Shulamith Firestone Quotes

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.

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

Believe me, if all wives whose husbands had affairs left them, we would only have divorced women in this country.

New theories and new movements do not develop in a vacuum, they arise to spearhead the necessary social solutions to new problems resulting from contradictions in the environment.

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

To be worshiped is not freedom.

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

[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.

It would take a denial of all cultural tradition for women to produce even a true 'female' art. For a woman who participates in (male) culture must achieve and be rated by standards of a tradition she had no part in making - and certainly there is no room in that tradition for a female view, even if she could discover what it was.

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

The patriarchal family was only the most recent in a string of 'primary' social organizations, all of which defined woman as a different species due to her unique childbearing capacity. The term family was first used by the Romans to denote a social unit the head of which ruled over wife, children, and slaves - under Roman law he was invested with the rights of life and death over them all; famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the total number of slaves belonging to one man.

For the real issue under all the fights about other women is the man is unable to commit himself.

Childbirth is at best necessary and tolerable. It is not fun.
(Like shitting a pumpkin, a friend of mine told me when I inquired about the Great-Experience-You-Are-Missing.)

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

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.

The end goal of feminist revolution must be ... not just the elimination of male privilage but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

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.

Love has never been understood, though it may have been fully experienced, and that experience communicated.

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

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

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

The pervasion of image has so deeply altered our very relationships to ourselves that even men have become objects
if never erotic objects.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.