The core argument of Irigaray's feminism offered in this book is that women are commodified as objects and then traded like slaves between families. This puts them in a lower class than men, and by pointing this out, she argues against it, saying that women are essentially equal, and that as a disenfranchized class, the hierarchy of power would need to be dismantled by a feminist revolution.
The central imagery associated with the plight of women is their object status in Inigaray's time, when women were regarded as a kind of slave, someone to do chores around the house, "sold" through marriage to a family that takes authority over her, just as her old family did. This depiction of marriage as a transaction leads Irigaray to conclude that the dominant resistence to women's rights movements is because men depend on the economy of trading women.
By viewing women as objects, men lower them to the position of utility and value, describing a woman only in terms of her value as a skilled worker at the home, and as a item of worth, placing a serious burden on women to be sexually worthy by trying to be more beautiful and more talented as a sexual servant to her husband. This perverted sense of self is the product of oppression, much like a slave mentality.
By likening the plight of women to another civil rights movement, the hope is to liken the plight of women to the plight of black people, who were also viewed as second class citizens during this time.
