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Cixous equates writing to sex because being a writer, like the actual act of sex, makes us examine ourselves and like other areas of life experience, female sexuality is taboo. Bronte and Woolf address the difficulties of being a writer due to the obstacles between women and world experience. If you cannot travel away from your physical continent or explore your own "dark continent" (i.e. your body and sexuality), then your ability to write is harshly limited. Jane Austen wrote what she knew from her limited life experience and  consequently,the body and sex, like other experiences available to male writers, is absent. To write your sexual body, like writing about any life experience, is a way in which women can demand a place in the greater world experience that male writers have always had access to.