"In order to touch himself, man needs an instrument: his hand, a woman's body, language..."

(Irigaray, 24)

This sentence in This Sex Which Is Not One seemed odd when i first read it. Even now, I can't quite figure out what Irigaray meant when she wrote this; how does a man 'touch himself' with language? The immediate association I made was to Saussure's conception of language as a system. Through this analysis, Irigaray is almost comparing a woman's body and a system. This made me wonder: can a body in fact be called a system? Or, can sexuality be called a system?