Comments on: Acts of Contrition: Feminism, Privilege, and the Legacy of Mary Daly

By: Download Movies

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By: The Wild Hunt » Goddess Religion and Misandry?

The Wild Hunt » Goddess Religion and Misandry? — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:44:34 +0000

[...] anti-goddess hate-fest is married to a pseudo-obituary of Mary Daly. I realize that Daly had said and advocated many problematic (even hateful) things during her life, but spitting on the dead is usually frowned on in civil society. You can expect that Kay’s [...]

By: John Salisbury

John Salisbury — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:15:41 +0000

Like many people, apparently, I’d never heard of Mary Daly till the obituaries started appearing on the internet; I was intrigued so I bought one of her books. I’ve never wanted to throw a book across the room so hard in my whole life, only because the writing is so shockingly bad. If it was a deliberate attempt to throw off the chains of Patriarchal English, to show how Patriarchy pervades everything and shapes convention–well, fine. I’d rather have those five hours of my life back.
As for the other issues brought up in this post, there’s still an awful lot of anger that needs to be processed, worked through before we can all settle down to reasoned discourse. Catharsis is never pretty, or tidy.

By: Ginsu Shark

Ginsu Shark — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:36:24 +0000

@Everyone, about the exterminating/excluding/positing essential difference from men thing: Honestly, that stuff just doesn’t register for me as offensive on the same level as providing a justification for excluding or committing violence and discrimination against an actually marginalized population
In this particular case, her hatred of men is extremely relevant to her transphobia, because the latter seemed to be directly derived from the former. Far as I can tell, she hated trans wome because she considered them to be men (more specifically, some sort of elite male strike force trying to infiltrate Woman and destroy it from the inside… so yeah)…

By: Article on Mary Daly « An und für sich

Article on Mary Daly « An und für sich — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:42:07 +0000

[...] January 13, 2010 This article on Mary Daly is well worth your time. Posted by Adam Kotsko Filed in feminism Leave a Comment [...]

By: falguni

falguni — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:39:28 +0000

yup, it’s true that mary daly held – and wrote about – beliefs that many of us today find abhorrent. in 1980, i questioned daly’s exclusionism in a discussion with my lesbian nun women’s studies professor (who studied with daly as an undergraduate and was a big fan). my professor said to me: “you don’t have to agree with everything she says. your task is to become a critical thinker. read, question, think, and develop your own opinions.”

By: Ika

Ika — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:43:54 +0000

Thanks for this – it was the first I heard that Mary Daly had died, and actually it’s exactly the way I would have liked to hear about it.

By: Random Linkspam… « random babble…

Random Linkspam… « random babble… — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:34:05 +0000

[...] Sady at Tiger Beatdown: Acts of Contrition: Feminism, Privilege, and the Legacy of Mary Daly [...]

By: Lisa Harney

Lisa Harney — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:48:14 +0000

As an even more specific example of that, Sady, I have several times had anti-trans radical feminists say that transphobia and trans misogyny from cis women doesn’t count because it’s cis men who are committing violence, not cis women.

And yet, and yet, the virulent transphobia and transmisogyny – the blatant hatred is part of the larger culture’s embrace of this trans hatred, it’s the same stuff dressed up in feminist theory that Peter LaBarbera and Focus on the Family says about trans people. And how does promoting an environment of trans hatred, of exclusion of trans women from DV and rape shelters, from other women-directed services, not contribute to the cultural violence directed at trans people?

I find it rather comparable to the way rape jokes and misogyny contribute to rape culture. Being on the receiving end of both, I don’t see much of a difference.

By: Sady

Sady — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:07:36 +0000

@belledame22: Oh, yeah. I don’t think there’s any argument that Daly WON’T warp you and make you a deeply ineffectual, or countereffectual, feminist: SHE WILL, as I can readily attest. I think her cartoonish extremes and fire-the-torpedos rhetoric are part of what makes her so powerful for young folk (like Valerie Solanas, in a way) who already feel powerless and drawn to fantasies of ultimate power. (It’s like X-Men comics! But, you know, for politics!) But if you don’t grow out of it and start actually thinking about how you CAN use whatever power you actually DO have to make things better, you end up acting like an idiot. And once she got onto the New-Age “ecofeminist” trip… hoo boy.

I sometimes think that’s exactly the appeal: sure, we can be as fancifully horrible as we want to be because (tacitly) not only do we not have the power to carry it out, *we never will.* Screw nuance and responsibility, full speed ahead!

Yes. Exactly. Not to make this a forum for my disgruntled whines, but I think there’s this tendency, in certain radfem circles, to actually assume your own complete powerlessness and victimhood as a badge of honor, and play that card whenever people point out that you’re being hurtful or gross or just plain wrong. Like, “but how could MY WORDS have ANY EFFECT on YOU OR THE WORLD! I am but an oppressed woman! The cards of the patriarchy, they are stacked against me!” It’s the tack that let Daly not notice how monstrous her genocidal fantasy world was – she was THE VICTIM, how could she have ANY RESPONSIBILITY in a world where she had zero power? – but it also comes up in debates with radfems, where they’ll all suddenly start paraphrasing a writer that I actually like, and will refer to for the sake of disgruntled-whining only as Fwisty of Fi Flame fe Fatriarchy, going, “well! I did not know that I, a FEMINIST, had ANY POWER here in PATRIARCHY! I SO APOLOGIZE for [shaming, offending, making incorrect assertions, etc.] since CLEARLY my actions have SO MUCH EFFECT on the world around me and I should TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEM.” Like, saying this as sarcasm. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever encountered, and it happens a lot, and I think it’s this specific radfem construction of Woman (no matter how straight, white, class-privileged or cisgender she be) as The Most Oppressed Person In The World, and Patriarchy as something so powerful and all-pervasive that any effective action against it is framed as literally impossible. I mean, enjoy your self-defined doomed rebellion against the Evil Empire, but I’m going to go with the assumption that I’m actually a person and my actions can matter, for better or worse.