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Shulamith Firestone

72 quotes

“Constant erotic stimulation of male sexuality coupled with its forbidden release through most normal channels are designed to encourage men to look at women as only things whose resistance to entrance must be overcome.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women have been allowed to achieve individuality only though their appearance.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psychosexual is often rejected as ahistorical by those who accept a view of history because it seems to land us back where Marx began: groping through a fog of utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell); systems that explain concrete historical developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to explain 'knowing' by 'being' and not vice versa.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labour force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child - That? Why you can't change that! You must be out of your mind!' - is the closest to the truth.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women throughout history before the advent of birth control were at the continual mercy of their biology - menstruation, menopause, and "female ills," constant painful childbirth, wetnursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover, or clan, government, community-at-large) for physical survival.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the Kingdom of Nature does not reign absolute.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fifties was the bleakest decade of all, perhaps the bleakest in some centuries for women.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Feminism, in truth, has a cyclical momentum all its own. In the historical interpretation we have espoused, feminism is the inevitable female response to the development of a technology capable of freeing women from the tyranny of their sexual-reproductive roles – both the fundamental biological condition itself, and the sexual class system built upon, and reinforcing, this biological condition.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The goals of feminism can never be achieved through evolution, but only through revolution. Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radical Feminism. The two positions we have described usually generate a third, the radical feminist position: The women in its ranks range from disillusioned moderate feminists from NOW to disillusioned leftists from the women's liberation movement. , and include others who had been waiting for just such an alternative, women for whom neither conservative bureaucratic feminism nor warmed-over leftist dogma had much appeal.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radical feminist movement has many political assets that no other movement can claim, a revolutionary potential far higher, as well as qualitatively different, from any in the past.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it’s your wife who is revolting, you can’t just split to the suburbs.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The feminist movement is the first to combine effectively the ‘personal’ with the ‘political’. It is developing a new way of relating, a new political style, one that will eventually reconcile the personal – always the feminine prerogative – with the public, with the ‘world outside’, to restore that world to its emotions, and literally to its senses.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most revolutionary movements are unable to practise among themselves what they preach. Strong leadership cults, factionalism, ‘ego-tripping’, backbiting are the rule rather than the exception.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If any revolutionary movement can succeed at establishing an egalitarian structure, radical feminism will.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we had to name the one cultural current that most characterizes America in the twentieth century, it might be the work of Freud and the disciplines that grew out of it.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freud captured the imagination of a whole continent and civilization for a good reason. Though on the surface inconsistent, illogical or "way out," his followers, with their cautious logic, their experiments and revisions have nothing comparable to say. Freudianism is so charted so impossible to repudiate because Freud grasped the crucial problem of modern life: Sexuality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether or not we can blame Freud personally, his failure to question society itself was responsible for massive confusion in the disciplines that grew up around this theory. Beset with the insurmountable problems that resulted from trying to put into practice a basic contradiction – the resolution of a problem within the environment that created it – his followers began to attack one component after another of his theory, until they had thrown the baby out with the bath.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe Freud was talking about something real, though perhaps his ideas, taken literally, lead to absurdity – for his genius was poetic rather than scientific; his ideas are more valuable as metaphors than as literal truths.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I submit that the only way that the can make full sense is in terms of power. We must keep in mind that Freud observed this complex as common to every normal individual who grows up in the of a patriarchal society, a form of social organization that intensifies the worst effects of the inequalities inherent in the biological family itself. There is some evidence to prove that the effects of the Oedipus Complex decrease in societies where males hold less power, and that the weakening of patriarchalism produces many cultural changes that perhaps can be traced to this relaxation.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," (in England( "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches." Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can also see the class basis of the emerging concept of child hood in the system of child education that came in along with it. If childhood was only an abstract concept, then the modern school was the institution that built it into reality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ideology of school was the ideology of childhood. It operated on the assumption that children needed"discipline," that they were special creatures who had to be handled in a special way (child psych., child ed., etc.) and that to facilitate this they should be corralled in a special place with tie own kind, and with an age group as restricted to their own as possible.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The myth of childhood has an even greater parallel in the myth of Femininity. Both women and children were considered asexual and thus"purer" than man. Their inferior status was ill-concealed under an elaborate "respect." One didn't discuss serious matters nor did one curse in from of women and children; one didn't openly degrade them, one did it behind their backs.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Self-regulation is the basis of freedom, and dependence the origin of inequality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is some irony in the fact that children imagine that parents can do what they want, and parents imagine that children do. "When I grow up..." parallels "Oh to be a child again...”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every person in his first trip to a foreign country, where he knows neither the people nor the language, experiences childhood.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children, then, are not freer than adults. They are burdened by a wish fantasy in direct proportion to the restraints of their narrow lives; with an unpleasant sense of their own physical inadequacy and ridiculousness; with constant shame about their dependence, economic and otherwise (‘Mother, may I?’); and humiliation concerning their natural ignorance of practical affairs. Children are repressed at every waking minute. Childhood is hell.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A book on radical feminism that did not deal with love would be a political failure. For love, perhaps even more than childbearing, is the pivot of women's oppression today.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love has never been understood, though it may have been fully experienced, and that experience communicated.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bliss in love is seldom the case: for every successful contemporary love experience, for every short period of enrichment, there are ten destructive love experiences, post-love ‘downs’ of much longer duration – often resulting in the destruction of the individual, or at least an emotional cynicism that makes it difficult or impossible ever to love again.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I submit that love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon – it becomes complicated, corrupted, or obstructed by an unequal balance of power. We have seen that love demands a mutual vulnerability or it turns destructive: the destructive effects of love occur only in a context of inequality. But because sexual inequality has remained a constant – however its degree may have varied – the corruption 'romantic' love became characteristic of love between the sexes.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being unable to love is hell.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live without love in the end proves intolerable to men just as it does to women.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The beauty ideal. Every society has promoted a certain ideal of beauty over all others. What that ideal is is unimportant, for any ideal leaves the majority out; ideals, by definition, are modelled on rare qualities.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An artist can never know in advance just how his vision might be articulated in reality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another internal contradiction in empirical science: the mechanistic, deterministic, ‘soulless’ scientific world-view, which is the result of the means to, rather than the (inherently noble and often forgotten) ultimate purpose of, Empiricism: the actualization of the ideal in reality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New theories and new movements do not develop in a vacuum, they arise to spearhead the necessary social solutions to contradictions in the environment.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As was demonstrated in the case of the development of atomic energy, radicals, rather than breast-beating about the immorality of scientific research, could be much more effective by concentrating their full energies on demands for control of scientific discoveries by and for the people. For, like atomic energy, fertility control, artificial reproduction, cybernation, in themselves, are liberating – unless they are improperly used.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact remains: childbirth is at best necessary and tolerable. It is not fun.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radical goals must be kept in sight at all times.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Revolutionary feminism is the only radical programme that immediately cracks through to the emotional strata underlying ‘serious’ politics, thus reintegrating the personal with the public, the subjective with the objective, the emotional with the rational – the female principle with the male.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage is in the same state as the Church: both are becoming functionally defunct, as their preachers go about heralding a revival, eagerly chalking up converts in the day of dread. And just as God has been pronounced dead quite often but has this sneaky way of resurrecting himself, so everyone debunks marriage, yet ends up married.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The family is neither private nor a refuge, but is directly connected to – is even the cause of – the ills of the larger society which the individual is no longer able to confront.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The classic trap for any revolutionary is always, ‘What’s your alternative?’ But even if you could provide the interrogator with a blueprint, this does not mean he would use it: in most cases he is not sincere in wanting to know. In fact this is a common offensive, a technique to deflect revolutionary anger and turn it against itself. Moreover, the oppressed have no job to convince all people. All they need know is that the present system is destroying them.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no precedents in history for feminist revolution – there have been women revolutionaries, certainly, but they have been used by male revolutionaries, who seldom gave even lip service to equality for women, let alone to a radical feminist restructuring of society.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source