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Mary Daly (October 16, 1928 – January 3, 2010) was an American radical feminism philosophy and theology. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing Roman Catholic, she had disavowed Christianity by the early 1970s. Daly retired from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes. She allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.
Daly received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the College of Saint Rose in 1950, and a Master of Arts degree in English from the Catholic University of America. She earned a PhD in religion from Saint Mary's College in 1953.
She later earned two additional doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Daly was first threatened with dismissal when, following the publication of her first book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968), she was issued a terminal (fixed-length) contract. As a result of support from the (then all-male) student body and the general public, however, Daly was ultimately granted tenure.
Daly's refusal to admit male students to some of her classes at Boston College also resulted in disciplinary action. While Daly argued that their presence inhibited class discussion, Boston College took the view that her actions were in violation of title IX of federal law requiring the college to ensure that no person was excluded from an education program on the basis of sex, and of the university's own non-discrimination policy insisting that all courses be open to both male and female students.
In 1989, Daly became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.
In 1998, a discrimination claim against the college by two male students was backed by the Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian advocacy group. Following further reprimand, Daly absented herself from classes rather than admit the male students. Boston College removed her tenure rights, citing a verbal agreement by Daly to retire. She brought suit against the college disputing violation of her tenure rights and claimed she was forced out against her will, but her request for an injunction was denied by Middlesex Superior Court Judge Martha Sosman.
A confidential out-of-court settlement was reached. The college maintains that Daly had agreed to retire from her faculty position, while others assert she was forced out. Daly maintained that Boston College wronged her students by depriving her of her right to teach freely to only female students. She documented her account of the events in the 2006 book, Amazon Grace: Recalling the Courage to Sin Big.
Daly protested the commencement speech of Condoleezza Rice at Boston College, and she spoke on campuses around the United States as well as internationally.
Daly died on January 3, 2010, in Gardner, Massachusetts.
In Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978), Daly argues that men throughout history have sought to oppress women. In this book she moves beyond her previous thoughts on the history of patriarchy to the focus on the actual practices that, in her view, perpetuate patriarchy, which she calls a religion.
Daly's Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984) and Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (1987) introduce and explore an alternative language to explain the process of exorcism and ecstasy. In Wickedary Daly provides definitions as well as chants that she says can be used by women to free themselves from patriarchal oppression. She also explores the labels that she says patriarchal society places on women to prolong what she sees as male domination of society. Daly said it is the role of women to unveil the liberatory nature of labels such as "Hag", "Witch", and "Lunatic".
Daly's work continues to influence feminism and feminist theology, as well as the developing concept of biophilia as an alternative and challenge to social necrophilia. She was an ethical vegetarian and animal rights activist. Gyn/Ecology, Pure Lust, and Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary all endorse anti-Animal testing and anti-fur positions. Daly was a member of the advisory board of Feminists For Animal Rights, a group which is now defunct.
Daly created her own theological anthropology based around the context of what it means to be a woman. She created a thought-praxis that separates the world into the world of false images that create oppression and the world of communion in true being. She labeled these two areas foreground and Background respectively. Daly considered the foreground the realm of patriarchy and the Background the realm of Woman. She argued that the Background is under and behind the surface of the false reality of the foreground. The foreground, for Daly, was a distortion of true being, the paternalistic society in which she said most people live. It has no real energy, but drains the "life energy" of women residing in the Background. In her view, the foreground creates a world of poisons that contaminate natural life. She called the male-centered world of the foreground necrophilic, hating all living things. In contrast, she conceived of the Background as a place where all living things connect.
According to Lucy Sargisson, "Daly seeks in Gyn/Ecology (1987) a true, wild, Woman's self, which she perceives to be dormant in women, temporarily pacified by patriarchal systems of domination."
Audre Lorde expressed concern over Gyn/Ecology in an open letter, citing homogenizing tendencies, and a refusal to acknowledge the "herstory and myth" of women of color. The letter,Audre Lorde's letter is discussed in Dr. Daly's book, Outercourse. and Daly's apparent decision not to publicly respond, greatly affected the reception of Daly's work among other feminist theorists, and has been described as a "paradigmatic example of challenges to white feminist theory by feminists of color in the 1980s."
Daly's reply letter to Lorde, dated four and a half months later, was found in 2003 in Lorde's files after she died., esp. pp. 24–26 & nn. 15–16, citing Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, by Alexis De Veaux (N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1st ed. 2004) (). Daly's reply was followed in a week by a meeting with Lorde at which Daly said, among other things, that Gyn/Ecology was not a compendium of goddesses but limited to "those goddess myths and symbols that were direct sources of Christian myth," but whether this was accepted by Lorde was unknown at the time.See ("week" per pp. 24 & 23).
Julie Kubala states that Gyn/Ecology’s “essentialist conception of gender is explicitly transphobic and implicitly racist.”
Wanda Warren Berry, Purushottama Bilimoria, Debra Campbell, Molly Dragiewicz, Marilyn Frye, Frances Gray, Hayes Hampton, Sarah Hoagland, Amber L. Katherine, AnaLouise Keating, Anne-Marrie Korte, Maria Lugones, Geraldine Moane, Sheilagh A. Mogford, Renuka Sharma, Laurel C. Schneider, and Marja Suhonen published their considered analyses of Daly's works and philosophy in Feminist Interpretations of Mary Daly, Penn State University Press, 2000.
In The Church and the Second Sex, Daly argued that religion and equality between women and men are not mutually exclusive. In her early works she sought to change religion and create an equal place for women in Catholicism by calling the church out on injustice and insisting on change. In the course of her writings her view of religion changed. She repudiated the Christian faith and regarded organized religion as inherently oppressive toward women by the time she wrote Beyond God and Father, stating that "woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan". In 1975, she characterized herself as a "post-Christian feminist".
Daly believed God to be an anti-feminist way of thinking. "If God is male then the male is God. How can a feminist worship a male God? The unholy trinity of rape, genocide and war are a result of the patriarchal society".
Daly eventually gave up on theology, believing it to be hopelessly patriarchal, and she turned her efforts towards philosophical feminism. She saw the Catholic Church as fundamentally corrupt, but it still had some value to her, as was evidenced by her love for her copy of Summa Theologica in her later days. Despite her abandonment of the subject, Daly's work opened the door for many more feminist theologians after her. Even when she moved on from the study of religion her ideas remained and inspired many of her contemporaries.
Daly's subsequent work was influenced by Wicca, though she rejected the characterization of her theology as being "Wiccan".
In Gyn/ Ecology (1978), Daly claimed that male culture was the direct, evil opposite of female nature, and that the ultimate purpose of men was death of both women and nature. Daly contrasted women's life-giving powers with men's death-dealing powers.
In Beyond God the Father (1973), she still believed that equality was important but argued more in terms of sexual difference than sexual equality.
In a 1999 interview with What Is Enlightenment? magazine, Daly said, " I don't think about men. I really don't care about them. I'm concerned with women's capacities, which have been infinitely diminished under patriarchy. Not that they've disappeared, but they've been made subliminal. I'm concerned with women enlarging our capacities, actualizing them. So that takes all my energy."
Later in the interview when asked about her opinion on Sally Miller Gearhart's proposal that "the proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race", she said, "I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."
Daly was the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation was published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire.
Mary Daly's book, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, was translated by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in Korea and published by Ewha Women's University in 1996. Hanamin Abeoji-reul Neomeoseo: Yeoseong-deulyi Habang-chelhak-eul Hyanghayeo (하나님 아버지를 넘어서: 여성들의 해방철학을 향하여). Mary Daly Jieum, Hwang Hye-Sook Yeokkeum (메리 데일리 지음, 황혜숙 엮음). Seoul: Ewha Women's University Press (이화여자대학교 출판부), 1996. ISBN 9788973003037. 9788973003037.
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