Shulamith Firestone died this Tuesday at the age of 67, reports the Times. Back in June, Patrick Deneen penned an “On the Square” about how Firestone’s thought is being rejected by some young women today. It amounts to a sort of intellectual obituary to read alongside the news accounts:
Firestone held that liberation would not be achieved until all forms of reproductive differentiation by sex were eliminated through technology. Thus, she called not only for “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.” Women had to be liberated from the bondage of their bodies in order to achieve equality. [ . . . ]
How does the unquestioned Progressive commitment to human mastery over sex and reproduction fit with Progressive criticism of technological control of the natural world? The very same environmentalist commitments that lead to criticisms of techno-optimism in its application to nature do not appear to extend to human nature, including human reproduction. This juxtaposition is at least puzzling, if not outright contradictory.
This contradiction has been increasingly called out and criticized by a younger generation of Catholic women who—to their great credit—have embraced a consistent “green philosophy” that does not stop at the point of their own fertility.
More here.
September 4th, 2012 | 10:10 pm
A PAINFUL CASE
I think of that title of a short story in Joyce’s DUBLINERS whenever I recall an episode during my time in publishing. In the mid-80s I was an associate editor with a small imprint of William Morrow, Beech Tree Books. One afternoon the editor-in-chief asked me to go to the reception area to meet with a former Morrow author. It was Shulamith Firestone who at that time was apparently living out of a post office box in Manhattan. She sat on the couch surrounded by several shopping bags ( the term “bag lady” was then in vogue). Every six months or so she would show up demanding an audit of her royalty statements. After a couple of visits I realized she believed she was under surveillance by the government because of her writings. I recalled her name. Probably from an “underground” newspaper and I had seen a copies of her book lying about apartments and faculty offices while in college. She talked but never looked at you. She made her request then often rambled on for some time. I sat by her and listened. I don’t know if there was any relation between her radical ideas and her condition. She may well have been simply mentally ill. She seemed abandoned by her more comfortable and tenured colleagues. Then again no matter what people try to do there are people who cannot be helped. I admit that at the time I was inclined to connect her situation with her extreme and incoherent positions in the past. But whatever I thought, mostly I felt sorry for her. And helpless to do anything for her.