Currently absolutely, embarrassingly, obsessed with Shulamith Firestone. A radical feminist who wrote a book came the Dialectic of Sex in 1970. She was 24 or 25.
She wrote it fast and, I feel, kind of in a mania. The fact that it's a rush job really shows in her structure and her research. But it's also glorious. It's maximalist, she calls for "a sexual revolution much larger than - inclusive of - a socialist one to truly eradicate all class systems". She set out to develop a Marxism for Sex that would expand the material analysis of class back to the animal kingdom.
Then she yelled at walls for a long time. Then she didn't write anything for two decades. Then she wrote about her nervous breakdown. Then she didn't wrote anything for two decades. Then she starved to death in her apartment and nobody discovered her body for a long while
Then her family was interested in what happened to her body suddenly, and the radical feminist community was suddenly interested in making sure she got the respect she deserved. I can't even blame them for that it sounds like she was probably a very difficult person.
I keep reading about her hoping the next line will be "well done you've read enough that you've clipped into the timeline where someone helped, or she found a way to help herself." She was a family abolitionist and a strong believer in radical activism and I want that world where she didn't die alone.
There's that essay going around today - dump your puppygirl. You don't have to read it. I apparently did because I've been cursed with a fascination with problematic but funny feminist writers. It's from the girl who used a fake FBI letter to pretend to be targeted by the government - Tara Knight. I wonder if Shulamith would have been a shitposter in the modern world. I wonder how many times she'd have been the main character on social media for a few days.
Was it better for her that she wrote so little? If the Dialectic of Sex was written now would it just be ephemeral Content, for the churn of social media, casting no shadow? How essential was it that she could tie herself to being physically present for formative moments in the movement? Can we still have formative moments in the movement?
The thing I keep coming back to is Shulamith believed the revolution would involve 51% of the population "a revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs". As transfeminists we are stuck with less than 1% of the population that is usually easily discarded. We are alone in a way she wasn't. And Shulamith Firestone died of starvation and nobody found her body for days. I think about this every single day.
I hope all problematic feminist theorists get a sandwich when they need it, and that all puppygirls get love. Gods, all we have is each other.
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