Irigaray states that true heterosexuality is impossible within the Freudian system because a male's desire is to reunite with the mother's body and the female's desire is to obtain a penis. Sexuality is indirect, the man and woman are not relating to each other directly but are responding to unmet childhood needs. They relate to each other in the roles of mother and father or look to the partner to fulfill and resolve the Oedipal complex. Thus, the couple continually miss each other under the phallogocentric Freudian system. This reconfiguration would be based on the diffuse nature of female sexuality that is present everywhere in a woman's body, not confined to a singe male sex organ.
Touch requires closeness or nearness while vision is distancing.
All relations that privilege sight privilege distance between subject and object, and therefore true connection is impossible in a system that privileges vision. A system based on female sexuality would counter vision with touch, it would lessen the distance between people. This blurring of boundaries, Irigarary says, might ultimately lead to the blurring of ownership. According to Irigary, once the notion of vision is upset the entire phallogocentric system will crumble. This upset will call into question who owns what and more specifically, who owns female sexuality.