44 quotes
In the Middle Ages there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.
Women have been allowed to achieve individuality only though their appearance.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
There is some irony in the fact that children imagine that parents can do what they want, and parents imagine that children do. "When I grow up..." parallels "Oh to be a child again..."
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
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.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
I believe Freud was talking about something real, though perhaps his ideas, taken literally, lead to absurdity – for his genius was poetic rather than scientific; his ideas are more valuable as metaphors than as literal truths.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
A book on radical feminism that did not deal with love would be a political failure. For love, perhaps even more than childbearing, is the pivot of women's oppression today.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
The beauty ideal. Every society has promoted a certain ideal of beauty over all others. What that ideal is is unimportant, for any ideal leaves the majority out; ideals, by definition, are modelled on rare qualities.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Being unable to love is hell.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Freud captured the imagination of a whole continent and civilization for a good reason. Though on the surface inconsistent, illogical or "way out," his followers, with their cautious logic, their experiments and revisions have nothing comparable to say. Freudianism is so charted so impossible to repudiate because Freud grasped the crucial problem of modern life: Sexuality.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
We can also see the class basis of the emerging concept of child hood in the system of child education that came in along with it. If childhood was only an abstract concept, then the modern school was the institution that built it into reality.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
There are no precedents in history for feminist revolution – there have been women revolutionaries, certainly, but they have been used by male revolutionaries, who seldom gave even lip service to equality for women, let alone to a radical feminist restructuring of society.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
If we had to name the one cultural current that most characterizes America in the twentieth century, it might be the work of Freud and the disciplines that grew out of it.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Marriage is in the same state as the Church: both are becoming functionally defunct, as their preachers go about heralding a revival, eagerly chalking up converts in the day of dread. And just as God has been pronounced dead quite often but has this sneaky way of resurrecting himself, so everyone debunks marriage, yet ends up married.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Bliss in love is seldom the case: for every successful contemporary love experience, for every short period of enrichment, there are ten destructive love experiences, post-love ‘downs’ of much longer duration – often resulting in the destruction of the individual, or at least an emotional cynicism that makes it difficult or impossible ever to love again.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Feminism, in truth, has a cyclical momentum all its own. In the historical interpretation we have espoused, feminism is the inevitable female response to the development of a technology capable of freeing women from the tyranny of their sexual-reproductive roles – both the fundamental biological condition itself, and the sexual class system built upon, and reinforcing, this biological condition.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Constant erotic stimulation of male sexuality coupled with its forbidden release through most normal channels are designed to encourage men to look at women as only things whose resistance to entrance must be overcome.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
The feminist movement is the first to combine effectively the ‘personal’ with the ‘political’. It is developing a new way of relating, a new political style, one that will eventually reconcile the personal – always the feminine prerogative – with the public, with the ‘world outside’, to restore that world to its emotions, and literally to its senses.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Revolutionary feminism is the only radical programme that immediately cracks through to the emotional strata underlying ‘serious’ politics, thus reintegrating the personal with the public, the subjective with the objective, the emotional with the rational – the female principle with the male.
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)