|
Shulamith Firestone (born 1945) (also called Shulie Firestone) is a Jewish Canadian-born feminist. She was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism, having been a founding member of the New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. In 1970, she authored The Dialectic of Sex: A Case for Feminist Revolution. Firestone was born in Ottawa, Canada at the end of World War II and is the older sister of Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. She attended Yavney of Telshe Yeshiva, Washington University, and the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a BFA in painting. During her studies at the Art Institute, she was the subject of a documentary film, which was never released. This film was rediscovered, however, in the 1990s by an experimental filmmaker, Elisabeth Subrin, who did frame-for-frame reshoot of the original documentary, having a young actress play the role of Firestone. That version was released in 1997 as Shulie. While living in Chicago, Firestone joined with Jo Freeman to organize the Westside Group (a predecessor of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union). In October 1967, she moved to New York to help start New York Radical Women. By 1969, NYRW had become deeply split between the "politicos" (or socialist feminists) and the radical feminists. Firestone was a central figure in the latter group. When NYRW dissolved, Firestone and Ellen Willis started the radical feminist group Redstockings in February 1969, over disagreements about her leadership style and perceived egotism. Firestone soon left Redstockings (named in reference to the bluestockings, women of intellect in previous centuries) in late 1969 to co-found New York Radical Feminists. Firestone broke with NYRF in 1970, over similar issues that she had had with members of Redstockings. By the time The Dialectic of Sex was published in 1970, Firestone had largely ceased to be politically active, but remained active in writing short fiction, and a collection of her short stories was published as Airless Spaces in 1998. The Dialectic of Sex continues to be an influential and widely quoted feminist work Kathleen Hanna, among others, often cites it as a critical work.
|
