Shulamith Firestone

Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist.

Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists.

Within these radical movements, Firestone became known as "the firebrand" and "the fireball" for the fervor and passion she expressed towards the cause.

Firestone participated in activism such as speaking out at The National Conference for New Politics in Chicago.

Also while a member of various feminist groups she participated in actions including picketing a Miss America Contest, organizing a mock funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speak outs, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.

Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Feuerstein was born in Ottawa, Canada on January 7, 1945.

Firestone was the second of six children and the first daughter of parents Kate Weiss, a German Jew who fled the Holocaust, and Sol Feuerstein, a Brooklyn salesman.

Firestone's parents were Orthodox Jews but her funeral would later be held at the Episcopal St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

In April 1945, when Firestone was four months old, her father took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

When she was a child, the family Anglicized their surname to Firestone and moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

Her father had become Orthodox when he was a teenager and, according to Susan Faludi, he exercised tight control over his children, with the zeal of a convert.

One of her sisters, Tirzah Firestone, told Faludi: "My father threw his rage at Shulie."

She railed against the family's sexism; Firestone was expected to make her brother's bed, "because you're a girl", her father told her.

Laya Firestone Seghi, another sister, remembers father and daughter threatening to kill one another.

Firestone's mother was described by her sister, Tirzah, as having a "passive view of femininity that was governed by what she regarded as "what Jewish women do."

Firestone attended Washington University in St. Louis and in 1967 earned a degree in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

While in Chicago she started her first Women's Liberation group, Westside.

Firestone was considered a radical feminist because she believed that women are an oppressed sex-class and that women's liberation can only be achieved through the revolutionary overthrow of the world-patriarchal system.

She drew upon the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, but criticized them for their lack of class-independent analysis of women's downtrodden condition and thus expanded their analysis to women's subordination.

In The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution she states, "Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the organization of nature."

One of her radical beliefs was that women's oppression directly sprung from women's capacity for and vulnerability during pregnancy and childbirth, that men were able to take advantage of.

In The Dialectic of Sex, she argues that we should invest in advanced technology in order to free women from childbirth.

Her views on childbirth shocked other feminists.

Her perspectives in The Dialectic of Sex can also be seen as a precursor to cyberfeminism.

Furthermore, her actions as a part of various feminist groups were seen as radical because they addressed issues around women's lives that were not discussed, especially by women.

Some of these topics include the female orgasm as well as forced abortion drives.

In 1967, at 22, Firestone, along with nearly 2,000 other young activists, attended the National Conference for New Politics in Chicago, held from August 31 to September 1.

Here, Firestone met Jo Freeman and the two bonded over their shared outrage in response to the dismissal of women's issues at the conference.

The two women put forth a resolution that called for equitable marital and property laws and "complete control by women of their own bodies."

The women were told their resolution was not important enough for a floor discussion.

They eventually managed to have their statement added to the end of the agenda, but it was not discussed.

The director, William F. Pepper, refused to recognize any of the women waiting to speak.

In 1970, Firestone authored The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution.

Published in September of that year, the book became an influential feminist text.

The Dialectic of Sex and the ideas presented within it became important in both cyberfeminism and xenofeminism, as her ideas were a precursor for other subjects regarding technology and gender.

In her writing career Firestone also helped write and edit a magazine called Notes.

Her final written text was Airless Spaces written in 1998, which consisted of short stories all relating to her experience with mental illness and schizophrenia.

A documentary called Shulie was created depicting Firestone during her time as a student, and it outlined her journey to becoming a feminist figure and important author.

The original documentary featuring Firestone was never released, but a recreation of it was.

Firestone struggled with schizophrenia after her retirement from activism and suffered from the illness until her death in 2012.