When Boston College became fully coeducational in 1971, Daly said she would no longer admit men into her classes, though if they showed genuine interest, she would tutor them privately. For the next 30 years, any time a man tried to register for one of her women’s studies or theology seminars, he was rebuffed. Men were a distraction, she felt. They sucked up the energy in a classroom. “I hear words like ‘separate’ and ‘equal,’ ” she told an interviewer. “I don’t care about those words. I want there to be women’s space, where there can be explosions of thought.”...
At speaking engagements, she refused to take questions from men, saying it was important for them to understand what it feels like to be voiceless and ignored. “There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard,” she wrote in “Outercourse,” her 1992 autobiography. “Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imaginations, and that I will continue to do so.”
December 23, 2010
"Phallocracy, penocracy, jockocracy, cockocracy — call it whatever," Mary Daly fought it.
She's one of the dead-this-year individuals profiled in the NYT Magazine's annual "Lives They Lived" issue.
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In a cluttered apartment just outside Boston, Daly lived alone with a cat.
Least surprising personal detail ever?
A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
I find it interesting that she thought that males didn't listen to females. Sure, in a long term relationship, esp. as we age a bit, many of us males seem to tune our womenfolk out a bit. But overall? I think that position is highly fanciful.
I would also suggest that women are as closed to men, as men sometimes are to women. I am always amazed at all that goes on in my office that I don't have a clue about. The women talk about it among themselves, but it is often hard to get it out of them, even if it affects me.
I assume that she was teaching at a private college, because her attitude and actions would have likely violated the 14th Amdt. if done in a state school.
I do think that 40 years ago, she may have had a point. But not today, and not over the last couple of decades. If anything, much of this country has turned into a matriarchy, and no where is it worse than in our educational system.
One word describes her: psychotic.
In saner times she would be the madwoman roaming the campus rather than leading a class.
But what such feminists never understood was that it was hardly an injustice to be voiceless and ignored by blathering ignoramuses.
But they had to force their way in, so now we have twice the number of blathering ignoramuses than we used to have.
@Meade So Mary Daly was younger than yesterday?
All my life I've been repressed by the cuntocracy--help, help, I'm bein' repressed. And as for cuntspeak, well wink wink nudge nudge say no more.
Oh, there goes my pussy whinin', she'll want to be fed, and then spanked, and then she'll make me have her way with her. Oh wicked, wicked, puss. Tomorrow, I've got to fetch her a shrubbery
What she hated was men, say it.
PS Dad, you nailed it.
PPS Am I the only one that recognized only about a third (or so) of the names?
The gynosaurs are dying out. Was it climate change or meteors?
"They were all meat-eaters." -- Paulie Walnuts
It's a hippie punch!
I didn't recognize many of the names either. Of course, if you don't recognize all the names, then you can't be one of us.
....and you're probably a breeder adding to the problem that we want to solve.
Along with Tip O'Neill and John F. Kerry, one of the people who makes me ashamed to hold a BC diploma.
Ah, memories. Mary Daly was one of several left-wing luminaries at war with the Jesuit administration when I attended BC in the early 1980s.
I came in a leftist, so I was receptive to her theories.
But the Woman's Studies cult she had always reminded me of that day in elementary school when all the girls were taken out of class and shown the movie about menstruation.
And then they came back to class all sworn to secrecy against the boys.
Right about now, she's writhing in the Lake of Fire, wishing she were not such a putz. Pun intended.
She was all about rage when rage was still new enough to make a point. It didn't age well, though, and my guess is neither did she. It's too empty at the center to have much to offer over the long haul.
What comes to mind is Lear on his heath, vowing "kill, kill ...." He carried through. Not sure whether Ms. Daly did or not.
I had a professor back in '93 who made it clear on the first day of class that she didn't welcome the male students who were present. None of them showed up after that. I was a pretty big feminist at the time and I remember thinking it was pretty shitty of her.
One day she presented us a slideshow, lots of pictures of her as a very beautiful young woman. She married a guy who put it in the prenup that if she gained 30 pounds, he could divorce her, and she'd get nothing. She promptly got fat, got divorced, and banished all men from her life. I was never so uncomfortable in a classroom. She was also anti-semitic, though she tried, unsuccessfully, to keep it subtle.
I think Daly would only have been happy in a separate nation for Vagino-Americans.
Vintage Jon Stewart, in 1999, on Daly's forced retirement. "The Feminine Mistake."
paul a'barge said...
Right about now, she's writhing in the Lake of Fire
The Spawn of Satan: Mary Daly. Ominous.
It's the classic leftist response.
1. x is hateful, immoral, repulsive and repressive
2. So to make it even I shall adopt all those same attitudes that I so abhor in x
Men are misogynist, so I hate men.
Whitey hates the black man, so I hate whitey.
If something is immoral and repulsive, why would you want to emulate it? Do you really ever 'get even' like that?
That's not even counting the biological differences.
Another dead misandrist. No great loss to humanity.
"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one." ~Nietzsche
I had to take a "gender studies" class to fullfill a graduation requirement.
I was hideously unwelcome and the only other guy in the class was possibly less welcome as he was in ROTC and had to wear his uniform once a week.
My first test came back a C and I had a chat with the teacher. I told her that I was working my way through school and any more grading like that would result in a lawsuit against her, the department, and the university.
Got a B, which is what I deserved.
Terrible class. And I say that as an econ major - the readings were horrible.
What might have been even worse was that the majors in the class didn't think it was at all strange.
-XCs
from the article:
When Boston College became fully coeducational in 1971, Daly said she would no longer admit men into her classes
and later in the article:
She was forced to retire from Boston College after, in 1998, a male student threatened to sue over her exclusionary policies, accusing her — with no lost irony — of sexism
27 years!!! If ever there was an indictment of tenure and academia this is it!
Daly always brought to mind the basis for Jeanne Krikpatrick's phrase "Blame America first."
Her book Gyn/Ecology detailed foot binding in China, witch burning in Europe, Suttee in India, and genital mutilation in Africa.
But you know, you can't say stuff like that without admitting that the US is at least as bad, which she did by discussing . . . psychotherapy, in such even-handed terms that she spelled therapist as "the/rapist".
Made one want to smack her upside the head with a big ol' Labrys.
Tedious woman. Tedious topic. Shallow. Tiresome. Tedious. Explosively tedious.
She's dead.
Good.
Isn't it interesting that back in the 50s and 60s, having separate men's and women's colleges was horrible, but when coeducation prevailed, it was necessary for separate classes to give women room to think.
Some kinds of people are hard to please.
I can think of no better seat than the ducking stool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_scold) for this intolerant woman. Strap her in.
She was tone deaf and studied music. She thought her inability to feel the melody gave her impartiality. Gender studies that does not acknowledge the dynamics of sexual attraction misses the point, or perhaps missing the point is the point.....She was in rebellion against Catholicism, but her wish to scrub the libido out of life was, in fact, very Irish Catholic.
I think that EDH's videos say it all. If Stewart goes after someone that far to the left, it's all over for them.
An inspiring list, including Daly, of folks who push themselves out of the comfort zone to accomplish their visions. I admit she is extreme in her views.
But even today men often do not listen to women, and my wife, a department chair, serves up daily examples-.
Are women subject to the rampant disorder that we may refer to as "Phallo-Cephalism"? [get it, urgh?]
Why, Yes!, some--indeed--are. Explurgions of thought, perhaps, fueled by testosterone in The Female Brain... but, of course!
Just, erm, less often, statistically speaking.
I would be willing to bet that her personal grooming habits would be in keeping with ironrailsironweights preference.
Is Twazi a word? I think it should be.
Mary Daly's final solution:
"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."
If there is justice beyond the life of man then Miss Daly is spending eternity boiling in semen.
She was just another bigot.
roesch-voltaire said...
"But even today men often do not listen to women, and my wife, a department chair, serves up daily examples-."
Many men listen to no one of either gender. And the same can be said of many women.
Mary Daly will not be missed.
"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."
So, she envisioned the future as a harem. A harem with I Dream of Genie outfits I assume.
r-v:
"But even today men often do not listen to women"
Oh, nonsense: people don't listen to people. Happens all the time, in all possible combination of genders.
Wasn't Mary Daley the one that caused all that commotion at the Democratic Convention in 1968?
Sounds like a delightful person and your typical college professor type there.
Merry Christmas.
Hello? The DEPARTMENT CHAIR says men don't listen to women? Listen to YOURSELF, man! How does a woman get the job of DEPARTMENT CHAIR without being listened to, a lot? What's her secret, sloppy blowjobs?
One word describes her: psychotic.
Some type of mental problem, that's for sure - but modern feminism is the art of turning one's personal, psychological problems into other people's political problems.
More interesting are the pitiful dweebs who wanted to attend her "classes", or cared what she thought - what's up with that?
Maybe Mary Daly was playing a deeper game. Her extremism can not possibly have helped the feminist cause. Maybe she actually hated women not men.
Those Jesuits are brilliant! They look confident in their principles by letting an anti-Catholic be on their faculty and she helps to advance their agenda.
Or possibly she was an unwitting crazy person.
Ann Althouse said...
@Meade So Mary Daly was younger than yesterday?
No. We are.
In a cluttered apartment just outside Boston, Daly lived alone with a cat.
She had been offered a litter of kittens and drowned all the males.
(Yes, I am making that up.)
Meade said that I said: "@Meade So Mary Daly was younger than yesterday?" And then he said: "No. We are"
Let's look at the lyric you quoted — from "My Back Pages," which, of course, has the line "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" (which The Byrds covered on their album "Younger Than Yesteday"). The part you quoted was:
A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Now, how does that relate to Mary Daly? It was Daly who rejected the simple straightforward notion of equality, so she rejected the "self-ordained professor's... spout[ing]" about liberty. She had a more elaborately developed idea that, to her, went beyond formal equality. That's why I prodded you with the idea that she was in fact the one who, in the logic of Dylan's lyric, was "younger than yesterday."
"Now, how does that relate to Mary Daly?"
I purposely omitted the younger than yesterday line because, I suspect, in her self-ordained role professing "post-Christian radical lesbian" feminism, she became less joyful, less forgiving and open-minded, less humane, more doctrinaire, and more humorless.
Now tell me - why did you elide over "too serious to fool"?
But even today men often do not listen to women, and my wife, a department chair, serves up daily examples-.
For example R-V rarely listens to his wife.
I thank God every day that subjects like physical chemistry, nuclear engieering and electrodynamics exist. The only "explosions" one will hear will not be of thought in the classrooms that exclude men but that of the brains such as Mary Daly's rupturing when some raw science and engineering reduces their cranial concrete to dust.
Nichevo maybe you know a lot about sloppy blow jobs, but little about how one becomes department chair in academia, and even less about the perspective of women. Ah but we men are so cocksure that when we speak the world listens-
I admit she is extreme in her views.
Well, that's might manly of you.
I agree with Fagin that math and computer science is the escape from the Daly types. Mechanical engineering is another. If you take a women's studies class it sucks some of the intelligence right our of your brain.
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