Sarah Franklin,
"Transbiology: A Feminist Cultural Account of Being After IVF"
(page 4 of 8)
Revolutionary manifestos rely on hyperbole and foreshortening, as
well as cheek and verve, and Firestone's 245-page instruction manual for
the overthrow of sexual difference, racial discrimination, class
inequality, environmental degradation, marriage, aging, disease,
monogamy, boredom, religion, culture, neurosis, depression and the
nation state was clearly ambitious. The ending paragraph of the book,
which is among its least convincing, promises no less than "paradise on
earth." Still, in the 21-year-old Firestone's own words it was only "a
very rough plan" intended to "make the general direction of a
feminist revolution more vivid."[21]
Firestone was not so simplistic a technological determinist as many
have claimed, and she didn't promise that IVF would liberate women.
Indeed of all her arguments in The Dialectic of Sex her views on
science and technology were probably least representative of 70s
feminism. In contrast to many of her contemporaries, it was Firestone's
utopian faith in technological progress that was unusual.
In her advocacy of "the benefits of modern embryology", Firestone had
more in common with the revolutionary socialist biologists, geneticists
and embryologists who invented biofuturism in the 1920s and 1930s,
particularly in the UK, where the terms 'ectogenesis', 'cloning,' and
'transhumanism' were invented. At that time a progressive political and
intellectual tradition of literature, science, and cinema united figures
such as H.G. Wells, Aldous and Julian Huxley, Charlotte and J.B.S.
('Jack') Haldane, Naomi Mitchison, Vera Brittain, and John Desmond
Bernal—many of whom were members of the Communist Party and espoused the same
methods, such as ectogenesis, as Firestone. At the heart of this
tradition was the utopian aspiration to take control of evolution
through technology—a project that has often been invoked as part of
progressive causes, and is evident in both the birth control and radical
ecology movements, as well as having played a major role in many
revolutionary governments, including those of China, Cuba and the Soviet
Union.
For Firestone, the importance of technology to assist women ingaining
control over their reproduction was uncontroversial. Since the origin of
sex distinction is "biology itself—procreation," its elimination
requires technological control of the means of reproduction in order for
the tyranny of biology over women to end:
Just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires
the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and ... their seizure of the
means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes
requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the control of
reproduction. [This will require] not only the full restoration to women
of ownership of their own bodies but also their (temporary) seizure of
control of human fertility—the new population biology as well as all
the social institutions of childbearing and childrearing. And just as
the end goal of the socialist revolution was not only the elimination of
the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction
itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of
the first feminist movement, not only the elimination of male privilege
but of the sex distinction itself.[22]
The "new population biology" referred to by Firestone in this
passage, and elsewhere in her book, refers to the new sciences of
reproductive endocrinology, reproductive physiology, and reproductive
biology that all emerged during the first half of the 20th century, and
the immediate post-war period. To Firestone, the pace of developments in
the life sciences, and in particular, understandings of the reproductive
process, was both breathtaking and full of promise:
Now, in 1970, we are experiencing a major scientific
breakthrough. The new physics, relativity, and the astro-physical
theories of contemporary science had already been realized by the first
part of this century. Now, in the latter part, we are arriving, with the
help of the electron microscope and other new tools, at similar
achievements in biology, biochemistry, and all the life sciences.
Important discoveries are made yearly ... of the magnitude of DNA ... or the
origins of life. Full mastery of the reproductive process is in sight,
and there has been significant advance in understanding the basic life
and death process. The nature of aging and growth, sleep and
hibernation, the chemical functioning of the brain and the development
of consciousness and memory are all beginning to be understood in their
entirety. This acceleration promises to continue for another century, or
however long it takes to understand the goal of Empiricism: total
understanding of the laws of nature.[23]
In the contemporary era of stem cells, cloning, genetic screening,
and transgenic organisms, as well as tissue engineering and regenerative
medicine, Firestone's references to major scientific breakthroughs and
significant advances in the understandings of life and death, aging and
disease, and the functioning of the brain sound remarkably familiar.
Also familiar in her celebration of scientific progress is the evocation
of hope, aspiration, and ethical purpose. She thus returns us to the
recurring challenge to feminism on the question of technology—what
kind of science and technology do feminists want or desire?—as well as
to the perennial matrix of this question for feminists, which is
reproductive technology.
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