Cixous' use of the title "The Laugh of the Medusa" presents an illustration of the oppositions women struggle to overcome. The creation of these oppositions results from the fact that "men have riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss." Cixous uses the abyss to represent the area men have established as being "too dark to be explorable." Men's attempt to deter female exploration stems from the fact that nothing but empty fears and fallacies are found in the abyss. If women explored this dark area they would uncover the lies, thereby empowering themselves. It is this power that men do not want women to aquire. This is because the more power women have the less relative power men have.
The second opposition Cixous presents is that of the Medusa. Cixous chose the myth of the Medusa, much like Koedt chose the myth of the vaginal orgasm, to represent the falsehoods that have prevented us from exploring the dark (the monster) and the truth that will be discovered upon exploration (the beautiful women). For Koedt, the myth was that of the vaginal orgasm which held women from exploring the same dark area described by Cixous. This dark area could be seen as representative of vaginally orgasmic women, a fallacy women did not question. Instead, they felt inadequate and incomplete as a result of their inability to achieve the coveted vaginal orgasm. Koedt proposes that upon questioning the existence of vaginally orgasmic women, women would uncover the truth. This truth holds that women are in fact sexually whole women, not the incomplete versions they previously had seen themselves as.