Absolutely classic
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Andrew Vincent in Modern Political Ideologies describes how feminism developed differently in America and Europe largely through the exclusion or marginalisation womens liberation and womens issues within the different political and cultural contexts, suggesting that a more radical and militant brand of feminism emerged in the US than in Europe.
Reading The Dialectic of Sex and comparing and contrasting it with European, particularly continental european feminism like de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, it seems to vindicate his position.
Firestone's book is very, very uncompromising in its analysis of how socialism, freudianism and cultural changes have failed to address what she considers the essential or principal disparity and oppressive relationship, those between men and women and children, which she believes are underlying other forms of oppression, such as social class divisions.
At times its a very challenging read, even for a sympathiser and I sincerely hope that if she were to write the book today (it was written in 1970) the plight of women and children would not be so severely portraited, at least locally, within the northern hemisphere or western world, if not globally.
However the clear sighted and plain spoken account is refreshing too, this is not death by a thousand words, neither is a journalistic, nor crippled by efforts not to alienate potential readership like some more contemporary feminist books which have a feel of apologia about them.
There is also a very coherent and clear message within this book about self-emancipation, womens liberation needs to be womens work and dont expect for any quarter to be given by men. I just know that that is going to construed as man hatred in the worst possible dismissive sense by a lot of people, men and women, but I would hope that no one, least of all men, will be put off by that and will read what is a well written and nicely presented piece of work.
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A good place to start
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I only came across this book while researching an essay on the Women's Movement of the '60s, but decided to read the whole lot, which I'm glad I did! Although it paints a very harsh (but perhaps true) portrait of male-dominated society it was an eye-opener and I learnt a lot about socialist theory and Freudianism as well as feminism. It was the first feminist theory book I read. Firestone spends a long time at the start of her book discussing and critising the theories of Marx and Engels - she doesn't dismiss them but says social revolution can't happen until you go back to the source of original oppression, that of man over woman, and then it is possible to remove the oppression of the bourgeoisie over the workers. I like this idea. In another section of the book she discusses Freudianism and the Oedipus and Electra complexes in detail - a bit tedious and it was hard to see the relevance. She goes on to highlight the oppression of children as well as women - this huge conspiracy against everyone is a little hard to swallow maybe! But then again this book was written c.1970 and although while reading it, it is easy to get angry about the inequalities in the world that Firestone sees, it must be remembered that progress has been made since then. I found it an enjoyable, passionate and interesting introduction to feminism and I'm eager to read more.
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