One of the main feminist themes in this work is écriture fémininee, translated to "feminine writing" or “women’s writing.” Cixous says that women must begin to write for themselves and in the style of themselves. To do so, prospective female authors must shed the bonds of their oppression and reject the embedded images of women in culture and language. Female authors must undergo a metamorphosis of self, reject the patterns of male dominance, and learn to portray themselves and other women faithfully to write with agency and authenticity. In doing so, they ensure their work does not replicate the masculine gaze it intends to reject. 

Cixous argues that culture, and the language which defines it, have long embraced phallocentric or patriarchal ideas and images. As such, women were historically suppressed and even discouraged from talking or writing about their own experiences and desires outside of those historically biased, phallocentric ways of thinking and writing. “The Laugh of the Medusa” rejects this tradition of oppression and silence. Instead, the article offers a post-structuralist argument written in favor of evolution and progress. Through a feminist lens narrowed to directly address the literary world, Cixous advocates for female agency and cites writing and literary language as the tools to obtain her lofty goal.

Cixous argues that men have placed themselves in a superior position to women in both culture and language. As part of this cultural structure, women's desires were quickly deemed taboo and viewed as frivolous subjects that no serious writer should touch or address. Cixous notes that feminine writing—discussing topics degraded by the male literati and embracing female authenticity—would liberate women from that cultural suppression:

And why don't you write?

Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great—that is, for "great men";

. . . or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty,—so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.

Here, Cixous’s self-insertion touches on the way that women's writing (and desire) suffers from the external masculine gaze. Female desire—be it merely sexual or the more complex urge to use literature to discuss the taboo female selves that male writers reject—is a nuanced creature that generations of intentional suppression have rendered nearly impotent. As Cixous mournfully reveals, the suppression is no longer only external, indeed, it has invaded the female consciousness and planted its insidious seeds. “Feminine writing” is the sole escape from this dangerous internalization, though Cixous is careful to add that "feminine writing" will not be a homogeneous, easily defined thing. Rather, it will represent a variety of styles and experiences of women. What unites all of these is the act of surpassing both internal and external male bias, as Cixous states, "It will be conceived of only by subjects who are breakers of automatisms, by peripheral figures that no authority can ever subjugate."

Cixous discusses psychoanalysis and the subconscious. She challenges Freud's ideas of phallocentrism and "penis envy," showing that the idea of women's "lack" is just another way of putting them in an inferior position. She challenges phallocentric metaphors, such as the presence and absence of a phallus and the implications these states inspire, and she explains that defining women by showing how they are unlike men is a fundamental strategy of suppression. A tactic of quintessential othering, this comparison perpetually situates the female sex on the peripheral of that which is considered normal and acceptable. Therefore, women must authentically conceive themselves by themselves: not in opposition to men and not as the objects of men's thoughts but simply as they are. All of these arguments are designed to encourage women to embrace new ways of thinking about themselves—ways that have previously been squashed. The added hope is that men will change their perceptions of women, too.