In response to the question ‘what is woman?’, Monique Wittig writes; ‘It is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective. ‘Woman’ has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual, economic systems. Lesbians are not women.’1 While it is possible to suggest that lesbians are in fact the ultimate women (their relationships being representative of the complete disavowal of the male and the necessity of the phallus), Wittig’s assertion is based on the idea that, as Julia Kristeva points out, ‘women cannot be said to exist’2. According to this theory, in subscribing to the category of women as being somehow valid or innate, one subscribes to a system of codes and binaries produced and maintained by a patriarchal system as a means of asserting power over women.