This sex which is not one Women on the market enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single com- labor. The mirror that envelops and paralyzes the com- modity, by itself, as we will. Yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it"(ibid. ) The value of a specularizes, speculates (on)mans "labor. "Com omen,are a mirror of value of and for man. In order to woman always escapes: black continent, hole in the symbolic Ich, they give up their bodies to men as the support breach in discourse... It is only in the operation of exchange ing material of specularization, of speculation. They yield to among women that something of this-something enigmatic to be surecan be felt. Woman thus has value only in that she him their natural and social value as a locus of imprints, marks, of his be exchanged In the passage from one to the other, something else finally exists beside the possible utility of the"coarseness Commodities among themselves are thus not equal, nor of her body. But this value is not found, is not recaptured, in alike, nor different, They only become so when they are com- her. It is only her measurement against a third term that re- pared by and for man. And the prosopopoeia of the relation of mains external to her, and that makes it possible to compare her commodities among themselves is a projection through which pro- with another woman, that permits her to have a relation to ducers-exchangers make them reenact before their eyes their foreign to both. ty in terms of an equivalence that remains another commodit operations of specula(riza tion, Forgetting that in order to re- flect(oneself), to speculate(oneself), it is necessary to be a Womenl-as-commodities are thus subject to a schism that divides subject, and that matter can serve as a support for speculation them into the categories of usefulness and exchange value; into but cannot itself speculate in any wa matter-body and an envelope that is precious but impenetrable. starting with the simplest relation of equivalence be ungraspable, and not susceptible to appropriation by women tween commodities, starting with the possible exchange of hemselves; into private use and social use women, the entire enigma of the money form-of the phallic function-is implied. That is, the appropriation-disappropria- In order to have a relative value, a commodity has to be con tion by man, for man, of nature and its productive forces, fronted with another commodity that serves as its equivalent insofar as a certain mirror now divides and travesties both Its value is never found to lie within itself. And the fact that it is nature and labor. Man endows the commodities he produces worth more or less is not its own doing but comes from that to with a narcissism that blurs the seriousness of utility, of use which it may be equivalent. Its value is transcendent to itsel Desire as soon as there is excha perverts"need. But that perversion will be attributed to commodities and to their al- In other words, for the commodity there is no mirror that copies it so leged relations. Whereas they can have no relationships except that it may be at once itself and its"own"reflection. One com from the perspective of speculating third partic felloay cannot be mirrored in another, as man is mirrored in his n. For when we are dealing with commodities the The economy of exchange-of desireis man's business For two self-same, mirrored, is not"its"own likeness, contains noth reasons: the exchange takes place between masculine subjects value added to the body of the commodity of its properties, its qualities, its"skin and hair ""The likeness and it requires a here is only a measure expressing the fabricated character of the supplement which gives it a valuable form. That supplement will be found, Marx writes, in another commodity, whose commodity, its trans-formation by mans(social, symbolic value becomes, from that point on, a standard of value 177