Shulamith Firestone famous quotes

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

#Struggle #Given #Given Up

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Girl #Dream #Teenage

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

#Sex #Civilization #Culture

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Sex #Class #Humanity

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

#Men #Individual #Superficial

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Sex #Class #Differences

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Men #Alcohol #Gathering

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Jobs #Mean #People

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Giving Up #Organization #Feminist

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Writing #Men #Thinking

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

#Goal #Feminism #Our Society

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

#Women #Class #Order

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

#Alternatives #Classic #Revolutionary

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Children #People #Childhood

The personal is political.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Political #Feminism #Politics

the 'natural' is not necessarily a 'human' value.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Natural #Humans #Human Values

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

#Love Is #Balance #Complicated

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

#Sex #Culture #Division

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Love Life #Men #Identity

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

#Order #Psychoanalysis #Unimportant

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

#Culture #And Love #Structure

The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF!
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Children #Way #Raises

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Dark #Moon #Views

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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Goal #Wife #Feminism

To be worshiped is not freedom.
-- Shulamith Firestone

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

#Levels #Matter #Problem

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

#Knowing #Males #Tools

...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.
-- Shulamith Firestone

#Differences #Feelings #Realizing

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

#Fantasy #Wells

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

#Selfish #Men #Wish

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

#Honesty #Lying #Men

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

#Generous

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

#Emotional #Culture #Males