In Lévinas' work the feminine plays a crucial role : first encountered in the erotic relationship, it breaks the circle of sameness, opening it to the salutary dimension of transcendence. However, though some thought that in this he was breaking away from phallogocentrism, Stella Sandford shows us, following Beauvoir, to what point he remains masculinist. Without demonstrating any critical distance, Lévinas associates the feminine with the ambiguity of Eros, with sexual difference, establishing it as the inviolable and almost animal, irresponsible or childish other of a masculine subject. Beauvoir's critique was therefore to the point, and the Derrida of "Violence and metaphysics" would have done well to ask himself what man was wielding Lévinas's pen when he wrote, instead of delighting in the fact that he was writing as a man.