“I urge you to Sin... But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism—or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism—which are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!"
Never anything but controversial, Mary Daly, author of works from 1968’s The Church and the Second Sex through the recent Amazon Grace, changed the worldviews of women and men for decades, challenging readers and listeners (and institutions) to imagine what she called an “ontological revolution” rooted in women experiencing (and becoming) themSelves.
Denied tenure (eventually overturned) and promotion to full professor, and forced into retirement, the longtime Boston College professor’s career spanned world transformations of Roman Catholicism, higher education, and American culture’s treatment of women. Beginning with her degrees from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she was the first woman to receive a theological degree, through her witnessing of the debate of Vatican II, her authorship of transformational philosophical reflection, her “Exodus” of the Harvard chapel (and of Catholicism) in the name of women, and her involvement in the formation of key areas of scholarly inquiry (including the Women and Religion section of the American Academy of Religion), Mary Daly was an agent of change. Self-identified as a revolutionary and a radical, branded a conservative essentialist or racist by others, her works of philosophical, theological, and genre-bending scholarship affected generations of women.
For Daly, women, (W)omen—that’s what she was all about. And, even more radically, she was about women loving women, lesbians with a capital L, meaning not those of a certain sexual orientation embedded within patriarchy, but those who truly loved themSelves. For Daly, as she eventually came to see it, debates between Jungianism and Freudianism, between Marxism and Nazism, Christianity and Judaism or Buddhism, were all what Freud (whose work she also drew on) would have called “the narcissism of small differences.” All were, for her, sects within the grand (and tragic) religion of patriarchy.
To move beyond patriarchy—spiraling out and sparking real connection between and among (W)omen, was ontological (or what she called a radical elemental) feminism. Sometimes construed as linguistic tomfoolery (as in her famous feminist re-visioning of the dictionary, her Wickedary), with tales of backgrounds and foregrounds, of worlds and wonders beyond the moon, Daly’s work sought to demystify patriarchal worldviews and structures, indeed, patriarchal makings of selves—and to identify and reach anOther option. Whether rendered through the metaphor of another place, or of another time, Daly’s imaginative and philosophical work pushed beyond.
Others will memorialize her much better than I. For me, it is enough to recall the sight of her plaid flannel shirt as she read (in a much more humorous tone than I had anticipated) from her works across the years. Or, to think of the respondents who berated Daly in responding to an essay I wrote on her (entitled “Rejected, Reclaimed, Renamed: Mary Daly on Religion and Psychology”). Their very venom—accompanied by the flinging around of words like necrophiliac, insane, and paranoid in what was ostensibly a scholarly journal—taught me a crucial lesson about the narrowness engendered by fear.
While I did not know it when I exited the church in which I was raised (I had never heard of Daly’s already famous exodus from the Harvard chapel), the symbolic power of that exit carried weight and remains a not uncomplicated reminder of hope emerging from refusal. Like her, I find the phrase Christian feminist oxymoronic; and like her, I rest in the paradoxical awareness that many others also intent on building an ontological revolution do not agree. Perhaps most paradoxically, when I think of her power, I think not of her own refusal to teach men (and her emphasis that she simply was not interested in men; she cared about women) but of a seminar of three women and three men I taught some years ago about her work. I can hear their voices as they struggled with those ideas, and the hope they each expressed in doing so.
Citing important foremothers like Valerie Saiving in her own early work, Daly’s own intellectual power drew upon a complex array of thinkers from Tillich and de Beauvoir to Freud and Thomas Szasz. Her creativity lay in resisting, transforming, and imagining/inventing/discovering a new world and new way of being. Her work reminds us of the central place of intellectual dissent, and anger, in any envisioning or enacting of a more equitable world for women.
Her work reminds us, too, that misogyny is real (and not merely carried by men), and that the hope of a world beyond patriarchy remains our responsibility. Thus, her passing reminds us all that we must not let the radical potential of feminism—or of Lesbianism—die.
Mary Daly was a performance artist. I watched her at work in Portland, Oregon during the seventies. She portrayed an inversion of the chauvinists who ran synagogues, churches, and mosques. She did this with great skill and humor.
She utterly delighted me, but she was absolutely serious.
I can understand and empathize with what she meant to you, but if you step back and consider do you really believe that radical separatists contribute anything positive to change? Where, apart from the tolerant shelter of campuses, is the evidence of that? Not in the church, nor in society as a whole, where "feminism" has come to be scorned precisely because of people like Mary Daly.
It seems to me that she was one of those people who act out personal drama on the canvas of public policy. It can be entertaining, even spellbinding for those close by, but it is ultimately neither admirable nor constructive.
Regards,
Clay Farris Naff
Professor Daly did not hate men. She hated patriarchy. She also would work one-on-one with male students to cover material in her advanced seminars. She was dramatic, but behind the theater was profound insight and solid scholarship.
Daly and Mark C Taylor were the only theologians I LOVED reading for my TRS degree. Anyone who has the chutzpah to accuse Ghandi of "psychic rape", backed up by references to Ghandi's own autobiographical writings, is my kind of theologian! Bless you, Mary Daly.
So I don't have to wait 'til I find my Mary Daly section of books packed away in storage, could you be a little more specific in your citation re: Gandhi? Ever since I saw the movie "GANDHI" and the short scenes with his wife, I've wondered if anyone critiqued the Mahatma for his abuse of his spouse...
Thank you for your consideration.
Gandhi did abuse his spouse during his young immature years and later when matured and developed his 'conscience' regretted it a lot which he did mention orally as well as in his writings. Even mentioning it in his autobiography can be seen as a a kind of confession. On realizing this tendency of men to objectify women, he began addressing his own wife as a 'mother' later in his life. (The reason why Hinduism calls the Goddesses as 'mothers' and emphasizes the 'mother' form of a woman is to teach men to look up to woman with respect not view her as a sexual object). I have also read somebody (do not remember the name) who spent many years with him that, sometimes in his privacy he used to dress like a woman. On being asked about why he did that he had answered that he was trying to 'experience' and 'feel' as a woman which was according to him a kind of therapy to learn not to look upon woman as an 'object.' Though I do not agree to Mary Daly's all ideas, particularly his views on Indian 'Sati, I do think she has contributed substantially to the Western Feminism. It is indeed a loss of a strong feminist voice for the global feminist struggle.
Dr. Henking, I came to know Mary Daly very well during her final struggle with Boston College in 1999, and she would have loved your tribute to her. She was an incredibly complicated, challenging, and brilliant thinker who liked nothing more than to upset the apple cart -- in part so that we could all finally SEE and NAME the apples, but also in part because she found upsetting applecarts so much fun! She took women's lives seriously (a way of life and thinking that remains profoundly radical even today) and truly had the courage of her convictions, even though these things made her life very difficult. I've read many blogs and articles about her since learning of her death on Monday, and in yours I recognize the Mary Daly I knew. Thanks.
This was really a very thoughtful piece, and so powerful. Mary Daly was just the most inspiring and intellectually challenging feminist I ever encountered. She was a true lover of women.
Someone above mentioned her condemnation of Gandhi... Daly could cut to the core the true patriarchs. Gandhi had a traditional Hindu "practice" of sleeping with nude young girls. Yes, that's right he did this. Today, this would be called child sexual abuse, or pedofilia. She would uncover the truth of "great men," and I loved her for doing this. Nothing got by Mary Daly, and I so loved that when she did something she meant it. I can't think of another feminist who so perfectly lived the life of the intellectual lesbian. Because of her inspiration and courage, I too walked out of the church, and went to Europe, and threw my mind farther than I ever dreamt it could go.
She not only had a brilliant mind, she lived it and made you want to become the most well read person on earth. Her books were visionary and also practical. I've used her concepts to decode and defeat patriarchal oppression in my daily life too. She revealed all, and paid a high price for everything. She did not compromise, and she was THE Lesbian with a capital L. To have met personally a great philosopher and leader by example only happens once in a lifetime, and a lesbian at that!
Did Professor Daly go too far? Yes, she did. As someone told me, Daly thought that sin came with Y-chromosomes, when sin is equal opportunity.
If Gandhi's sleeping with young nude girls can be called 'child abuse' or pedofilia, what can we say about the young girls who accepted it. They were women who participated actively in the freedom struggle and definitely were not 'dumb' and one of the two girls, who used to be on Gandhi's either side was a 'European.'(probably her Indian name was Meera). Did they lack courage to reject such 'indecent proposal? or were they 'enjoying their relation with one of the great men of their time? It always takes two to commit a 'sin.'
Seriously? You're going to say it's probably the fault of the girls for sexual abuse? Way to victim-blame. If they were members of a movement that Gandhi was a leader in, there's a serious power dynamic that's being abused. It's like blaming a middle school student for a teacher's inappropriate actions. I don't know laws in India, but there could also be an issue of consent - minors can't legally consent to sexual activity, especially with an older person.
And no, it does not always take two to sin. I'm incredibly appalled at your suggestions. And (to bring it back around to the article), I think Mary Daly would have been as well. Probably would have used more forceful words than I did, also.
I remember when I first read Mary Daly's BEYOND GOD THE FATHER. I was very inspired by this. In some of her following books, she exposed the anti-woman crimes of genital mutilation and foot-binding.
However, as time went on, it seems that she became more and more prejudiced against men; she seemed to believe that men are naturally more violent and must be controlled. And then just recently, I found out that she was the long-term partner of a very trans-phobic individual, Janice Raymond.
Janice Raymond wrote a book, THE TRANSEXUAL EMPIRE. In this book, Raymond posited the theory that male-to-female transexuals were spies trying to invade "womanspace." Most of this book expounds this theory and of course is centered on men. In a few paragraphs, she dismisses female-to-male transexuals as being brainwashed by male privilege.
As I recall, Mary Daly basically held the same trans-phobic views. Mary Daly was very important to feminism in many ways. But we also have to remember some of her (what I consider) less-than-feminist views.
Why is objecting to formerly male people entering female space transphobic? Why would former men want to invade radical lesbian territory or destroy the work of a visionary feminist? Because they can that's why.
Why the slander of Mary Daly, when male greats, even when they kill women, are lauded as great? When women celebrate women, when women put other women first, that is transphobic because? That is simply a classic diversionary tactic. The road to freedom is long and hard for women, and men will continue to undermine the freedom fighters.
It's transphobic because, like the religious funadmentalists, Mary Daly seems to believe in the primacy of "correct" body parts.
The question is: what is "female space?" Is female space reserved for those who were born with the "correct" body parts? Does it all depend upon body parts? Or does it depend more on the spirit?
Many years ago, I used to be a bit trans-phobic myself. I used to believe that men had the privilege, even of being changed to women. However, I have learned through the years that transgender people who change from men to women are not men as such, according to their souls and their spirits. It's the same with trangender people who change from women into men. Would anti-transgender "radical lesbian feminists" believe that it would be OK for a female-to-male trans-person to come into "womanspace?" Would they try to do what religious fundamentalists do and try to "cure" this person of an "affliction?" Would they try and make this person into an "ex-transgender?"
Does it truly depend upon matters of physical body parts, or does it depend upon the spirit and the soul?
Unfortunately, it is not about changing body parts, it also is about how you were raised.
In every lesbian group I have ever been involved with, transwomen come in, and claim to be lesbians. Then they dominte the group, often times bringing a kind of purient attitude toward the group. This is problematic because it means an already underserved population (young lesbians just coming out) has to deal with people who still have penis and still act like men. That is the problem. Most straight women don't know this, because they don't bear the brunt of this. It's a real issue, and I do believe that lesbians have the right to exclude groups from their spaces. If this is transphobic so be it, I'm concerned with the empowerment of lesbians, I am not concerned with people who were raised as boys. There are plenty of other people who will serve former men. It's not about body parts, it's about in incredible male entitlement that can't be changed with a surgerical procedure unfortunately. There is the inner life of women, the life herstory of being raised female in a womanhating society. And if you don't take this seriously, once again, no surprise here, women get short changed. I'd say transwomen, if they expected to be accepted in lesbian spaces have a lot to learn and should perhaps have to go through a rigorous training program. Even immigrants to the US have to take citizenship tests, you just can't have someone waltz in with no training.
Nobody seems to be addressing this. I will not have straight women telling me who can come into lesbian space, I think transwomen would be better served by going to straight women's groups.
I don't think that transgender people wish to have non-transgenders arbitrarily defining who they truly are -- any more than I (a lesbian) would want straight people to arbitrarily define who I am.
I have learned a lot more about transgender people. It's not nearly as simple as a man, raised as a man and deciding that "he" wants to deliberately invade "womanspace." Being transgender involves something entirely different, a matter of the mind and soul rather than the body. Not being transgender myself, I cannot completely understand it.
And once more, you completely ignore female-to-male transgender people. Would you welcome a female-to-male transgender into your womanspace? I must ask again, are female-to-male transgender people "afflicted", must they be "cured"? Do you want female-to-male transgender people to become "ex-trangenders."?
I don't agree with all of what Mary Daly espoused, but much of it. In some ways she's a kindred spirit. There are things she wouldn't agree with me in regards to my personal choices, and others we may come to some agreement on..and her book Gyn/Ecology certainly woke me up. I realized she is both a Witch and an Amazon Warrior, as I am, both of us in our ways..intensely questioning the male centeredness of patriarchal religion, even amongst those who try to reform it.
As far as MTF's and FTM's, both weaken Lesbians as a whole, and women in particular. MTF's would make their needs primary before any bio woman alive. To me, they're still bio-males, maybe not benefitting any longer from male privilege, but still with the assumption of male thinking in their minds, bodies and spirits, no matter HOW surgically or hormonally altered. As far as FTM's go, MANY Lesbians, and I'm sure if Mary Daly were aware of the current trends, would heartily mourn so many butch and boyish Lesbian types wanting to chop off their breasts, take hormones and consider them male, that literally the patriarchy took hold in their own bodies, minds and spirits.
Some of us no longer believe the lies of the trans movement, it's clouding the issues, it's anti-feminism, it's lesbian hatred, and it's diminishment of women's issues and lives, to merely 'gender' issues, that we can put on and take off 'gender' like so many clothes, or surgeries or hormones. That indeed the 'cure' for our problem(female oppression living in an intensely patriarchal and bio female and lesbian hating world)is to transition to male..and then we'd be 'cured of our problem. So many have been convinced of this in so many ways.
So for all the 'liberation' you claim by conforming to gender roles by altering your bodies, and going on hormones and surgeries, by having to kowtow to doctors both psychological and medical to get at these hormones and surgeries, is furthering the oppression in so many ways, not liberating us from it!
Like myself, Mary Daly questioned questioned, questioned women and Lesbians status in intensely spiritually, religiously, politically and socially patriarchal societies throughout the world, which neither want women free or even more so, Lesbians free. Better to transition to male and 'pass' as male, married to a woman, than be homosexual. Same for the MTF's...pressure in Iranian and other Arabic/Islamic societies to transition to the opposite sex for the 'cure' to homosexuality.
Separatism for better or worse, is the ONLY movement that continues to solely advocate for the empowerment of Lesbians in particular and women as a whole, by literally unplugging from patriarchy every way a Dyke and a woman can...spiritually, sexually, emotionally, and as much as possible physically.
She saw into the Background, another place for us Wildwomyn, us Witches, us AmazonDykes to go by and for our OWN agency, questioning the patriarchy that destroys so many FEMALE minds, bodies and spirits...and even threatens to destroy the very planet Herself!
-FeistyAmazon
"Same for the MTF's...pressure in Iranian and other Arabic/Islamic societies to transition to the opposite sex for the 'cure' to homosexuality."
The last I heard about Iran is that Transgender people get executed along with Lesbians and Gay men. This is also what is happening in Uganda and other places, where genocide against LGBT people is occuring.
It's nice to be an AmazonDyke. However, instead of attacking Transgender people as being "sick" and in need of "curing" (can you see how much like a fundamentalist that sounds?), we need to stick together -- else we will hang separately (as separatists), which is what is happening in places like Iran and Uganda.
And don't ever think that this genocide can never happen here in the U.S. LGBT people need to unite together against the oppressor. The oppressor is not defined by body parts, the oppressor is defined by genocidal ideologies who wish nothing other than to turn us against each other.
Thanks Feisty Amazon! It's really good to hear from a sister, amidst all the Daly haters and lesbian haters out there. I pretty much agree with everything you wrote! Well put.
Loosing a woman such as Mary Daly is a great loss for many communities. There are few ever brave enough to stand up to the face of adversity as she did through her life, and for that she will never be forgotten.
I would like to refer you to a wonderful interview series: Successful Women in Online Journalism Interview Series. It was conducted by the Fall 2009 University of Iowa Gender and Mass Media class, in which the students interviewed several professional women in online journalism.
I encourage you to add your thoughts, any information you might have, or comments about the project as there is currently an online book being compiled based on the interviews.
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