Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone

Shulamith Firestone, date unknown.

Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of second-wave feminism and a founding member of three 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 protesting 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 speakouts, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.

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.

Quotes

Unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family — the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled — the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.

The family structure is the source of psychological, economic and political oppression. --The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

Feminism

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.

Mental Illness

In May 1974, Firestone was called home to St. Louis following the news of her brother Daniel's death. She was told he died in a car crash, but later came to know the true cause of death, a gunshot wound to the chest. Her brother's apparent suicide shook the family's Jewish Orthodox beliefs and sent Shulamith Firestone into a battle with mental illness. Firestone refused to attend her brother's funeral and stated, "Whether murder or suicide, afterlife or no, [his death] contributed to my own growing madness." Following her brother's death, her parents, Sol and Kate Firestone, planned to emigrate to Israel, prompting an argument that ultimately resulted in Shulamith's disavowal of her parents. She stated in a certified letter that she had "dissolved her tie of blood."

In 1987, Shulamith's sister Tirzah stated, "it was when our father died that Shulie went into psychosis. She lost that ballast he somehow provided."

Firestone's condition was officially diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, following which she was repeatedly hospitalized at Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Margaret Fraser, her psychiatrist, stated that she suffered from a particularly severe form of Capgras delusion, which caused her to believe that the people in her life "were hiding behind masks of faces."

Eventually, friends and acquaintances, under the guidance of Fraser, her psychiatrist, began a community effort to watch over and care for Firestone as her mental health deteriorated. When Fraser moved and her confidante Lourdes Cintron fell ill, the community of women disbanded, leaving Firestone to her psychosis and death.

Death

On August 28, 2012, Firestone was found dead in her New York apartment by the building's owner. Alerted by neighbors, who had smelt the foul odor of her decomposing corpse from her apartment, her superintendent peered in through a window from the fire escape and saw her body on the floor. Her landlord, Bob Perl, said she had probably been dead about a month. According to her sister, Laya Firestone Seghi, she died of natural causes, but because of her family's staunchly Orthodox views, an official autopsy was never done to confirm or deny the theory that starvation was the cause of her death. According to reports, she lived in a reclusive fashion and had been in ill physical and mental health.

In a commemorative essay by Susan Faludi published several months after Firestone's death, The New Yorker magazine further detailed the circumstances of her demise, citing her decades-long struggle with schizophrenia—along with speculation of self-induced starvation—as probable contributing factors. A memorial service was arranged in her memory.

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