Thank you for this post, it's the best eulogy for Firestone that I've read yet. You zero in on the important point of The Dialectic of Sex so many others have missed-- that Firestone saw the possibility of technology to free women from the tyranny of biology. I would only add that The Dialectic, which I read in the 70s while in college, made me question everything I was ever taught! It was a critique of everything existing and tremendously stimulating. That book, more than anything else, made me the feminist I am today. I too have held onto my copy through the decades.
In the early 70s childless women were often pitied, almost no one considered the pros and cons of childbearing. Firestone blazed the way. I just read a fascinating statistic in a Washington Post opinion by Jessica Valenti: since 1976 the number of women who are not a parent has doubled! One in 5 women today do not have children. We are making informed choices, we are no longer chained to our biology.
Firestone may be gone physically but she lives on in the world of ideas!
Thank you for this post, it's the best eulogy for Firestone that I've read yet. You zero in on the important point of The Dialectic of Sex so many others have missed-- that Firestone saw the possibility of technology to free women from the tyranny of biology. I would only add that The Dialectic, which I read in the 70s while in college, made me question everything I was ever taught! It was a critique of everything existing and tremendously stimulating. That book, more than anything else, made me the feminist I am today. I too have held onto my copy through the decades.
In the early 70s childless women were often pitied, almost no one considered the pros and cons of childbearing. Firestone blazed the way. I just read a fascinating statistic in a Washington Post opinion by Jessica Valenti: since 1976 the number of women who are not a parent has doubled! One in 5 women today do not have children. We are making informed choices, we are no longer chained to our biology.
Firestone may be gone physically but she lives on in the world of ideas!