Women, biology, technology: Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, then and now
– a video conversation between Victoria Margree and Claus Halberg
The year 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Shulamith Firestone’s radical feminist manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. With this book, Firestone became a leading while also contested pioneer of the women’s liberation movement of the Seventies. She argued that gender equality could only be achieved by liberating woman’s body from the reproductive role assigned to it by nature in and through pregnancy, birth and lactation. Hence, development of technologies that can move the reproductive process outside the female body entirely must be a feminist priority, according to her.
With abortion laws back on the political agenda, and given recent advances in reproductive technologies that suggest “artificial wombs” could soon be a reality, Firestone’s analysis of women’s reproductive labour has renewed relevance for our present time.
In this video conversation, Victoria Margree – Principal Lecturer and member of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at the University of Brighton; and author of the book Neglected or Misunderstood: The Radical Feminism of Shulamith Firestone – joins Claus Halberg in a conversation about Shulamith Firestone’s legacy. You can watch it here:
The conversation was originally scheduled to take place in person at the Bergen public library on the eve of 22 April 2021. But due to the unfolding pandemic and the restrictions on international travel consequent on it, the event had to be moved to a digital platform. Thanks are due to the Bergen public library for their collaboration on this event and especially for their technical assistance with the recording and postproduction of the video.
Gender, Brain and Health: A cross-disciplinary digital seminar, 20-21 May 2021
Project FEMSAG wrapped up with a two-day cross-disciplinary seminar devoted to understandings of sex and gender in scientific and public discourse on brain and health. Attendance was open to everyone through a Zoom link. Further information about the topic of the seminar, the program, and the people involved, as well as video recordings of the proceedings, are available at the seminar’s official webpage: