Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012)

"No one can understand how feminism has evolved without reading this radical, inflammatory second-wave landmark." --Naomi Wolf Originally published in 1970, when Shulamith Firestone was just twenty-five years old, and going on to become a bestseller, The Dialectic of Sex was the first book of the women's liberation movement to put forth a feminist theory of politics. Beginning with a look at the radical and grassroots history of the first wave (with its foundation in the abolition movement of the time), Firestone documents its major victory, the granting of the vote to women in 1920, and the fifty years of ridicule that followed. She goes on to deftly synthesize the work of Freud, Marx, de Beauvoir, and Engels to create a cogent argument for feminist revolution. Identifying women as a caste, she declares that they must seize the means of reproduction--for as long as women (and only women) are required to bear and rear children, they will be singled out as inferior. Ultimately she presents feminism as the key radical ideology, the missing link between Marx and Freud, uniting their visions of the political and the personal. In the wake of recent headlines bemoaning women's squandered fertility and the ongoing debate over the appropriate role of genetics in the future of humanity, The Dialectic of Sex is revealed as remarkably relevant to today's society--a testament to Shulamith Firestone's startlingly prescient vision. Firestone died in 2012, but her ideas live on through this extraordinary book.… (mer)

Originally published in 1970, when Shulamith Firestone was just twenty-five years old, ‘The Dialectic of Sex’, one of the most contentious and important books of feminist theory, was the first book of the women’s liberation movement to put forth a feminist theory of politics.

Firestone presents feminism as the key radical ideology, the missing link between Marx and Freud, uniting their visions of the political and the personal, Susie Orbach said in a discussion about the book in the Freud Museum in April 2015.

Firestone synthesizes and criticises the works of Freud, Marx, and Engels to create a strong argument for feminist revolution. She does not dismiss them; she says social revolution can’t happen until you go back to the source of original oppression, that of man over woman. “Women are an oppressed class”, she says, exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labour.… (mer)

I have to admit, many different parts of Firestone's book gave me pause. For example, the concept that war (specifically World War II) was a welcomed opportunity for women to be treated as equals was really interesting. The idea that women hired as the only available workforce during that time allowed them to be and feel necessary and not just in the "female" sense of family and sex. The second concept that feminism and Freud "grew from the same soil" (p 43).
Firestone does not leave any aspect of the case for feminist revolution uncovered. She even delves into the stages of fashion for children in medieval times. For the male child dress was not to symbolize just age but to also announce sex, social rank and prosperity, whereas the female child did not have stages of fashion. She went from swaddling directly to adult garments. There was no need to differentiate social rank and prosperity because women had neither.… (mer)