I was privileged to see her speak on two occasions when she travelled to the UK. Her use of language made her perhaps less accessible than some other feminist academics, but her passion inspired. As did her heroism in standing firm against the college who instead of treasuring her genius sought to stymie her every effort to prioritise women’s education.
The theft of her energies by her college is well documented and this passage demonstrates what feminists mean when they talk about male entitlement. This is it in operation when one egotistical boy pouts, stamps his privileged foot and is facilitated by the male (right wing in this case) establishment to get his own way.
“For thirty-odd years she has hung on by a thread to the academy -- a thread that has now been cut by Boston College, which has suspended her for her long-time policy of teaching only female students in the classroom (and male students in independent study). Whatever one thinks of her policy, the college's tactic is a little too transparently vindictive, as is the role of the Center for Individual Rights (the right-wing backers of the student who brought suit against Daly for discrimination). One does expect, however naïvely, of people who call themselves conservatives that they will have some sense of their own long-term interests. If they had been trying to prove Daly right -- by demonstrating the power of a stripling boy to reduce an old woman to dishonor and poverty with the help of a male-controlled hierarchy -- they could not have chosen a better tactic.”The links at the end of this post give more detail of this disgraceful behaviour by Mary Daly’s employers.
Mary Daly was a feminist theologian. This meant she took her philosophy into the heart of the patriarchy – religion and opened it up to scrutiny using her gift for deconstructing language and uncovering layers of meanings, as this quote shows.
"Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin," she wrote in the opening of "Sin Big," her New Yorker piece. "The word 'sin' is derived from the Indo-European root 'es-,' meaning 'to be.' When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, 'to be' in the fullest sense is 'to sin.' "When asked in one interview about criticism from other feminists she replied:
“Maybe they focus too much on criticizing. You know, it seems to me that if you spend a lot of time criticizing rather than creating, that suggests a lack. I do have critiques of de Beauvoir, there are a lot of ways in which I think she's wrong. And I've written about it, but I don't spend a lot of pages on that; I respect her for what she's done. So I think a lot of that [focus on criticism] is just leaning on me, or on any village guru -- and that's not what I ever want to be -- leaning on me instead of branching out. My intention, say, in writing Gyn/Ecology was to -- truly for it to be a springboard, say for example the Second Passage [Daly's comparative analysis of Indian Suttee, Chinese footbinding, African genital mutilation, European witchburnings, and American gynecology, with an afterword on the influence of Nazi medicine on American gynecological practice]. And instead, You didn't do it perfectly, there's something wrong with what you did about the African genital mutilation, oh go to hell. It's just a springboard! You carry on, when you have specific knowledge.”That answer encapsulates the frustration I feel when I see women sometimes wantonly, ripping into other women’s work. This is the activity of the oppressed not that of (allegedly) empowered equality.
I read Gyn/Ecology The Metaethics of Radical Feminism when I was pregnant and two and a half decades later, I still recall much of it, such is the impact of her writing. It contains a valuable overview of how we got here and reading it, no one male or female can be left untouched by the harm caused to humans by unthinking, belief in the patriarchy. For me, this is the central message of radical feminist thinkers like Mary Daly; patriarchy damages all of us, not just women.
I've not yet read her later books. This is a project I may keep for some future date when I need reinvigorated and reinspired. As Mary said:
“You guard against decay, in general, and stagnation, by moving, by continuing to move.”Mary Daly understood that change is not going to happen overnight and looking ahead to this century she also said;
“Women who are Pirates in a phallocentric society are involved in a complex operation. First, it is necessary to Plunder -- that is, righteously rip off -- gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us. Second, we must Smuggle back to other women our Plundered treasures. In order to invert strategies that will be big and bold enough for the next millennium, it is crucial that women share our experiences: the chances we have taken and the choices that have kept us alive. They are my Pirate's battle cry and wake-up call for women who I want to hear.”Thank you Mary Daly for your work and your courage and your steadfast feminism.
Links I’ve used material from:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/mary_daly_pione.html
http://ncronline.org/news/women/mary-daly-radical-feminist-theologian-dead-81
http://www.crosscurrents.org/madsenf00.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/mary_daly.htm
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