The case for the feminist revolution

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 10

The case for the feminist revolution

The Dialectic Of Sex: the case for the feminist revolution. By Shulamith Firestone. Jonathan Cape. 274 pp. Still in its early stages in New Zealand, the Women’s Liberation Movement is a quickly-growing phenomenon, in spite of the antipathy, derision and scorn, with which some regard it. Shulamith Firestone, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and is the editor of “Notes,” a journal of radical feminism, explains in “The Dialectic of Sex” the history of, necessity for, and ideals behind the feminist revolution in America, as she sees it She concludes with a radical programme for social reform which is utopian in its ideology and thoroughly impracticable, mainly because it is so radical, with the sex-class system, the deepest source of social and cultural and social* disease, in the author’s view, eradicated.

After a comparatively detailed history of the more significant events in the feminist revolution, mainly in America, up to the time of the present-day “Women’s Lib.,” Miss Firestone examines various Freudian theories which had a direct bearing on the revolution, because, she says, Freud grasped the crucial problem of sexuality. “Freudianism and Feminism grew from the same soil.” She interprets Freud’s theories of the Oedipus complex 'in terms of power, and analyses the Electra complex, its female counterpart, concluding that, “like all Freud's theories about women, it terms the female only as a negative male.” The heart of women’s oppression, according to Miss Firestone, is their child-bearing role, which causes the two to be always mentioned together: women and children, the bond being a shared oppression, and, she contends, an entirely unnecessary one.

In a chapter calling for the elimination of childhood, Miss Firestone analyses the position of children in society. She says that children are now a different species, not just in age but in kind, from adults, who relegate to children a language, literature and behaviour all of their own. This, she claims, is a myth, with a great parallel in femininity, with inferior status, not to curse or be cursed in front of, fancy and nonfunctional clothing, and both being

considered mentally deficient, while being set on a pedestal of' adoration. Thus the physical difference has been enlarged culturally through dress, education, manners and activity, and at the same time the woman and child must appear to like this oppression, ■ to smile sweetly when a pass is made at a woman or when an aunt gurgles over a child. The conclusion Miss Firestone draws is that children no , more belong to women than anyone else in responsibility, and that it is only because of their shared sufferings , that any empathy between them is , felt. i Men are deemed by -her as being incapable of true love,* except of a projection of themselvs, whereas , women cling traditionally to men for , love, because it has always been their only means of security and protection. , However, women’s greatest weapon is j sex, and it is recognised that she uses ] this factor, either as a threat or a promise, whenever she wants something, believing that the man needs it more than she does. Romance is ; defined as love corrupted by the power • complex, imposed by the sex-class 1 system and serving only to reinforce 1 that system. Its main component • according to Miss Firestone, is 1 eroticism, which is related to the sexual exploitation of women, and J eventually women realise that they are indistinguishable from other women in 1 men’s eyes. This, says Miss Firestone, is hardly surprising when all women conform to the particular beauty ideal of the moment, all dieting and buying clothes fervently and furiously, relying on artificial methods to squeeze itito the ideal, which only changes once the majority have managed to conform. All tire problems and issues of our time are somewhat related by Miss Firestone to the feminist revolution. Ecology, the population explosion, arts versus science, artificial insemination and test tube babies, and cybernation. Machines, she says, will eventually act as the perfect equaliser, when neither male nor female will have to be the breadwinner, and when there will be a new leisure-based society, with no need to distinguish between the sexes, although she does admit that nature did produce a fundamental inequality in that half the human race has to produce the children .of all of it. But scientific advances, in the development of test

tube babies and man-made placentas, will overcome this, she says. Marriage is seen as being functionally defunct. Miss Firestone’s utopia envisages a society based on die “household,” or group marriages, ■ where a certain number of people legally agree to live together in a family unit for a certain number of years, and where responsibility for bringing up children lies with all me adults in that community, and the housework is shared equally, although this would probably be eliminated by cybernation. "Humanity’s double curse when it ate the Apple of Knowledge, that man would toil by the sweat of his brow in order to live, and woman would bear children in pain and travail, can now be undone through man’s very efforts in toil. We now have the knowledge to create a paradise on earth anew. The alternative is our own suicide through that knowledge,” concludes Miss Firestone. Conceived of a mind that is perhaps too categorical, too ready to put an—"ism” onto anything, “Dialectic of Sex” is a first class exposition of the feminist revolution, but whether it presents the case for one can only be decided by each reader. Miss Firestone’s case would seem to be more for the intellectual woman who has leamt to question, not for the millions of women who are perfectly happy with their child-rearing "subservient” role.