The Death of a Radical Feminist
An icon of the feminist movement, “thealogist” Mary Daly died January 3. Not exactly a household name outside the academy, Daly was in her lifetime a major influence in women’s studies programs, treating women’s role in religion. Her demise at the age of 81 will likely serve to pique the interest of a new generation of students, hopefully an objective and less emotion-driven bunch than the last.
Those non-academics to whom Daly’s name is hazily familiar may have a vague recollection of a highly publicized lawsuit Daly fomented: Boston College, the Jesuit institution Daly taught at for decades, was forced into sex-discrimination litigation in the late 1990s with a male student who had been barred from the militantly feminist Daly’s women’s studies classes on the grounds of his sex. Effectively fired as a result, Daly “retired” from academic life in 2001.
Daly’s intellectual trajectory coincided with the rise of dissident Catholic theology in the 1960s and 70s after the Second Vatican Council, a time when rebellious Catholics worked vociferously (and unsuccessfully) to bend normative Catholicism toward more liberal approaches to contraception and homosexuality and abortion.
In 1968 Daly published The Church and the Second Sex, her seminal j’accuse work indicting the Catholic Church for its humiliation of women by a patriarchal hierarchy. Her most inflammatory book followed in 1973, Beyond God the Father.
Out of whole cloth, there being not a shred of historical or literary or archaeological evidence to support it, Daly invented a vanquished anticipatory religion to Judaism and Christianity. Goddess spirituality was at first a strictly ivory tower phenomenon, but would later be popularized and absorbed into the public domain via the hugely popular books The Chalice and the Blade (1989) by Riane Eisler and The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown.
In Daly’s and a few other like-minded feminists’ reworking of the Genesis narrative, the first human cultures worshipped the Great Mother Goddess and lived as peacefully and collaboratively and ecologically responsibly as the blue-skinned Na’vi on Pandora in the movie Avatar, who worship a goddess Daly would have loved and whose creation she may have inspired.
Humans inhabited this paleo-Eden under the benevolent spiritual tutelage of the Goddess. She nurtured specifically female values of peace and harmony and environmental sensitivity. From 40,000 to 5,000 BCE, all was good. Men and women rejoiced in collaborative productivity.
Then barbarian hordes marauded and pillaged their way across the pacifist Goddess’ domains. These savage men introduced the evils of racism, social hierarchies, war mongering, and eco-depredation. The rest of human history is the tragic tale of a violent, controlling patriarchy, aligned with ruthless capitalism, environmental despoliation, and unrelieved misogyny.
It’s all nonsense: Goddess spirituality is ideology posing as religious history and theology. The distinguishing feature of all pseudo-religions, as McGill University researchers Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson point out in their just-published, magisterial study of Goddess religion, Sanctifying Misandry, is exactly this kind of historical revisionism. Historical revisionism is also a marker pointing to a conspiracy theory, in which category the authors situate Goddess spirituality.
Conspiracy theories require both good guys and bad guys. The “truth,” which would lead to a resolution of the presenting problem and thence to a perfect world, is known only to an enlightened few. They’re the good guys, in this case Mary Daly and her apostles.
When reality intervenes, when it becomes clear that little headway has been made in fulfilling the precepts of the utopian “solution” (see under communism), scapegoats must be found to blame: those perennial villains — in this case men tainted by the original sin of patriarchy — who are consciously and assiduously preventing progress toward the promised nirvana.
In my college days, I fancied myself a bit of a “feminist theologian”. It didn’t take long, however, to notice the pervading odor of misandry among those I was working/ studying with– disconcerting to my man-loving self. I think I was one of three straight women in that lot.
Then I got more boned up on history . . . and suddenly almost all the “feminist” left my “theology”. How one could live their entire life stewing in such rage and hatred I’ll never know. . .
Perhaps soon Ms. Daly will be nothing but a historical example of “who not to be.”
Thanks, Barbara, for taking the risks involved in publishing the truth.
You’re right, I don’t remember Daly, but we all live with her consequences.
Several generations have been programmed-indoctrinated-brainwashed.
It’s too late to reverse the impetus.
Western men have come to believe the feminist line, and the culture has become testosterone deficient.
That explains phenomena as diverse as the social congruity with the Simpsons and the demographic success of Islam.
I was a student at Boston College in the mid-80′s. Ms. Daly was some kind of untenured professor at the time. She would dismiss any male student who signed up for her classess. Her hatred of men was real and sincere. She attacked the Pope, the church and Boston College on a regular basis in her classroom. She was an egocentric psuedo-intellectual pushing earth goddess religious ideals mumbo-jumbo. She chaired an on campus feminist group called WOMYNFYRE, basically stressing the need for separation of the sexes, and a return to the earth goddess. Daly hated America and referred to it as a PHALLO-CENTRIC country. As a typical socialist type she believed that society had to be destroyed and then re-built. From what I was able to discern, Daly’s classess were ridiculous and lacked any academic scholarship but were heavy on political indoctrination.
I just read another article about Daly, and the author doesn’t try to hide what she was, in the Chicago Reader no less:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/new-york-times-obit-radical-feminist-theologian-mary-daly/Content?oid=1337180
There is hope, perhaps.
It’s great to see Barb Kay writing for Pajamas: a fine marriage!
Schadenfreude: The influence of women (and men) like Mary Daly on mainstream, Protestant churches has been a disaster for these churches, which are losing members at a precipitous rate. The feminization of Protestantism, hand in hand with secularization, has weakened these once Christian institutions altogether.
I’ve known a lot of female priests/ministers: the majority have been “do gooders”, vaunted social workers of challenged intellect. I call them Betty Crockers: squeaky clean, smiling women on the outside, but shallow and misguided, “soft” feminists on the inside. They have turned their backs on scripture, tradition, and reason, and, for the sake of misguided compassion, have followed the feminist siren song re traditional religious observance and language, marriage/divorce, abortion, homosexuality, Gaia worship, the greening of the planet, etc. It’s not all their fault: the men who remain in the Protestant denominations, who wouldn’t be tolerated if they didn’t acquiesce to the feminization of their churches, must also be held to account.
There are a handful of faithful Protestant holdouts, where scripture, tradition, and reason are honoured, but they are few and far between and under siege by their headquarters. In general, go into almost any Protestant church and take note of the small congregations and the large number of white haired ladies, as well as the dearth of men and young people. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church, which has stood firm against the feminization of the Church by such secularists as Daly and her ilk, is thriving. Its churches are packed: young, old, multicultural, male, female . . .
The way of the Mary Dalys of this world is not life and health, but destruction and death. Unfortunately, by the time those who’ve been duped by women like her realize it—if they’re even able to discern their folly—it’ll be too late. Too bad.
Barbara Kay’s analysis is both timely and brave. Nothing invites wrath so much as criticism of women. I am married to an old-school feminist. One who — of course — retained her maiden name after we wed. (She turned down my first proposal some twenty-six years ago — one in which I asked, “How would you like to become Mrs. Murray” — by declaring, “…and even if I DID agree to marry you, I wouldn’t change my name.” She also believed, back then, that engagement rings represented “man’s enslavement of women.”)
I mention these things not to embarrass my “better half” of a quarter-century, but by way of explaining that I am not hostile to “empowered” females. Shoot, when we first met, she had already completed her Ph.D., and I had yet to complete my undergraduate studies. I was delivering campus mail by day, taking classes at night. She was already a respected member of the college’s faculty. So, I feel comfortable stating that I am not “intimated” by powerful, accomplished women.
Nevertheless, I have to say it: It is one thing for society to elevate one segment of society, quite another to demean another in the process. Kay’s analysis with respect to Mary Daly, religion, and the contamination of higher education by hateful perspective rings true for me. I am unqualified to comment about her specific charges, but the tone and tenor do seem to hit the target squarely in the center.
The celebration of all things female that permeates many western societies these days has, it appears, gone well beyond reasonable. Here in the States, for example, the notion that women (and girls, too) are being slighted by the health-care industry is heavily promoted. I have to ask: How can that be, when men live substantially shorter lives? Certainly, the biggest health threat one can face is the complete loss of life.
See: What About Bob? http://emmeffemm.com/id33.html
Heaven knows I appreciate women. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them. I only wish more women felt the same way about their brethren.
Any man who espoused such views would be medicated and psycho-analyzed. Deservedly so.
All one has to do to figure out that Mary Daly and her ilk are profoundly wrong is to watch one episode of “The View”. That’s what an exclusively matriarchal society would look like.
By the way, Daly got to see the fruit of her wish for male “decontamination”. Go to any place in the world where men have disappeared or abandoned their responsibilities, women and families and you will see the results of Mary Daly’s dream come true. You will see poverty, crime, drug use, hopelessness, promiscuity, illegitimacy, educational failure, murder, violence, domestic abuse, rape, and every other pathology that disproportionately affects the neighorbhoods, towns, cities, and countries of “decantaminated” men.
Ms. Kay:
If one wants to see what a Matriarchy looks like, one need go no further than a government housing project.
Women like her are the reason so many other women bristle when they are called feminists.
Daly was the farthest thing from a feminist. She was a female supremacist. If she had said the same stupid stuff, but aimed it at blacks, she would have rightfully been called out for what she was….a hateful, warped bigot unfit for any kind of polite society.
Mary Daly is just one in a pantheon of misandrist who claim special dispensation due to their gender. From Planned Parenthood’s Sanger to Daly to Valerie Jean Solanas who attempted to kill Andy Warhol, they are the dirty little secret of Liberal Arts programs throughout the world.
If Ms Daly and the rest of her acolytes are so fed up with “men, the church, government and society” may haps they should find land somewhere uninhabited (Sibera, China, Africa, or an island in the Pacific-there are thousands of those) and create their own civilization. Like the Shakers however I dare say they will find propagating their species will be somewhat difficult without the basic building blocks of life. Egg + sperm = offspring, scientifically proven fact. So without interference and assistance from their most hated foe, they shall live and they shall die without kith or kin to live after them. Their beliefs will die, their hatred will evaporate, we all will better off for their demise.
If it’s true that all you take from this life is your knowledge, attitudes and ideals I’m truly glad to never have had to take a class from this creature. I would hate to spend eternity in her company. Now that would be a Hell indeed.
According to dubiously encyclopedic website Wikipedia, Mary Daly in her book Gyn-Ecology claimed that the number of people executed for witchcraft in early modern Europe was nine million. According to Wikipedia, “Nearly all estimates today range from 60,000 to 100,000.” Even one execution for the bogus crime of witchcraft would be bad enough, but Daly appears to have exaggerated the death toll by a factor of ninety at the least. That Boston College employed such a phony scholar for 33 years tells you what sort of faculty Boston College offers its students for their $31,000 annual tuition.
…so what I did was I have her wearing a June Cleaver day outfit and she has one job and one job only – bake me a god@mn apple pie before the end of Sportscenter. Here’s the catch (there’s ALWAYS a catch): the oven’s pilot light goes out halfway thru the cooking – like clockwork. As punishment, its horizontal duty time, if you know what I mean. Man, am I good at this.
Sincerely,
Satan
The primary tactic of far-left positions, be they feminism, AGW, or whatever, is the intentional, emotional, overstatement of their case in order to attract fellow travelers of lesser intellect. Moving the masses. Bending the curve.
We see this in the far-left’s assertion that Pres Bush as BushHitler is . . . well . . . Hitler. In their minds, they fabricated a tragic play out of the Bush years and it bothers them not a wit that he left the Federal Government not too much worse for wear and lives in peace.
Daly was a polarizing figure intent on hardening the feminist position. I’m sure she didn’t believe half of what see said, but the half that she did believe in was important enough to her for her to overstate her case and outright lie to her followers.
This brings back a lot of unpleasant memories from my college days but it is good to hear that those classes are drying up. The truth will out and you are a part of that process Barbara. Thank you.
The anti-intellectual Mary Daly was not brave. She took full advantage of the minority protection policies of the federal government that virtually guaranteed her a well paying position with Boston College. The institution was powerless to do anything effective against her even though her works were disgracefully shallow and illogical. In many respects, Daly was perhaps only a step or two above Ward Churchill. The irony is that a more scholarly woman might be unable to achieve tenure—but not a whack job deemed by the left to be an “authentic” woman.
Boy, anyone who thinks women are better than men by nature never went to high school. Although I suppose when you have an enclosed, pure, hate-fed conspiracy philosophy, I guess you can just blame any actual evil from your people against the “enemy” somehow causing it (see today’s report on the Lancet’s amazing study of Palestinian wife-beaters!).
What an insult to the blessed name Mary. Not to mention all the good Dalys out there.
“Daly’s intellectual trajectory coincided with the rise of dissident Catholic theology in the 1960s and 70s after the Second Vatican Council”
I am adamantly convinced that Vatican II was one of the worst events that occurred in the Twentieth Century. It may even rate among the top fifty. Vatican II was not merely a disaster for Catholics—but also Western civilization itself. If nothing else, one cannot overlook the fact that Catholics represented about twenty percent of the American population at that time. Thus, when the Church changed course it was inevitable going to impact the lives of those outside the fold.
The seemingly naïve John Courtney Murray’s church-state views were interpreted as a need for Catholics to raise the white flag of surrender to the secularists. Those who embraced Judeo-Christian values were not supposed to “impose” their beliefs on non-believers. Opposing abortion, for instance, was not deemed a rational position, but a peculiarly Catholic demand similar to not eating meat on Friday. Needless to add, things have only gotten much worse since the mid 1960s.
One of the benefits of the lowered stigma today for acknowledging gay or lesbian orientation is we can see to what degree radical feminist leadership consists of lesbians pursuing a uniquely man-free utopian world-view.
While lesbians in my experience run the gamut from man-hating to live and let live, its not hard to imagine that its easier for lesbians to imagine a man-free world than straight women, and in a similar fashion to view sex with men to be in all cases a form of domination and abuse, and to view abortion restrictions as the forced slavery of childbearing.
As we discussed in an article a few days ago, I suggest that radical feminism is often born of an animus toward the male race, born of personal childhood tragedy and perhaps life relationship choices. I further suggest that the intellectual sin committed by these man-hating women is to generalize their sad and angry personal experience into a prescription for society as a whole.
It takes a lot if intellectual and emotional honesty and work to disentangle one’s personal life from one’s world view, and my view is that those who seek victim status under liberalism are not willing or able to perform this work.
“People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore”, she opines as she recommends a near extermination of human males.
Note to Mary’s ghost– it’s not that anyone’s afraid to say it, its just that it’s lunacy and nobody BELIEVES it.
Maybe it’s natural to be ‘afraid to say’ something that marks you as a lunatic. Unless you’re a creature of the left, in which case extermination of some class of humans is almost an inevitable destination of your philosophy, and too often the action that goes with it.
For Daly, it’s men. For Mao, it was ‘republicans and nationalists’. For Stalin it was the evil middle class who had enough money and influence to oppose him and therefore did not deserve to live.
It’s always something.
Goddess worship, neopaganism, etc., do use conspiracy theory, emotionalism, and gross overstatement. But they also rely heavily on the cult of victimhood. The importance of that can’t be ignored. They apply it not only to history, but to themselves. It’s: Nine million of *us* were murdered by the Catholic Church during the holocaust of the Spanish Inquisition. Thus are white, college-educated, middle-class modern women (and a few men) able to see themselves as eternal victims. This is desperately important to their self-image. It lends them a stature they aren’t clever or industrious enough to otherwise obtain.
I once worked at New Age publishing company. I saw these people every day. Until that time, I had no idea there was such malignant nonsense being gobbled up by so many sad little people.
Too bad Daly and those of he ilk have been so busy trashing Christianity that they have overlooked a religion that truly is misogynist, that of Islam.
It always amused me that those who buy into this revisionist garbage ignore many real pioneers among women who sought fulfillment outside the role of wife and mother. After all, long before the rise of modern feminism, nuns were the CEOs of major institutions of learning and the healing arts. Founding and running a religious order is not for whiners or shrinking violets. Then there are the female scholars and intellectuals who shaped the church such as St. Catherine of Siena in the 14th century, the daughter of a cloth dyer who became the correspondent of Popes and Kings as she worked to bring the papacy back to Rome. Then there is St. Teresa of Avila in the 16th, whose writings on her own mystical experiences remain influential in both sacred and secular scholarship. Of course, none of these women were fixated on the need to be an eternal victim. It’s hard to get anything useful done when you expend all your energy on grievance mongering.
Love to see the old hag’s face when she gets a load of the afterlife.
“If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the earth. I think this will be accomplished by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.”
LoL :: ))
Yeah, Mary after those tedious boors, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Manson, People are kind of afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.
I’ve always loved this kind of Fairy Tale, because the obvious questions are never addressed: Where in the Goddess run world did the hordes of bad men come from? Why were the good and decent people unable to resist them?
A Veganess once told me The Planet was mad at people for eating meat. I said, “Anne, how is it that the Planet just now noticed that people are eating meat?”
Is being accused of Anti-Intellectualism over yet?
I read “Beyond God the Father” when I was younger. I was fascinated by ideas I had never heard of or read about. By the end of the book I felt the best thing I could do as a man was kill myself. Thank goodness my wife didn’t read it!
I recovered and that was the last “feminist” book I ever read.
So this cockroach is dead. Good. I’m surprised she (it, since Daly was not entirely human) didn’t choke on her own spit long before.
Mary Daly was clearly a very disturbed person; most of us can agree on that.
On the other hand # 14 Ding wrote:The primary tactic of far-left positions, be they feminism, AGW, or whatever, is the intentional, emotional, overstatement of their case in order to attract fellow travelers of lesser intellect. Moving the masses. Bending the curve.
We see this in the far-left’s assertion that Pres Bush as BushHitler is . . . well . . . Hitler. In their minds, they fabricated a tragic play out of the Bush years and it bothers them not a wit that he left the Federal Government not too much worse for wear and lives in peace.”
Now this is quite humorous, quite accurate about what the left does, but apparently blind to the fact that the right does absolutely the same thing. Lets take “the intentional, emotional, overstatement of their case.” C’mon, righties and half the articles here have some over-the-top, exaggerated take on some issue of leftist absurdity. As for the bashing of GWB: exactly right, but it is also EXACTLY what is being done to Obama right now. How about just an ounce of objectivity here?
I shudder to think of either the right or the left in power for twenty years. If they did not have the idiots on the other side to bluff and blab their way into power every so often, then you might see some real damage being done.
The funniest thing of all is if you tone the language down a bit and substitute “white people” for “men”…you get Michelle Obama.
I have deep respect and affection for the always kind and rational Barbara Kay. Her obvious love for men is a wonderful anti-dote to the toxins spread by people like Daly. My disgust is not just with the man-haters like Daly but with the male cowards who give them a platform to spew their venom.
This is the best essay on feminist studies departments that I have read in my forty years in academia. I will treasure it always. I am surprised that you got it published. PC is really powerful in the USA.
I am heartened to learn that Mary was fired for her overt discrimination against men. I have taught at several universities that employed at least one feminist who practiced that same discrimination. In all cases, they managed to die in office. And their transgressions were far worse than what you describe. They regularly used their personal and official powers to seduce their students. The usual semester turnover often led to fisticuffs in the quadrangle. I fear that the power of PC is undiminished in American universities and these practices remain commonplace.
#7 Dale writes:
“Any man who espoused such views would be medicated and psycho-analyzed. Deservedly so.”
You mean any straight male, right? The Marys have been joined by the Boys George.
By the way, such towering academic accomplishments like “The Church and the Second Sex” and “Beyond God the Father” must be shelved together with other 90-s academic deconstructionist idiocies, like…
* Black Venus -
* Same Sex Marriages In The Eastern Church -
… crap which has been debunked for long, yet still, mysteriously lives in colleges and is presented as science -
… and the list can go on and on…
The funny thing about radical feminists is this: If men were to ever really act as the brutes that they said they were, the men would subjegate the radical feminists.
This is a worldview that can only exist in the academy.
I’ve long known about this monster but I thank you for bringing her horrible nature to our general attention.
Too bad Daly and those of he ilk have been so busy trashing Christianity that they have overlooked a religion that truly is misogynist, that of Islam.
In fact time and again I have found some of these self-anointed “popesses of feminism” looking the other way and even justifying female genital mutilation, polygamy and Islam in name of “cultural practices”.
Ms. Kay;
Just as a post-script, I note that Ms. Daly did not appear to have any progeny that survived her.
This is where such “philosophy” rightly leads…to an evolutionary dead-end, both on the personal and the species scale.
The Dalys and their ilk are little more than fossils of a failed self-experiment that met, or will meet, the harsh jdugment that Darwinian principles evoke.
Thomson: Shame on you.
“. . .minority protection policies of the federal government that virtually guaranteed her a well paying position with Boston College.”
They made me do it. Baaaawl, baaaaw, waaah.
Those spinelss Jesuits, huh?
Come on. Boston College did an evil thing, and probably continues the same with granting undue preferences to popular en-title-ists.
In my weakness, I could not clear my mind of the fact that a misandrist like Mary Daly now neighbors with radical Islamists like the Taliban every minute for eternity.
The bitter fruit of her life’s work…
Mary who? I was reminded of Madeline Murray O’Hare, who met an equally futile and empty end. Tilting against windmills isn’t conducive to mental health.
Any resume that crosses my desk with a Grievance Studies degree on it guarantees you will not be hired. Be careful kids, Facebook is not the only thing that can affect your career.
Another rabid feminazi dead.That makes 2/3 of the triumverate of demented gender stalinists.(the other one wau UGLY Betty Friedan).One to go: Gloria (I prefer bicycles to broomsticks )Steinem.I am hopeful; more bad political news(like the Mass.election)will likely provoke enough rabies to cause her to meltdown.Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
I never heard of Mary Daly, and apparently she was a nasty, hateful, pitiful excuse for a human being.
I have nothing more to say than, “May God have mercy on her soul.”
She sounds like one of those nuts so many schools keep around as a form of local color. I sometimes wonder if colleges have a quota of eccentrics — if every professor is reasonable, then there’s nobody to first delude and then disillusion the kiddies.