Firestone located sexual difference as the deepest, invisible source of all oppression

Evidence

Firestone gives full voice to the radical feminist analysis of sex-gender oppression as the ultimate and primary oppression from which all others derive, and also as the source of the hierarchical, binary, self-other structure of all oppression. She opens on a powerful, resonant note: ”Sex class is so deep as to be invisible” (1). She expands this observation: ”this is painful: No matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten one’s sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant’s new awareness of racism [note the competitiveness with Black Power]: Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature” (2). — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 872

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attacking hierarchy-producing binaries actually magnified the differences they sought to erase. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 832; Firestone’s technological utopianism prefigured queer theory and cyborg feminism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 879

Broader Connections

• Firestone’s technological utopianism prefigured queer theory and cyborg feminism #expands (0.78) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 879