''The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution'' is a 1970 book by the
radical feminist
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a Political radicalism, radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are al ...
activist
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-w ...
. Written over a few months when Firestone was 25, it has been described as a classic of feminist thought.
Firestone argues that the "sexual class system" predates and runs deeper than any other form of oppression, and that the eradication of
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...
will require a radical reordering of society: "The first women are fleeing the massacre, and, shaking and tottering, are beginning to find each other. ... This is painful: no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. ... feminists have to question, not just all of ''Western'' culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature."
The goal of the feminist revolution, she wrote, must be "not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself" so that genital differences no longer have cultural significance.
Summary
Firestone's theories have been described by philosophy professor
Mary Anne Warren as follows: Firestone argues that the biological sexual dichotomy, particularly the biological division of labor in reproduction, is the root cause of male domination, economic class exploitation,
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
,
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
and ecological irresponsibility. Sexual inequality is "an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself": in this sense, it has been universal and inevitable, but the cultural and technological preconditions now exist that make its elimination possible and perhaps necessary for human survival.
Firestone describes her approach as a
dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world con ...
more radical than that of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' matrilineal
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's Lineage (anthropology), lineage – and which can in ...
or
patrilineal
Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...
, and the inevitable dependence of women and children within the family upon men, for protection if not subsistence. There were no ancient matriarchies (societies ruled by women), and the apparently superior status of women in matrilineal cultures is due only to the relative weakness of men. Whatever the lineage system, women's vulnerability during pregnancy and the long period of human infancy necessitate the protective and hence dominant role of the male.
This dependence of the female and the child on the male causes "psychosexual distortions in the human personality", distortions that were described by
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
. Firestone describes Freudianism as a "misguided feminism", since she sees the only real difference between Freud's analysis and that of the radical feminists as being that Freud and his followers accept the social context in which sexual repression develops as immutable. Freud demonstrated that the source of repression and sex-class distinctions is the inherently unequal power relationship in the biological family: women and children are alike oppressed by the more powerful father. The young boy identifies first with the mother, whose oppression he shares, but soon switches his identification to the father, whose power he fears but will someday inherit. In the process he accedes to the
incest taboo
An incest taboo is any cultural rule or norm that prohibits sexual relations between certain members of the same family, mainly between individuals related by blood. All human cultures have norms that exclude certain close relatives from tho ...
and the strict separation of sexuality and emotion which this requires, and which is the psychological foundation of political and ideological oppression. While the young girl also envies the father's power, she learns that she cannot inherit it and can only share in it indirectly, by currying favor with the dominant male.
Not only are women and children both inevitably oppressed in the biological family, they are doubly oppressed by the particular form of it which prevails in the industrialized nations: the patriarchal nuclear family, which isolates each couple and their offspring. Compulsory schooling and the romantic mythology of childhood are devices which serve to prolong the isolation of children and their economic dependence. The socialist-feminist revolution will free both women and children, leaving them with complete economic independence and sexual freedom, and integrating them fully into the larger world. The end of the sex-class system must mean the end of the biological family, that is, the end of women's biological reproductive role through artificial means of gestation. Love between the sexes will remain, for it becomes oppressive only when joined to the reproductive function. The biological family turns sexual love into a tool of oppression. Within it, women give their love to men, thus inspiring the latter to greater cultural creativity, and providing the former with an emotional identity of the sort denied them in the larger world. Yet men, as a result of the
Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to have ...
and the incest taboo, are unable to love: they must degrade the women they make love to, in order to distinguish them from the mother, the first and forbidden love object. They cannot simultaneously respect and be sexually attracted to women.
This is why the "sexual revolution" has not meant liberation for women, who are still bound by the double standard and the need to combine love and sexuality. By eliminating the biological family and the incest taboo, the feminist revolution will enlarge the opportunity for real heterosexual love, as well as legitimating every other type of voluntary sexual relationship. Firestone hesitates to make exact predictions about how children will be raised once they are no longer born of women in the biological family, but suggests that there will be a variety of child-rearing social units, including couples "living together" and households of unrelated persons, up to a dozen or so, who contract to remain together long enough to provide a home for their children until the latter are ready to enter the world, which they will do at a much earlier age than is now considered possible.
The feminist revolution presupposes
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
, but goes beyond it. Existing socialist societies have tried to expand women's roles without fundamentally altering them, to integrate women into a male world, rather than eliminating sex class altogether. The feminist revolution will end the split between the "Aesthetic Mode" (feminine, intuitive, and artistic) and the "Technological Mode" (masculine, empirical, and aimed at the control of nature through the comprehension of its mechanical laws). The end of sexual repression will free Eros to diffuse throughout and humanize the entire culture. Eventually it will lead not only to the end of alienated labor but of labor as such, defined as activity which is not performed for its own sake. Technology will eliminate domestic and other drudgery, leaving everyone free to do work which is intrinsically rewarding.
Reception
''The Dialectic of Sex'' is a
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
classic.
Mary Anne Warren described it in 1980 as "the clearest and boldest presentation thus far of the radical feminist position". In 1998
Arthur Marwick
Arthur John Brereton Marwick (29 February 1936 – 27 September 2006) was a British social historian, who served for many years as Professor of History at the Open University. His research interests lay primarily in the history of Britain in the ...
ranked it as one of radical feminism's two key texts, along with
Kate Millett
Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honor ...
's ''
Sexual Politics
''Sexual Politics'' is the debut book by American writer and activist Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation. It was published in 1970 by Doubleday. It is regarded as a classic of feminism and one of radical feminism's key texts. ''Sexu ...
'' (1969). Writing in ''The Cambridge Companion to Marx'' (1991), Jeff Hearn described Firestone's approach as having lasting significance in reviving interest in sexuality and reproduction as the basis of
patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males a ...
.
The American journalist
Susan Faludi
Susan Charlotte Faludi (; born April 18, 1959) is an American feminist, journalist, and author. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitze ...
wrote in 2013 that, although criticized for their radicalism, the basic tenets of ''The Dialectic of Sex'' have been of lasting significance. Firestone imagined reproduction outside the womb, and children being raised by collectives and granted the right to leave abusive situations. "Predictably," Faludi wrote, "the proposal
stimulated more outrage than fresh thought, though many of Firestone's ideas—children's rights, an end to 'male' work and traditional marriage, and social relations altered through a 'cybernetic' computer revolution—have proved prescient."
Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell, Lady Goody (born 4 October 1940) is a British psychoanalyst, socialist feminist, research professor and author.
Early life and education
Mitchell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1940, and then moved to England in 19 ...
argued that Firestone misreads Freud, and misunderstands the implications of psychoanalytic theory for feminism. She noted that while Firestone, like
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...
, attributes the term "Electra complex" to Freud, it was actually coined by
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
. Mitchell suggested that for Firestone, the only kind of reality is social actuality (the generic experience or accidental experience of the individual), and that in this respect Firestone's work closely resembles that of
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine, doctor of medicine and a psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author ...
. In Mitchell's view, Firestone's interpretation of Freud reduces his psychological constructs to the social realities from which they were reduced, thereby equating the Oedipus complex with the nuclear family. Firestone thus interprets Freudian "metaphors" such as the Oedipus complex in terms of power relations within the family, an approach Mitchell considered mistaken.
In her introduction to the 1998 edition of the book, Rosalind Delmar argued that Firestone's "counter-explanation of problems observed by Freud relies too heavily on recourse to rationalizations", and neglect the inner world of fantasy. In Delmar's view, the result of Firestone's discussion of Freud is that "Freud is not so much refuted or rescued from his mistakes as ignored." Mary O'Brien, in her ''The Politics of Reproduction'' (1981), criticized Firestone's work for reductionism, biologism, historical inaccuracy, and general crudity.
Writing in ''
The Evolution of Human Sexuality
''The Evolution of Human Sexuality'' is a 1979 book about human sexuality by the anthropologist Donald Symons, in which the author discusses topics such as human sexual anatomy, ovulation, orgasm, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and rape, at ...
'' (1979), the anthropologist
Donald Symons
Donald Symons (born 1942) is an American anthropologist best known as one of the founders of evolutionary psychology, and for pioneering the study of human sexuality from an evolutionary perspective. He is one of the most cited researchers in co ...
attributed to Firestone the view that, although the sexes are identical at birth, men are emotionally crippled by early experiences that women escape, and that men, unlike women, are therefore unable to love. Symons contrasted Firestone's views with his own view that "selection has produced marked sex differences in sexuality" and that neither sex is a defective version of the other.
In an interview with Anne-Marie Cusac in ''
The Progressive
''The Progressive'' is a left-leaning American magazine and website covering politics and culture. Founded in 1909 by U.S. senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. and co-edited with his wife Belle Case La Follette, it was originally called ''La Follett ...
'', gay rights activist
Urvashi Vaid
Urvashi ( sa, उर्वशी, Urvaśī}) is the most prominent apsara (celestial nymph) in Hindu mythology, considered to be the most beautiful of all the apsaras, and an expert dancer. She is mentioned in both ''Vedic'' and ''Puranic'' scr ...
identified ''The Dialectic of Sex'' as an influence on her work ''
Virtual Equality
''Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation'' is a 1995 book about gay rights by lawyer and civil rights activist Urvashi Vaid, in which the author argues that LGBT movements in the United States have been only partially su ...
'' (1995).
According to Firestone,
Valerie Solanas
Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for the ''SCUM Manifesto'', which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968.
Solanas had a turbulent child ...
, author of the ''
SCUM Manifesto
''SCUM Manifesto'' is a radical feminist manifesto by Valerie Solanas, published in 1967. It argues that men have ruined the world, and that it is up to women to fix it. To achieve this goal, it suggests the formation of SCUM, an organization ded ...
'', told her that she disliked ''The Dialectic of Sex''.
See also
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Postgenderism
Postgenderism is a social, political and cultural movement which arose from the eroding of the cultural, psychological, and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory.
Postgenderists argue ...
Notes
References
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;Journals
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dialectic Of Sex, The
1970 non-fiction books
American non-fiction books
Books by Shulamith Firestone
Debut books
Dialectical materialism
English-language books
Marxist feminism
Radical feminist books
Socialist feminism
William Morrow and Company books