See: [[Shulamith Firestone and The Dialectic of Sex]] for a brief summary. # 1. The Dialectic of Sex >For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself. In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: not their literal opinions about women – about the condition of women as an oppressed class they know next to nothing, recognizing it only where it overlaps with economics – but rather their analytic _method_. >The class analysis is a beautiful piece of work, but limited: although correct in a linear sense, it does not go deep enough. There is a whole sexual substratum of the historical dialectic that Engels at times dimly perceives, but because he can see sexuality only through an economic filter, reducing everything to that, he is unable to evaluate in its own right. >Engels did observe that the original division of labour was between man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children the labour; and that reproduction of the human species was an important economic system distinct from the means of production. >But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression of women as a class. >Simone de Beauvoir was the only one who came close to – who perhaps has done – the definitive analysis. Her profound work The Second Sex – which appeared as recently as the early fifties to a world convinced that feminism was dead – for the first time attempted to ground feminism in its historical base. Of all feminist theorists De Beauvoir is the most comprehensive and far-reaching, relating feminism to the best ideas in our culture. Beauvoir was over-intellectualizing, thereby missing that the root cause of women's oppression were not abstract ideas of "Otherness" and "Transcendence," but rather the biological differences between the sexes. For example, imagine a village where men and women have different roles due to their physical differences. Over time, a cultural believe develops that men are "naturally" decision-makers and women are supportive. >Perhaps she has overshot her mark: Why postulate a fundamental Hegelian concept of Otherness as the final explanation –and then carefully document the biological and historical circumstances that have pushed the class ‘women’ into such a category – when one has never seriously considered the much simpler and more likely possibility that this fundamental dualism sprang from the sexual division itself? >Unlike economic class, sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equal. Although, as De Beauvoir points out, this difference of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system – the domination of one group by another the reproductive functions of these differences did. The biological family is an inherently unequal power distribution The biological family is characterized by these fundamental, historical facts: 1. Women have been at the mercy of their biology (menstruation, childbirth, nursing, etc.) and therefore dependent on males for survival. 2. Infants have a long developmental period where they are dependent on adults for survival. 3. A basic mother/child interdependency has shaped the psychology of every mature female and infant. 4. The reproductive differences between the sexes led directly to the first division of labor, creating the first class division and resulting caste. Humanity now has the technological means and ethical imperative to transcend "natural" biological differences and the resulting power imbalance between men and women. >Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation. New technology, while potentially liberating, can also be used to reinforce sexist oppression. >Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation. Women must **seize the means of _reproduction_**— including bodily autonomy, human fertility, and the social institutions of child-rearing. >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. **The end goal of feminist revolution must be the elimination of the sex distinction itself**— rendering genital differences irrelevant to social role. (Note: She doesn't mean creating an androgynous species, just erasing the social implications of having different bodies.) >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 world without rigid gender divisions would make human sexuality more fluid and open, rendering categories such as heterosexual or bisexual irrelevant. - Artificial reproduction would (optionally) replace sex-based reproduction, and people of all genders could experience parenthood equally. - Child-rearing would shift to a communal model, replacing the tyranny of the nuclear family. - Remaining differences in physical strength would be compensated for culturally. - Division of labor would be eliminated by advances in technology. >(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 be 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. Firestone updates Engel's definition of historical materialism to include her analysis: >Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction and child care created by these struggles; in the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes \[castes]; and in the first division of labour based on sex which developed into the \[economic-cultural] class system. And updates the analysis of the cultural and economic superstructure, traced back to sex: >All past history \[note that we can now eliminate ‘with the exception of primitive stages’] was the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of organization of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual-reproductive organization of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period.