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Mary Daly is an important feminist foremother whether or not you knew of her, agreed with her, or read her books. Her work was like a powerful intellectual and spiritual snow-plow, taking the risks to clear the roads for others to travel. There are radical pioneers who risk everything the world will say about them or do to them in order to truly inhabit what they believe. They walk what they talk, even when the talking alone is an act of courage. Mary Daly was that kind of pioneer.
She lived her truth.
Did she have flaws? Yes. Was she known for being ego-centric? Yes. Did she veer from the path occasionally? Yes. But she ran with the wolves long before others joined her. And those "wolves" were radical ideas about women and our potential.
Many of you may not have read Daly or encountered her thoughts knowingly. I will give her a voice here, using her words more than my own, by way of an introduction. She was a wild woman. I had to re-type that line because I typed "She is a wild woman." That she has died just seems foolish, as though it cannot be true. How could such a life force be extinguished? Of all the things Mary Daly might have done, dying never seemed like one of them. Mary Daly, radical, lesbian, brilliant, original thinker, died January 3rd at age 81.
EnlightenNext Magazine said of her:
Described as both "a prophet" and "the grande dame of feminist theology," Daly has, for more than three decades, committed her every waking breath to a single purpose: seeing, naming and dissecting the structures of patriarchy in order to liberate women's minds, bodies and spirits from its oppression. One of the most revered visionaries of the contemporary women's liberation movement, Daly, who holds six graduate degrees, including three doctorates in religion, theology and philosophy, lectures throughout the world, is the author of seven groundbreaking works of feminist philosophy, and has taught much-debated women-only courses in women's studies at Boston College since 1974.
I want women to know her, and to honor her contribution. She woke people up. She angered men in charge. She made people comfortable with the oppression of women squirm in their seats. She got people talking. She forced people to think. You didn't have to agree with her to be a better off for what she did in her life.
She knew that to influence thought was to influence action.
She taught for over 30 years at Boston College, a Catholic college. When she taught about feminist philosophy, she limited her classes to women only, although she did offer independent study to males who were interested. Ultimately, she was forced out of her full-time, tenured 30+ year career because of that. At the time she was only earning about 43K a year.
Her comments about that in a brilliant Crosscurrents interview make reference to the fact that she felt she had been set up by right-wing organizations. A male "plant" allegedly was set up to take her class, and then get refused. BC was then sued by the "Center for Individual Rights", and she was apparently hustled (as she says) "out the back door" with a "rotten little retirement agreement". She described it as "a gang rape".
The Boston Globe said:
"She was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy -- or any idea that domination is natural -- in its most defended place, which is religion," said Gloria Steinem.
Dr. Daly emerged as a major voice in the burgeoning women's movement with her first book, "The Church and the Second Sex," published in 1968, and "Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation," which appeared five years later. That accomplishment was viewed, then and now, as all the more significant because she wrote and taught at a Jesuit college.
Dr. Daly...died Sunday in Wachusett Manor nursing home in Gardner. She was 81 and her health had failed in the past few years, including recent paralysis due to a neurological condition.
Mary Daly, the first to publish discussions of a feminist theology, did not consider herself a theologian. She felt that she was a philosopher.
She was a profound and imaginative thinker who let her truth evolve, saying in her later years that her early work was not radical enough
