Top Shulamith Firestone Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Shulamith Firestone Biography

Shulamith Firestone

Shulamith "Shulie" Firestone (January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist. A central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism, Firestone was a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists.

Read about Shulamith Firestone in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Shulamith Firestone Quotes

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.

Giving Up, Organization, Feminist, Culture, Deep, Western

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

Alternative, Alternatives, Classic, Revolutionary, Trap

The personal is political.

Feminism, Personal, Political, Politics

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.

Cases, Common, Interrogator, Jobs, Mean, People

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

Fair, Fairs, Generous, Seldom, Woman

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

Evolved, Given, Given Up, Power, Struggle

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

Achieves, Crack, Cracks, Feminism, Goal, Goals

[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.

Apparatus, Long, Running, Self, Stick, Together

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.

Boycott, Dream, Girl, Liberation, Smile, Women

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

Culture, Discrimination, Division, Economics, Sex

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

Business, Class, Order, Species, Women

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.

Balance, Hangs, Identity, Love Life, Man, Men

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

Culture, Emotional, Male, Males, Parasitical, Women

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.

Begun, Class, Grounds, Humanity, Pragmatic, Sex

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

Levels, Matter, Problem, Reaches

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

Differentiated, Individual, Men, Superficial, Women

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

Fantasies, Fantasy, Let, Loved, Preconceived, Wells

To be worshiped is not freedom.

Freedom, Worshiped

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.

Dark, Moon, Our World, Talk, Universal

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

Order, Pretend, Psychoanalysis, Told, Unimportant

1