Shulamith Firestone Quotes

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.

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.

(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.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.