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vulnerable to the patriarchal essentialization of women as naturally submissive, overly emotional, and so forth. Indeed, for Kristeva, the feminine can’t be defined because there are as many definitions of the feminine as there are women. We can, however, know this about femininity, Kristeva asserts: it is marginalized, oppressed, just as the working class is marginalized and oppressed. Furthermore, what have been generally accepted by many feminists as the bio‑ logical differences that make women female and men male (as opposed to the differences socially imposed by patriarchy that define us as feminine or mascu‑ line) are seen by Kristeva as social differences rather than biological differences because of their concrete effects on women in the real world. As she puts it, the “sexual, biological, physiological, and reproductive difference [between women and men] reflects a difference in . . . the social contract” (“ Woman’s Time” 188). In other words, if one is born with the biology of a female, one’s place in society is accorded fewer rights—particularly the right to own and control one’s body sexually, both in terms of the kind and number of sexual relationships one will have and in terms of abortion and contraceptive rights—than if one is born with the biology of a male. In the final analysis, the issue is not how biological difference should be defined; rather the issue is that whatever meaning biologi‑ cal difference may have is instantly consumed, overshadowed, displaced by the social (patriarchal) meaning that accompanies it. And it is the social mean‑ ing given to sexual difference that oppresses women. Thus for Kristeva, as for most French feminists—including materialist feminists like the ones discussed earlier—the difference between sex and gender posited by Anglo-American feminists does not exist. Patriarchy defines and controls the way we relate to sex (female) and gender (feminine) as if they were the same thing. Indeed, there is no word in French for gender as we use the word in English. Instead of embracing écriture féminine and womanspeak as a means to take us beyond patriarchal oppression, Kristeva maintains that women and men can get beyond patriarchal language and patriarchal thinking by seeking access to what she calls the semiotic dimension of language (not to be confused with the field of study called semiotics, which is the analysis of cultural sign systems). For Kristeva, language consists of two dimensions: the symbolic and the semiotic. The symbolic dimension is the domain in which words operate and meanings are attributed to them. What she calls the semiotic dimension of language is that part of language that, in contrast, consists of such elements as intonation (sound, tone of voice, volume, and for lack of a better word, musicality); rhythm; and the body language that occurs as we speak, which reveals our feelings and bodily drives (for example, bodily drives that relate to the sexual, to survival, and so forth). Perhaps we can say, then, that the semiotic consists of the way we speak, for instance the emotions that come across in our voice and body language as we talk. So it is not unexpected that, as Kristeva notes, “Scientific
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