"Airless Spaces" (1998) Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein;[1] January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012)[2] was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist.

[10] A documentary called Shulie was created depicting Firestone during her time as a student, and it outlined her journey to becoming a feminist figure and important author.

[12] Firestone was the second of six children and the first daughter of parents Kate Weiss, a German Jew who fled the Holocaust, and Sol Feuerstein, a Brooklyn salesman.

"[3] Firestone attended Washington University in St. Louis and in 1967 earned a degree in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

[23] Other actions taken by the group included putting out a journal, and protesting a Miss America contest to address the theme of women's appearance that was prevalent within society.

[3] The speak out was held in March 1969 at Judson Memorial Church[27] and consisted of twelve women of whom Firestone had convinced to share their personal accounts with the issue.

The women also participated in the "Burial of Traditional Womanhood" that took place at the Arlington National Cemetery 1968, in which a funeral was held for a dummy dressed to resemble the common housewife.

[28] Further actions were the releasing of mice in Madison Square Garden during a bridal fair, or the ogling of men on Wall Street to draw attention to sexual harassment.

[31] The Dialectic of Sex was perceived to be a Utopian manifesto dedicated to exploring some of the contradictions present in the United States at the time to an extreme.

[33]Firestone synthesized the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Simone de Beauvoir into a radical feminist theory of politics.

Within her book, Firestone asserts that modern society could not achieve true sex equality until women's biological traits are separated from their identity.

Firestone believed in the importance of recognizing and creating awareness for the history and predecessors of the feminist movement, so she dedicated her book to Simone de Beauvoir.

Gender inequality stems from the patriarchal societal structures imposed upon women because of their bodies, she argued, particularly the physical, social, and psychological disadvantages caused by pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing.

[16] She expanded on Marx's views of class to argue for the existence of the sex-class system, which she believed was created due to biological distinctions associated with reproduction.

Unlike the adherents of cultural feminism of her time, Firestone didn't believe that women could be liberated through asserting their innate biological superiority.

Firestone also insists that to be human is to outgrow nature,[7] saying: "we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on the grounds of its origin in Nature", and "The abolition of the sex class requires that women take control of the means of reproduction,"[36] like the Marxist view that the proletariat must seize the means of production.

She regarded pregnancy and childbirth as "barbaric" (a friend of hers compared labor to "shitting a pumpkin") and the nuclear family as a key source of women's oppression.

She urged the emergence of a new type of artificial reproduction, referred to as the "bottled baby," through which women could be freed of the hindrance of childbirth, just as men are.

[37] She argued that children are hindered in their abilities to develop because of their education, predetermined positions in the social hierarchy, and "lesser importance" in comparison to the adult figures in their lives.

This dependency on maternal figures makes the child(ren) more susceptible to physical abuse and deprives them of the opportunity to work towards being economically independent and possess or feed into sexual urges.

Angela Davis criticized the book for viewing all forms of exploitation and oppression as extensions of sexism and thereby "[transposing] the Oedipus Complex into racial terms".

From 1978 to 1980, she took part in the Cultural Council Foundation CETA Artists Project in New York City, where she taught art workshops at Arthur Kill State Prison For Men, and created a series of murals.

[41][42] Inspired by personal experience, this work highlights the lives and struggles of various characters in New York City battling with mental illness and poverty.

"Airless Spaces" is said to be a reflection of the marginalization Firestone experienced resulting from her radical feminist ideals and lifestyle, as well as the hardships of individuals to escape from the dehumanizing aspects of the mental health field.

Dr. Margaret Fraser, her psychiatrist, stated that she suffered from a particularly severe form of Capgras delusion, which caused her to believe that the people in her life "were hiding behind masks of faces.

"[3] Eventually, friends and acquaintances, under the guidance of Fraser, her psychiatrist, began a community effort to watch over and care for Firestone as her mental health deteriorated.

When Fraser moved and her confidante Lourdes Cintron fell ill, the community of women disbanded, leaving Firestone to her psychosis and death.

Alerted by neighbors, who had smelt the foul odor of her decomposing corpse from her apartment, her superintendent peered in through a window from the fire escape and saw her body on the floor.

[2][10] In a commemorative essay by Susan Faludi published several months after Firestone's death, The New Yorker magazine further detailed the circumstances of her demise, citing her decades-long struggle with schizophrenia—along with speculation of self-induced starvation—as probable contributing factors.

Helen Hester, one of the members who helped write The Xenofeminism Manifesto, related her contributions to the ideas on feminism and technology presented by Firestone.