The Dialectic of Sex

A manifesto of radical feminism, subtitled The Case for Feminist Revolution and dedicated to Simone de Beauvoir. It sets out to do for sex what Marx and Engels did for economic class. Firestone argues that the deepest division in society is sex class, rooted in biology itself: women's role in pregnancy, childbirth and nursing made them dependent on men and produced the biological family, the model for later forms of domination. Just as workers must seize the means of production, women must seize control of reproduction. After reading Freudianism as a misdirected account of power within the family, she attacks the modern idea of childhood, links racism to the structure of the family, and analyses love and romance as instruments of control. The closing chapter imagines artificial reproduction, shared childrearing and cybernetic automation freeing people from both biology and toil. Critics question its technological optimism and its biological starting point.

It is the boldest statement of early radical feminism, and its questions about reproduction, technology and the family now feed debates on reproductive technology, care and the future of the family.