What distinguishes a woman from a man? What is the difference between the sexes? To maintain, according to the author, a supposedly symbolic order on which the "human sciences" that are structural anthropology, a certain psychoanalysis, and a dominant current of the philosophy of Law, rely to justify the maintenance of the system of gender inequality. The secularization of our modern societies poorly conceals the sacralization from which they proceed. It is to a sacred mythology that the experts and the politicians strangely appeal, who warn us and forbid us from getting too close to the established order, its norms and its values. This book offers a critical analysis of the strategic devices that organize our societies and protect the rigidity of our representations. It proposes a redefinition of the social and political contract according to intuitions that run from Pic de la Mirandola to the texts of Castoriadis and restores the humanist project to its relevance: we can be the co-creators of our society and of our most " essential”.