Shulamith Firestone

“A mother who undergoes a nine-month pregnancy is likely to feel that the product of all that pain and discomfort 'belongs' to her.”

“...childbirth is at best necessary and tolerable. It is not fun. (Like shitting a pumpkin, a friend of mine told me when I inquired about the Great-Experience-You-Are-Missing.)”

“...new theories and new movements do not develop in a vacuum, they arise to spearhead the necessary social solutions to new problems resulting from contradictions in the environment.”

“It is only after we have integrated the dark side of the moon into our world view that we can begin to talk seriously of universal culture.”

“Whichever it is, he does not question it, not understanding that his own behavior has been or could be a determining influence.”

“The pervasion of image has so deeply altered our very relationships to ourselves that even men have become objects--if never erotic objects.”

“The demands of Sex Privatization contradict the demands of the Beauty Ideal, causing the severe feminine neurosis about personal appearance.”

“If women are differentiated only by superficial physical attributes, men appear more individual and irreplaceable than they really are.”

“All men are selfish, brutal and inconsiderate--and I wish I could find one.”

“Emancipated' women found out that the honesty, generosity, and camaraderie of men was a lie.”

“A fair and generous woman is (at best) respected, but seldom loved.”

“He has let her in not because he genuinely loved her, but only because she played so well into his preconceived fantasies.”

“...he will go to his grave feeling cheated, never realizing that there isn't much difference between one woman and the other, that it is the loving that creates the difference.”

“For the real issue under all the fights about other women is the man is unable to commit himself.”

“Believe me, if all wives whose husbands had affairs left them, we would only have divorced women in this country.”

“But in psychoanalysis there are no unimportant thoughts; there are only thoughts that pretend to be unimportant in order to not be told.”

“Thus her whole identity hangs in the balance of her love life. She is allowed to love herself only if a man finds her worthy of love.”

“...love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.”

“(Male) culture was (and is) parasitical, feeding on the emotional strength of women without reciprocity.”

“Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.”

“Love has never been understood, though it may have been fully experienced, and that experience communicated.”

“It is only the failure of my plots I fear.”

“The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF!”

“To be worshiped is not freedom.”

“a revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.”