In her preface to a collection of feminist analyses of Mary Daly’s work, Nancy Tuana states:
Take into your hands any history-of-philosophy text. You will find compiled therein the “classics” of modern philosophy. Since these texts are often designed for use in undergraduate classes, the editor is likely to offer an introduction in which the reader is informed that these selections represent the perennial questions of philosophy. The student is to assume that she or he is about to explore the timeless wisdom of the greatest minds of Western philosophy. No one calls attention to the fact that the philosophers are all men.
Tuana goes on to remark that while women are omitted as thinkers in philosophical cannon, the texts and their authors dictate the supposed “nature of woman” (her proper place in society and the world, her abilities and inabilities, her desires and hints at her emotionality and irrationality). As such, one must take into account that the central concepts of philosophy (reason and justice), which are taken to mean human, are associated with male traits as they are conceived of by and for male thinkers. When Mary Daly burst onto the academic scene in the fields of both philosophy and theology in the late sixties and early seventies, she sought to bring this often overlooked phenomenon to light and in so doing, she has become one of the most influential feminist voices of our time.
Daly was born on October 16, 1928 in Schenectady, New York, educated in Catholic schools and earned her first PhD from St. Mary’s College / Notre Dame University in 1954. From 1959-1966, she taught the junior year abroad program in Fribourg, Switzerland at the University of Fribourg. There, she later earned doctorates in theology and philosophy in 1963 and 1965, respectively. In 1966, she became a member of the theology department at conservative, private and Catholic Boston College.
It was here that she wrote her first book in 1968, The Church and the Second Sex. Well-coordinated with the early wave of feminism in the United States, it highlighted Catholicism’s misogyny from the time of the early church fathers to the reign of Pope Pious XII. In The Church, she urges the Catholic church to end sex discrimination by allowing women to become active clergy members and encourages the breakdown of social / spiritual barriers between nuns and the rest of the world. Additionally, she calls for the church to refrain from applying the male gender to its images of God. As a result of this book, Daly almost lost her job at Boston College as, in that time, her publication flew in the face of dominant Catholic doctrine concerning women. Fortunately, after months of student protests and relatively widespread press coverage, Boston College granted her tenure.
In 1971, Daly was invited to give a sermon at Harvard University’s church. She would be the first woman in the school’s history to do so, however she found herself faced with an ethical dilemma. To accept the invitation outright would be, in her mind, to agree to being tokenized while to decline would seem like a refusal of an opportunity. Her creative solution was to accept the invitation, but to invite her listeners to leave the building and listen to her give her sermon outside, thereby still fulfilling her commitment while refusing to work from within a patriarchal structure.
From this point on, Daly no longer identified herself as Catholic or even Christian, preferring to refer to herself as post-Christian and in 1973, she published her second work, Beyond God the Father, a frontal attack on the entirety of our patriarchal culture. In it, she challenges every aspect of patriarchal religion, choosing to focus much of her attention on myths which legitimate male superiority and a way of thinking (that one must dominate other living beings) which will eventually, she asserts, contribute to the downfall of civilization as we know it. It is here that she points to an “ontological spiritual revolution” which only women, she argues, are capable of fulfilling. This tension between the religious faith in her earlier life as a Catholic and between her skeptical, post-Christian self after The Church and the Second Sex becomes a staple characteristic in all of her writing, expressing a certain level of annoyance at Christianity’s static symbolism and dogma. Marie Korte clarifies that “She alternated expressions of religious faith in an ‘Infinite Being’ with sekepticism toward the complacency of people who continued to speak in theological terms as though nothing had changed since the middle ages.”
Between Beyond God and her next work (Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, 1978), Daly abandons all Christian symbolism in her writing, choosing to focus only on the creation of a new and non-patriarchal social order. The symbolism and language she uses are completely rooted in women’s experience. Increasingly, she becomes interested in how language itself is a destructive force, contributing to the authoring of Pure Lust in 1984 and her Webster’s Wickedary in 1987. In both, she explores new possibilities for language as we know it, striving to recreate and redefine words that we currently use, in the interest of making language more empowering.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, she continued to teach at Boston College and to lecture, becoming an outspoken critic of Christian men’s movements (such as Promise Keepers). Supposedly, at one of these lectures, when a reporter asked her, “Who has hurt women?”, she replied by stating, “These creeps, the Promise Keepers, rightwing Christians. It’s not just the ancient fathers of the church and it’s not just the church. It’s all major religions.”
In 1996, more of her feminist philosophy was published in The New Yorker and in 1999, she found her career taking a halfway-unexpected turn. Throughout her 25 years of teaching, Daly had always separated her male students from her female students, arguing that women would not open up about their own experiences when there were male students present and that many male students took women’s studies courses with the express purpose of disrupting them. This became a legal problem for Daly and for Boston College when one young man took legal action against both Daly and the school. This incident resulted in a forced leave of absence from Boston College. Daly’s most recent work, Amazon Grace, was published in 2005.
Taken as a whole, the goal of all of Daly’s work is a lofty one. She seeks to demystify our entire culture, confronting patriarchal thought patterns from a historical context and applying her discoveries to current damaging cultural trends. From there, she seeks transcendence, hoping that a radical change will ensue within human cultural context, leading to an equitable and mindful social order. In so doing, she urges women to leave the patriarchal structure of Christianity and to live an intentionally marginal life, in the hopes not only of realizing our personhood, but also of bringing about this new order. The topics addressed by Daly can be broken up into three loose categories: damaging myths and assumptions, the results of these myths and assumptions and how one might begin to transcend our current social order in the interest of pursuing better possibilities.
In Beyond God the Father, Daly makes an observation which might be considered obvious by modern feminist thinkers but which was, at the time she wrote it, radical. If we view God as being male and patriarchal then the male patriarch on earth is elevated to God status. In almost all prominent religious traditions on the planet, God has been (and still often is) portrayed as a patriarch ruling over “his” creation. Likewise, the male heads of households are represented in the same light, seen as ruling over that which is in their dominion (wives, children, etc.). This viewpoint, according to Daly, creates an artificial polarization of human qualities, which are categorized into traditional sexual stereotypes. As such, all good qualities are defined by and correlated to being male, whereas all undesirable qualities (as defined by patriarchs throughout time) are correlated to being female. With this polarization comes the myth of female evil and with this myth, women are put in an unfortunate position within society. While on the one hand, women are “pedestalized,” this elevation to icon status not only prevents us from realizing the multi-faceted nature of full personhood, but the image of what constitutes a “real” or “good” woman also excludes the majority of actually real women in the world.
Daly explains that the ambiguity and contradiction surrounding the church’s views on women produces a tension between the “pseudo-glorification of ‘woman’ and degrading teachings and practices concerning real women” through a historical analysis of the churches views on women from various standpoints including scriptural, patristic, the middle ages and the beginnings of the modern period. While ideas concerning women have changed slightly in their wording, the general tone remains the same.
For instance, woman emerges as subjugated and inferior in Old Testament teachings. This is illustrated nicely in the Genesis account most commonly used to justify women’s subjugation, in which woman is said to be created from the body of man and for his entertainment. Furthermore, the fall in Genesis 3 paints a picture of woman as a seductress who is chiefly responsible for the fall of humanity into original sin and for death itself. In an interesting contrast to Old Testament views on women, women in the New Testament emerge as actual human beings with which Jesus interacts in a way that defies the social norms conceived by those within his historical context. Unfortunately, this is not the mode of relation that is paid the heaviest attention when the church is attempting to justify female subordination. For this, one has only to turn to the Pauline texts that state that a woman should remain silent during meetings for worship and that wives ought to obey their husbands. While Paul’s actions and assertions concerning women should be read within their historical context, his statements are often taken by modern misogynists as normative.
For the church fathers, women pose an even greater problem. The dominant assumption during this period of time is that while women are human (which was actually up for debate during that period of time), they will never fully embody the image of God as they can never break free from their divinely sanctioned lot as servile bearers of children. Furthermore, all women are considered to actually be Eves, deserving of their subjugation because of the fall. The divinely sanctioned oppression of women is justified by the church fathers as first having to do with the “nature” of women (as carnal, dim and seductive) and then as having to do with the evil of Eve, the first woman (the human fall from grace / death). While Jesus functioned as the savior of the fallen Adam, female Eves had to turn to the Virgin Mary (a biological impossibility to which they could never realistically aspire) for their salvation. Thus, the redemption of women was made necessarily impossible by the rhetoric of the church fathers and female subjugation continued to be justified.
In the middle ages, women were seen as theoretically able to embody the image of God, but not practically able. Again, childbirth was the central focus of this assumption, as woman was seen to be the passive party in the creation of a child and man was seen to be the active party. We see again God likened to man and woman likened to creature in this assumption. Even in the beginnings of the modern period, the life of Teresa of Avila embodies how greatness in women is described in such a way as it dissociates her from her own sex. For instance, many of Teresa’s admirers described her by saying that she “is a man.” The underlying assumption is that a woman capable of greatness must actually be male, as no woman is actually capable of greatness.
According to Daly, the church and society in cahoots have contributed to the breakdown of full female personhood. She refers to this process as “pedestalism” and refers to the result of an attempt to “explain” female existence as the notion of the “eternal feminine.” Daly explains the “eternal feminine” as philosophical, theological and psychoanalytical arguments which seek out quick and dry assumptions that can be made about women’s supposed “nature” in an attempt to “explain” their existence. In short, women are put on pedestals and transformed from living people with moral agency to stagnant symbols. In collective consciousness and, unfortunately, in general female consciousness, these symbols do not allow women to evolve beyond them. Viewing women as symbols has allowed societies throughout history to commit various atrocities against them and, in its very nature, has hindered the evolution of men and of society.
This process seeks to uphold rigid gender norms in which male characteristics and female characteristics are strictly outlined. For instance, traditionally male roles are to be stoic, unemotional, violent, aggressive, levelheaded and competitive. It is interesting that these characteristics are not necessarily congruent in the sense that to be stoic and unemotional directly contrasts being aggressive and violent. Traditional female roles, on the other hand, are to be emotional, unintelligent, passive, docile and unable to think rationally. These characteristics are also contradictory. It makes little sense to describe someone both as docile and emotional. We must recognize that in their contradictions of themselves, these gender norms present themselves as arbitrary. As a result of our enculturation, society often finds itself obsessed with gender performances. Some of the more horrifying examples of these gender performances are described by Mary Daly as gynocidal rituals.
Daly argues that the patriarchs in a patriarchal society are able to penetrate the minds of their victims (subordinates) and keep them docile by seeing to it that the myth of domination/submission is acted out repeatedly in “performances that draw the participants into emotional complicity.” Daly give several examples of gynocidal ritual including Sati (widow-burning) in India, foot-binding in China, female genital mutilation in Africa, witch-burnings in Europe; before concluding with a comparison of American gynecology to medical experiments done on female prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. A common characteristic of all of these practices and of her later comparison is that in these “rituals,” women are not viewed as people. Instead, we are viewed as symbols. For instance, in the ritual of Chinese foot-binding, women’s feet are not viewed as part of a human being, but as potential “lotus hooks.” In this ritual, children’s toes and feet were broken and young girls were tortured in the interest of making them appear marriageable by turning their feet into objects of sexual enjoyment for potential husbands. While gynocidal ritual is on the extreme end of possible results of negative gender symbolism, it is nonetheless relevant as symptoms such as these are portrayed by Daly as those of a larger and very ill culture. One which we must strive to transcend.
While Daly stressed the necessity of a total transcendence of culture in all of her publications, in 2005, she posits a model for modern transcendence:
The new forms that will be assumed by re-emerging Radical Feminism must take into account both the extremity of the atrocious conditions under which many women now struggle to live and the global stealth campaign that often keeps the majority of women – even the majority of feminists – in a smog of unawareness and denial. This involves Daring to Know and Name the ways in which our victories are now being used against us. The hope that we can do anything about this state of betrayal and reversal requires faith in the “fabric of unseen connectedness”…Effecting changes in small places – seemingly small changes – is ineffably important, for this enables us to work with the flow within that small system and thus have impact elsewhere. Such changes create large systems change because they participate in an unbroken wholeness.
In order to transcend oppressive culture, we must simply cease to agree to function within its limits. To do so, we must be able to name atrocity as such and function, even in seemingly miniscule ways, as mindful human beings who recognize the interconnectedness and divine potential of all things as equal. Once we are able to make these small changes, larger systemic change will be allowed to take place and our culture will enter into what she refers to as “bio-philic” being. This refers, of course, to an obsession with life and construction rather than the death and destruction with which patriarchal structures and leaders have been and still are obsessed.
I must admit to the fact that I completely agree with almost everything Mary Daly says, thus I find it difficult to critique her assertions and methods. While I do think she is absolutely correct about our culture needing radical transformation in order for humans, other creatures and the planet itself to survive, I have a difficult time with how closely a lot of her philosophy borders on scapegoating. In Amazon Grace, one of the assertions that she makes is that in order for the human race to survive, there will have to be a drastic reduction in the amount of men populating the planet. While she states that this is something she believes will happen naturally, I fear that this vision could easily underscore a matriarchy (in the sense of a reversed patriarchy).
Another aspect of Daly’s work that I struggle with is the idea of intentional marginal living. For the most part, I agree that when one is marginalized within a society, especially one as far-fallen into patriarchy and exploitation as ours, it makes relative sense to strive to exist somewhat outside of it 1) in order to live the freest life possible and 2) to remove one’s self from a continual system of exploitation (of the self and of other beings). However, this is not always possible for everyone in the world. Using myself as an example, it is less plausible for me to live marginally than it would be for someone who has no student loans and knows a lucrative trade for example. Being in financial debt binds me to the economic system in which we exist and the obligations that are inherent in my situation prevent me from leaving it until I no longer have those obligations. In this way, her message is not as universal as I would like for it to be, as it applies mainly to white, American women who live above a certain economic earning level.
This brings me to a larger critique of her philosophy and theology: while her projections for peaceful co-existence are ones that I find ideal, they are goals which are impossible to meet without entirely decimating culture as we know it. Furthermore, even if this decimation were possible (that is to say, if society started from zero and had to rebuild itself in its entirety), those who were left to do the building would have recollection of a previous existence. Therefore, it is difficult for me to believe that patriarchal structures of domination would fail to arise once again.
That being said, I also must admit that Mary Daly’s work has been one of the most (if not the most) influential factors in my spiritual journey and how I view my personhood and my purpose on this earth. While I find her model of intentionally marginality not entirely possible most of the time, I do see it as something to which I will continue to strive. Having been raised in a Catholic household and indoctrinated with the churches derogatory teachings regarding women, I have been concerned with the feminist cause for as long as I can remember being cognizant. I fought my way through years of religious education as a child only to refuse confirmation into the Catholic church as a teenager. From there, I struggled with the tension that I felt between wanting to feel the welcoming comfort of belonging to a religious institution that I felt as a child and teenager and my longing to separate myself from a system which I knew would be damaging to my psyche and my sense of self. A long struggle with faith and God ensued for me until my freshman year in college when I was introduced to Beyond God the Father in an introduction to theology course. Daly’s assertions gave voice to things that I had felt deeply for my entire life and I was immeasurably relieved and empowered by reading them. After the semester in which I took that course, I changed my major from psychology to religion, in the hopes of further exploring feminist theology.
Interestingly enough, after six more years of studying feminism and feminist theology (four in college and two and a half in seminary), my spiritual journey has led me to a similar place as Daly found herself after having faced the backlash against the message in The Church and the Second Sex: post-Christianity. While there are some symbols and rituals that I still do find comforting and helpful within the Christian tradition and while I cannot separate myself from my upbringing and must continually acknowledge that I come from an American Christian context, I cannot, for the most part, identify myself with Christianity as a larger institution, as I believe it to be too damaging to salvage in its entirety without transforming it into something entirely different. Ironically, this discovery about myself points to what I believe Christians can take from the message of a post-Christian, radical lesbian feminist who is interested in the demolition of society and culture as we know it.
The only constant in existence is that we all exist together on this planet and through a careful and critical examination of our history as a human species of exploiting one another and our environment, it becomes clear that we have not found a way to peacefully coexist. While institutions such as the church have made recent efforts to be inclusive, these efforts have been on the surface rather than systemic and change has been painfully slow. That being said, I believe that the best piece of advice we can take from Daly is that sometimes an institution is not more important than life itself. It is often in one’s best interest to let go of the arbitrary structures into which we have been indoctrinated in the interest of living in right relation. For Daly, this not only meant leaving the institution of the Christian church, but it also meant inviting us to join her on the margins.
Mary Daly passed away on January 3, 2010, at the age of 81.
Dear Mary: I have more thank you than I have voice. I hope that wherever you are now, you know this.
**for a complete list of references, e mail me.
