The Dialectic of Sex

The landmark manifesto by Shulamith Firestone, now with an introduction by Andrea Long Chu.

A revelation upon its first publication in 1970-when Shulamith Firestone was just twenty-five years old-The Dialectic of Sex was the first book of the women's liberation movement to combine feminist critique and full-scale radical politics. The problem of gender oppression, Firestone argues, organizes our society. It can only be eliminated by restructuring the entire world.

And so the book ranges with fearless, almost reckless ambition across feminist history, romantic love, the exploitation of children, ecology, art, cybernetics, and the liberating possibilities of artificial reproduction. Blazingly ahead of its time, The Dialectic synthesizes Marx, Engels, and Freud with feminist consciousness to insist upon complete reproductive autonomy, the fluidity of sex and gender, and an end to the violence embedded in the so-called private sphere.

Firestone wanted not just freedom from oppression but freedom for something: a new way of organizing human life, desire, and connection. With curiosity, wit, and a dizzying intellectual force, The Dialectic of Sex asks readers to stretch their imaginations, to see that the other side of suffering is not only relief but the possibility of something different.