#shulamithfirestone

[globalizinggendersexuality]

So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility - the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality Freud's 'polymorphous perversity' - would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would born to both sexes equally, or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended by the elimination of labour altogether (through cybernetics). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex In "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.", Scott briefly mentions the work of Firestone, before dismissing it, along with related approaches, as overly concerned with physical difference. I personally find that Firestone's views continue to be highly useful and relevant today though, as encapsulated in this particularly striking quote. If there's anything I disagree with Scott about, it's what seems to be her ideological distancing from the role biology (as opposed to society/culture) plays in determining gender, and I think for all the issues with essentialism, the role of biology cannot be rejected outright, especially as we go on to examine transgender/transsexual politics within Iran. - TZX

[coop-r]

The granting of the vote to the suffrage movement killed the Woman's Rights Movement. Though the antifeminist forces appeared to give in, they did so in name only. They never lost. By the time the vote was granted, the long channeling of feminist energies into the limited goal of suffrage - seen initially as only one step to political power - had thoroughly depleted the Woman's Rights Movement. The monster Ballot had swallowed everything else. Three generations had elapsed from the time of the inception of the Woman's Rights Movement; the master-planners all were dead. The women who later joined the feminist movement to work for the single issue of the vote had never had time to develop a broader consciousness: by then they had forgotten what the vote was for. The oppression had had its way

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex.