The Dialectic of Sex: A Case for Feminist Revolution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured:  |
In The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone synthesized the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Simone de Beauvoir to put forth a feminist theory of politics. It became a major text in second-wave feminism in the United States.
Firestone perceived that gender inequality originated in the patriarchy forced on women through their biology: the physical, social and psychological disadvantages imposed by pregnancy, childbirth, and subsequent child-rearing. She stated that women must seize the means of reproduction and advocated the use of cybernetics to carry out human reproduction in laboratories - as well as the proliferation of contraception, abortion, and state support for child-rearing - enabling them to escape their biology. Childbirth was memorably described in the book as being "like shitting a pumpkin", and Firestone described pregnancy as "barbaric". Among the reproductive technologies she predicted were sex selection and in vitro fertilization.
Firestone explored a number of possible social changes that she argued would result in a post-patriarchal society, including the abolition of the nuclear family and the promotion of living in community units within a socialist society.
The book influenced American novelist Marge Piercy's imaginative utopia, Woman on the Edge of Time.
