Prelude to a Radical Feminist
"Shulie": a short documentary
“Shulie” is a profile of art student Shulamith Firestone. She is a painter and photographer about to graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The documentary was made by a group of Northwestern University students, Jerry Blumenthal, Sheppard Ferguson, James Leahy, and Alan Rettig, in 1967. It is a typical artist profile – it follows the subject in her daily life, and as she creates. Firestone gives her thoughts on her work and challenging living situation. She wants to make her mark as an artist in the world. At first this might seem like just another short artist profile, but it is an intimate look at an important feminist right before her revolutionary transformation.
Shulamith Firestone was a Canadian-American writer and activist. She was most active in the 1970s when she wrote prolifically and was one of the leaders of the New York Radical Feminists (NYRF). She is best known for her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, which was a political text that called for major changes to society to ensure equality. After a falling out with the NYRF, Firestone suffered a serious mental health crisis. She was institutionalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia. For years she battled with severe mental illness until her death in 2012. Tragically, several other feminist leaders from that time also descended into poverty or mental illness.1
Above is the 1967 documentary “Shulie” in its entirety. It is 27 minutes.
“Shulie” provides a glimpse into the life and experiences that may have shaped some of Firestone’s most notable ideas. Firestone commented on unfair labor practices at work and how dehumanizing modern work could be. This is well illustrated in the stark wide shots of the bustling yet grey dreary city and Firestone’s mundane work at the post office. Firestone would later argue that the nuclear family helped support class oppression.2 One of the most notable scenes is when an all-male faculty panel critiques Firestone’s paintings and photographs. They are not mean or overly critical, but seem not to understand Firestone’s art at all. There is a chapter in The Dialectic of Sex that examines how art and culture are determined and shaped by the male gaze.3
For many years this documentary was impossible to find and almost completely unknown. It received new attention when filmmaker Elisabeth Subrin decided to recreate the entire documentary shot for shot. Subrin’s “Shulie” came out in 1997 and is impressive in its extreme attention to detail. The actor playing Firestone is natural and convincing. But when I watched the 1967 and 1997 films back-to-back, Subrin’s version feels like a soulless imitation. The failure of the copy is most evident in the scene in which an all-male faculty panel is critiquing Firestone’s paintings. In the 1967 version, this scene is subtle and riveting as the tension between Firestone and the faculty is evident. In the 1997 version some of the faculty actors are a bit over the top, and here it is most apparent that we are not witnessing “real life.”
In my opinion, it was a missed opportunity to engage more fully with Firestone’s ideas and complicated biography. Critics and Subrin say it is a commentary on how little has changed for women since the 1960s.4 That is an arguable critique, but reenactments could have been used in a much more creative and bold way to engage with the present. Why not show Firestone as a fully matured and politically active woman at the height of her political strength? There are a few brief written narrations (not in the 1967 version) that explain Firestone’s career and contributions to the feminist movement, but they are not sufficient. Subrin’s piece is notable for its artistry, but it is cold and academic.
After viewing both versions, I was an interested to read some of Firestone’s works, starting with The Dialectic of Sex. It is very much steeped in American culture and politics of the 1960s, but I still found it to be a riveting book with ideas relevant to today. Unlike other theory books, it is smart but not bogged down in academic jargon or pretentiousness. Some of the ideas that stood out to me were Firestone’s critiques of the societal role of families and how children are raised. She advocated that children be raised in a gender-neutral way in order to lead to greater equality in all public and private spaces. Firestone argues against the nuclear family and instead for small groups raising children collectively.5 The collective and public upbringing of children has been embraced by many utopian works of literature—most notably in Plato’s Republic and B.F. Skinner’s Walden II—the idea being that children are brought up in a strong community and their lives are not dramatically shaped by the good or bad quality of their parents.
Firestone’s most prominent argument is that equality will not be possible until women are no longer vessels for reproduction. This does not simply mean access to birth control and abortion. She argues more radically that all human births could be done artificially. Carrying a child for nine months and giving birth is extremely exhausting, painful, and sometimes life-threatening. Artificial child birth would equalize the creation of children – a woman would not have to sacrifice her body for nine months and then risk her life to give birth.6 If this became an acceptable practice today, then it would make it much easier for same-sex couples and those struggling with infertility to have children. If it were widely available to the population, then it would remove a huge physical and emotional burden from those who would otherwise have to work full time throughout their entire pregnancy.
The idea of babies being made in a lab may conjure images of sci-fi dystopias like Brave New World, and of course there are ethical risks whenever science and capitalism mix. But I would argue that the current state of affairs is far more dystopian. It is 2024 and women across the globe still live under oppressive regimes that severely restrict their existence, such as in Iran and Afghanistan. Women in several African countries still do not have adequate access to birth control and education. In the United States abortion rights are under threat and currently determined by individual states. In rich democracies with declining birth rates there has been an obnoxious avalanche of think pieces lamenting population decline and trying to pressure women to reproduce. The global trend has been that the more educated women are, the less likely they are to have children. This trend is only likely to continue, even if policies are put in place to help families economically.7
Women in the United States have made great strides in education and financial independence, but this has not been without backlash. The internet is a cesspool of hateful attacks against women in every profession. Threats and sexist insults that used to be just from “the trolls” are now acceptable in the mainstream. Trump’s open misogyny and sexual assault charges were not seen as disqualifying. The campaign loved insulting and talking down to women. Harris almost never mentioned her race and gender, but the Trump campaign brought them up constantly to denigrate her intelligence and qualifications.
Voters knew all about Trump’s actions and amoral behavior, and yet voted for him anyways. Many used the bad economy to justify their choice. There is no denying the economy is bad and has been unfair to the working class for years. But in the aftermath of the far more widespread recession of 2007-2009, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, American voters did not elect a strongman or conservative. There is no nationwide survey that can be conducted to figure out if sexism played a part in voters’ minds. But now two exceptionally qualified women have both lost to one of the most hateful and fascist candidates ever to run for president. In 1970 Firestone argued that “men can’t love,” because our society made them incapable of it. Men would never give up power for the sake of love.8 I don’t share this opinion of men, but I think that some people will always choose power above all else.
Susan Faludi, “Death of a Revolutionary,” The New Yorker, April 15, 2013, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/15/death-of-a-revolutionary. (I highly recommend reading this article as it gives a short and compelling biography of Firestone, as well as a good overview of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 88 – 91.
Firestone, 139 – 143.
Elisabeth Subrin, “Trashing Shulie: Remnants from Some Abandoned Feminist History,” 2006, accessed November 14, 2024, https://elisabethsubrin.com/Trashing-Shulie.
Firestone, 187 – 189, 207 – 209.
Firestone, 182 – 185.
Christina Caron, “Kids? A Growing Number of Americans, say ‘No Thanks,’ The New York Times, July 25, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/well/mind/child-free-adults-pew-study.html.
Firestone, 121.