Shulamith Firestone Quotes

In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My 'dream' action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their 'pleasing' smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.

Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.

Women were the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half for the business of the world.

Just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, ... not just the elimination of the male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself; genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

Romanticism is a cultural tool of male power to keep women from knowing their conditions.

Men are thinking, writing, and creating, because women were pouring their energy into those men; women are not creating culture because they are occupied with love.

Feminism, when it truly achieves its goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.

If women are differentiated only by superficial physical attributes, men appear more individual and irreplaceable than they really are.

He has let her in not because he genuinely loved her, but only because she played so well into his preconceived fantasies.

The separation of sex from emotion is at the very foundations of Western culture and civilization.

(Male) culture was (and is) parasitical, feeding on the emotional strength of women without reciprocity.

All men are selfish, brutal and inconsiderate--and I wish I could find one.

Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know.

Thus her whole identity hangs in the balance of her love life. She is allowed to love herself only if a man finds her worthy of love.

We should keep in mind that Revolutions anywhere are always glad to use any help they can get, even from women. But unless women also use the Revolution to further their own interests as well as everyone else's, unless they make it consistently clear that all help given now is expected to be returned, both now and after the Revolution, they will be sold out again and again.

The 'natural' is not necessarily a 'human' value. Humanity has begun to transcend nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origins in nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as if we must get rid of it.

[U]nless oppressed groups stick together, and on alliances of self interest rather than do-goodism; nothing can be accomplished in the long run to dismantle the apparatus of oppression.

To be worshiped is not freedom.

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 reflect 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.

No matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper.

Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.

...he will go to his grave feeling cheated, never realizing that there isn't much difference between one woman and the other, that it is the loving that creates the difference.

But in psychoanalysis there are no unimportant thoughts; there are only thoughts that pretend to be unimportant in order to not be told.

The classic trap for any revolutionary is always, 'What's your alternative?

The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF!

A fair and generous woman is (at best) respected, but seldom loved.

The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer.

a revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.

The personal is political.

Emancipated' women found out that the honesty, generosity, and camaraderie of men was a lie.

...love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.

the myth of childhood happiness flourishes so wildly not because it satisfies the needs of children but because it satisfies the needs of adults. In a culture of alienated people, the belief that everyone has at least one good period in life free of care and drudgery dies hard. And obviously you can't expect it in your old age. So it must be you've already had it.

It is only after we have integrated the dark side of the moon into our world view that we can begin to talk seriously of universal culture.

the 'natural' is not necessarily a 'human' value.

The bar is the male kingdom. For centuries it was the bastion of male privilege, the gathering place for men away from their women, a place where men could go to freely indulge in The Bull Session.