Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was an American radical feminist writer and activist. She was a prominent figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical feminist organizations: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Within these movements, she was referred to by some as "the firebrand" and "the fireball".
In 1967, she spoke at the National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. In 1968, she organized a symbolic event referred to as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood" and participated in the Miss America protest later that year. She protested sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organized abortion speakouts, and disrupted abortion legislation meetings.
In 1970, Firestone published The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Released in September of that year, the book became an influential text within feminist theory. The ideas presented in The Dialectic of Sex later became relevant to the development of cyberfeminism and xenofeminism, with Firestone’s arguments considered precursors to discussions about technology and gender. In addition to her work as an author, Firestone contributed to and helped edit the feminist magazine Notes.
Following her retirement from activism, Firestone was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition she lived with until her death in 2012. Her final published work was Airless Spaces, released in 1998. The book is a collection of short stories based on her experiences with mental illness.
A documentary titled Shulie was produced that depicted Firestone during her time as a student and traced her trajectory as a feminist thinker and writer. The original documentary, which featured Firestone herself, was never released; however, a recreation of the original was later produced.
Firestone was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on January 7, 1945. She was the second of six children and the first daughter of Kate Weiss, a German Jewish refugee who fled the Holocaust, and Sol Feuerstein, a salesman from Brooklyn. Firestone's parents were Orthodox Jews.
In April 1945, when Firestone was four months old, her father participated in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
During her childhood, the family Anglicized their surname from Feuerstein to Firestone and relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had adopted Orthodox Judaism as a teenager and was described by Susan Faludi as exercising strict control over his children. One of Firestone's sisters, Tirzah Firestone, recalled that their father directed much of his anger toward Shulamith. Shulamith frequently objected to perceived gender-based expectations within the household. For example, when instructed by her father to make her brother's bed, she was told it was "because you're a girl". Another sister, Laya Firestone Seghi, recounted instances of Sol and Shulamith threatening to kill one another.
Firestone's mother was described by Tirzah Firestone as holding a "passive view of femininity" shaped by traditional ideas of Jewish womanhood.
Firestone skipped a year of high school to join her older brother Daniel at the Washington University in St. Louis. She attended English and History courses from 1961 to 1963, then transferred on full scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1967. While studying in Chicago, she lived on the North Side and worked as a mail sorter at the post office. In 1967, she founded in Chicago the first independent women's liberation group since the suffrage movement, named Westside.
In St. Louis, Firestone worked as an organiser with the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, and was briefly involved with the Catholic Worker Movement.
Firestone was identified as a radical feminist due to her belief that women constitute an oppressed sex class and that women's liberation could only be achieved through the revolutionary dismantling of the global patriarchal system. She drew upon the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, while also critiquing them for not offering a class-independent analysis of women's oppression. Firestone expanded their theoretical framework to include the subordination of women as a distinct and foundational category of analysis.
In her seminal 1970 work The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Firestone wrote, "Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the organization of nature". One of the central arguments in the book was that women's oppression originated in their biological capacity for pregnancy and childbirth—a condition she argued enabled male domination. Firestone advocated for the development and use of advanced reproductive technologies to liberate women from childbirth. These views on reproduction and technology were controversial and elicited strong responses from other feminists. Her work has also been cited as a precursor to cyberfeminism.
Firestone's participation in feminist groups was also characterized as radical, particularly because they addressed subjects that were rarely discussed publicly by women at the time. These included topics such as the female orgasm and forced abortion practices.
In 1967, at the age of 22, Firestone attended the National Conference for New Politics in Chicago, which took place from August 31 to September 1, along with approximately 2,000 other young activists. At the conference, she met Jo Freeman, and the two connected over their shared frustration regarding the lack of attention given to women's issues. Together, they submitted a resolution advocating for equitable marital and property laws and for "complete control by women of their own bodies".
The resolution was deemed insufficiently important for floor discussion. Although Firestone and Freeman succeeded in having their statement added to the end of the agenda, it was not addressed during the conference. When several women, including Firestone, attempted to speak in protest, the conference director, William F. Pepper, declined to recognize them. As five women approached the podium to express their objection, Pepper reportedly patted Firestone on the head and said, "Cool down, little girl; we have more important things to talk about than women's problems".
Following the conference, Firestone and Freeman organized a meeting that led to the formation of the first women's liberation group in Chicago. The group was named Westside, based on its meeting location in Freeman's apartment on the West Side of the city.
A few months later, Freeman began publishing a newsletter titled Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement, which was distributed nationally and internationally. The newsletter helped define and popularize the emerging women’s liberation movement. Several members of the Westside group went on to establish additional feminist organizations, including the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.