Shulamith Firestone on Family
Browse 7 quotations attributed to Shulamith Firestone, catalogued under family, with dates where available.
This page displays 7 quotations attributed to Shulamith Firestone and filed under "family" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Shulamith Firestone, entry #98694: "In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours."
Attributed to Shulamith Firestone, entry #46082: "Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression"
7 Quotes by Shulamith Firestone on Family
"In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours."
"Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression"
"Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed."
"Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," (in England( "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches." Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation."
"The ideology of school was the ideology of childhood. It operated on the assumption that children needed"discipline," that they were special creatures who had to be handled in a special way and that to facilitate this they should be corralled in a special place with tie own kind, and with an age group as restricted to their own as possible."
"The myth of childhood has an even greater parallel in the myth of Femininity. Both women and children were considered asexual and thus"purer" than man. Their inferior status was ill-concealed under an elaborate "respect." One didn't discuss serious matters nor did one curse in from of women and children; one didn't openly degrade them, one did it behind their backs."
"Women and children are always mentioned in the same breath . The special tie women have with children is recognized by everyone. I submit, however, that the nature of this bond is no more than shared oppression. And that moreover this oppression i intertwined and mutually reinforcing in such complex ways that we will be an able to speak of the liberation of women without also discussing the liberation of children, and since versa. The heart of woman's oppressing is her childbearing and childrearing roles. And in turn children are defined in relation to this role and are psychologically formed by it; what they become as adults and the sorts of relationships they are able to form determine the society they will ultimately built."