Shulamith Firestone, groundbreaking radical feminist writer, died at 67.
The Dialectic of Sex is wonderful, if by “wonderful” you mean “batshit science fiction feminist theory,” and I’m pretty sure you do. She theorized that pregnancy was one of the major forces leading to the perpetuation of patriarchy, and therefore the invention of artificial wombs would free women from childbearing and therefore from sexism. Yes, really. She missed her calling as a trippy science fiction author, clearly.
I thought she’d been dead for years, to be honest. It turns out, however, that she’d had severe schizophrenia which, combined with the pressures of fame, led her to withdraw from the world for a solitary life of painting and writing. A tragic ending to a brilliant woman’s life.
(Note: if there are less savory aspects of her life, I’m leaving them out because I don’t know about them, not as an attempt to whitewash or minimize them. Commenters are encouraged to discuss both positive and negative aspects of her life.)