguistics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Her main contributions are her concept of sexual difference and the methodology she developed for a feminist interpretation of the history of philosophy. Like many feminist philosophers, Irigaray argues that women have always been defined in relation to men. She would agree with the mid-twentieth century French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who argued that "the relation between the sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral … whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria." Irigaray agrees that the feminine tends to be described "in terms of deficiency or atrophy, as the other side of the sex that alone holds a monopoly on value: the male sex" (1985b...