cated to women through patriarchal means. In The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone argues that “the end goal of the feminist movement must be...not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself” (Firestone 19). Opposingly, Zillah Eisenstein positions herself in favor of ideological and political formulations of sexual relations. All of these women portray many insights into feminist theory, some putting forth a more realistic position, others presenting a weaker analysis of female oppression. Friedan’s article is lacking entirely of any substance - a substance in which her other feminist compatriots provided bountifully. Friedan’s article is set up beside Smith’s article, so as to emphasis Friedan’s weaker arguments. Finally, the strong and weak points made in both Firestone and Eisenstein’s articles will be examined, as well as a comparison of some of the central topics discussed in their articles, most notably the effect of biology on female oppression.

Unlike Friedan, Smith sets up the framework under which female oppression takes place. Smith carefully outlines the structure of female oppression, and further provides ways in which women may understand this structure, in order to overcome the forces of their emotional confinement. What Friedan may have been trying to say, but instead wound up involved in a descriptive flurry, Smith concisely articulated in the early stages of her article; “...sociological...methods...and theories...[have] been based on and built up within the male social universe , even when women have participated in its doing...There is thus a disjunction between how women experience the world and the concepts and theoretical schemes by which society’s self-consciousness is inscribed” (Smith 13). An important point made in Smith’s article warns feminist readers that taking into account women’s experiences, will not create equality. This is unlike Frie

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