Mary Daly

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Mary Daly (born October 16, 1928 in Schenectady , New York , † January 3, 2010 in Gardner , Massachusetts ) was an American Catholic theologian and philosopher . Until her retirement she taught theology at Boston College . She is considered one of the most radical representatives of feminist theology .

Life

Mary Daly came from a working class family with Irish ancestors . She studied English and Latin at the College of Saint Rose in New York and the Catholic University of America in Washington .

She received her first doctorate in theology in 1954 from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She then taught at Cardinal Cushing College, Brookline . Between 1959 and 1966 she taught Catholic theology and philosophy at the University of Friborg (Switzerland) . In 1963 she received her doctorate in theology with summa cum laude . In 1965 she did a third doctorate in philosophy.

From 1967 to 1999 Daly was an associate professor on the theological faculty of the Jesuit Boston College . Her research, teaching and publications focused on the doctrine of God and gender, feminist ethics and the theory and history of patriarchy . A Rockefeller grant enabled her to write Gyn / Ecology .

Daly described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist". She was initially a practicing Catholic, came to believe that all organized religions were irreparably patriarchal and called herself "post-Christian" in her later years.

Conflicts with Boston College

1969, in response to the publication of her first book The Church and the Second Sex (1968, "The Church and the second sex" ) in which it the misogyny laid bare the Catholic Church, it was the one time temporary contract had at Boston College who threatened dismissal. A petition with 1,500 signatures from the then mostly male student body and the support of the general public led to her permanent position. Daly's refusal to admit male students to some of her feminist ethics courses resulted in disciplinary action. While arguing that the presence of male students hampered discussion, the college administration saw a violation of both federal law prohibiting the exclusion of students because of their gender and its own non-discrimination policy that stipulated that all courses would be open to students of any gender.

In 1998 a discrimination lawsuit by two students was supported by the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative bar association. As a result of further warnings, Daly preferred to refuse classes rather than admit male students.

Boston College then withdrew her tenure rights , citing an oral agreement that Daly wanted to retire. Daly filed a lawsuit against the college for violating its tenure tenure, claiming she was coerced against her will. Your lawsuit was dismissed.

A confidential out-of-court settlement was concluded. The college claimed Daly had promised to retire from her position as a lecturer, while others claimed she was coerced. Daly, however, alleged that Boston College wronged its students by depriving them of their right to choose to teach only female students. She documented her account of the events in the 2006 book Amazon Grace: Recalling the Courage to Sin Big .

plant

Mary Daly's works Beyond God the Father (1973) and Gyn / Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) deal with the history and religion of patriarchy. Beyond God the Father is the last book in which Daly takes the view that God is material. She laid out her systematic theology according to Paul Tillich's model. Often considered a fundamental work in feminist theology, Beyond God the Father is her attempt to explain androcentrism and to overcome it in Western religion . It is characterized by its playful writing style and its attempt to have a conversation with God about the rehabilitation of the women's liberation movement against the writings of existentialist theologians such as Paul Tillich and Martin Buber . While the former increasingly marked her writings, she soon abandoned the latter. In Gyn / Ecology , she analyzes actual practices with which men attempted to mutilate and destroy women, such as female genital mutilation in Africa, the tying of the feet in China ( lotus foot ), the persecution of witches in Europe, gynecology in the USA in the wake of Nazi medicine, as rituals around the Consolidate patriarchy.

Her books Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984) and Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (1987) present and explore an alternative language to explain the process of exorcism and ecstasy . In Wickedary , Daly offers definitions, as well as chants, which she said can be used by women to break free from patriarchal oppression. She also examined the labels she said patriarchal society pinned on women in what it saw as male dominance of society. Daly said it is up to women to expose the liberating nature of labels like "hag", "witch" and "lunatic". In 1984, the New York Times Book Review, the religious scholar Demaris wrote about Pure Lust : “Mary Daly is an extraordinary woman and this is an extraordinary work, demanding unusual spiritual and intellectual effort from its readers. The effort is worth it. "

Daly's work influenced feminism and feminist theology as well as the development of a concept of biophilia as an alternative and challenge to social necrophilia . She was an ethical vegan and an activist for animal rights . Gyn / Ecology , Pure Lust, and Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary contained statements against animal testing and furs . Daly was a member of the Advisory Board for Feminists for Animal Rights, a group that has since been disbanded.

Daly created her own theological anthropology based on the framework of what it means to be a woman. She created mind games that divided the world into the world of false images, which creates oppression, and the world of the community of true being. She called these two areas foreground and background. Daly saw the foreground as the realm of patriarchy and the background as the realm of women. She argued that the background lay beneath and behind the surface of the false reality of the foreground. The foreground for Daly was a distortion of the real being, the paternalistic society in which, as she said, most people live. It has no real energy, but draws the “life energy” from women who are in the background. From their perspective, the foreground creates a world of poisons that contaminate natural life. She described the male-centered world, the foreground, as necrophilic, hating all living beings. In contrast, she conceives the background as a place where all living beings are connected.

Gyn / Ecology reception

According to Lucy Sargisson, Daly is looking for a real, wild woman's self- image in Gyn / Ecology , which she perceives as resting in the woman when she is temporarily pacified by patriarchal systems of rule.

Audre Lorde expresses concern about Gyn / Ecology , citing tendencies towards homogenization and a refusal to acknowledge women's history and the myth of women of color.

Her letter and Daly's apparent decision not to respond publicly strongly influenced the reception of her work by other feminist theorists and was described as a paradigm for challenges to white feminist theories by colored feminists in the 1980s.

Daly's letter of reply to Lorde is dated four and a half months later. Daly's response was followed within a week by a meeting with Lorde, at which Daly said among other things that Gyn / Ecology is not a compendium of goddesses, but limited to those goddesses, myths and symbols that are direct sources of Christian myths. It is not known whether this was recognized by Lorde.

Views on religion

In her work The Church and the Second Sex , Daly writes that religion and the equality of women and men are not mutually exclusive. In the course of her writings, however, her understanding of religion changed; When she wrote Beyond God and Father , she believed that women were fundamentally oppressed by organized religions and stated that women who asked for equality in the church would be treated similarly to black people who were in the Ku Klux Klan would ask for equal treatment.

Views on gender relations

In The Church and the Second Sex , Daly argues for equality between the sexes and finds that the church must recognize the importance of equality between men and women. She writes that women and men are created equal.

In her book Beyond God and Father (1973), Daly states that equality is important, but argues more in terms of sexual differences than equality between the sexes.

In an interview with EnlightenNext 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 ”

“I don't think about men. I really don't care. I study the abilities of women who have been infinitely degraded under patriarchy. Not that they have disappeared, but they have been suppressed. I am concerned with how we women expand our abilities, bring them to fruition. This takes all of my energy. "

- Mary Daly : Interview with Susan Bridle

In the same interview, she said when asked if she agreed with Gearhart's thesis that the proportion of men in humanity should be reduced to 10% and kept at this level:

“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. "

“In my opinion, that's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there has to be a decontamination of the earth. I believe that this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will lead to a drastic reduction in the population of men. "

- Mary Daly : Interview with Susan Bridle

Views on transsexuality

In her work Gyn / Ecology, Daly expresses her negative view of transsexuality . She writes:

“Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent […] phallocratic technology. [...] Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes. "

“Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is ubiquitous [...] phallocratic technology. […] Transsexuality is an example of male surgical procreation that penetrates the female world with surrogates. "

- Mary Daly

"Transsexualism, which Janice Raymond has shown to be essentially a male problem, is an attempt to change males into females, whereas in fact no male can assume female chromosomes and life history / experience."

"Transsexuality, as Janice Raymond has shown, appears to be essentially a male problem, an attempt to change men into women, while in reality no man can adopt female chromosomes and life stories / experiences."

- Mary Daly Gyn / Ecology , op. Cit. , Page 238 n.

“The surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual kingdom […] can be said to produce feminine persons. They cannot produce women. "

“It can be said that the surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual realm [...] create feminine persons. However, they cannot produce women. "

- Mary Daly Gyn / Ecology , op. Cit. , p. 68 (n. 60 (at end) omitted)

Brittany Shoot criticized Daly for her views as transphobic .

Daly was the doctor's mother of Janice Raymond , whose dissertation The Transsexual Empire , published in 1979, is critical of transsexuality according to its intention.

Publications

Books

  • The Church and the Second Sex . Harper & Row, 1968. OCLC 1218746
  • Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation . Beacon Press, 1973, ISBN 0-8070-2768-5 .
  • Gyn / Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism . Beacon Press, 1978, ISBN 0-8070-1510-5 .
  • Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy . Beacon Press, 1984, ISBN 0-8070-1504-0 .
  • Jane Caputi, Mary Daly, Sudie Rakusen: Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language . Beacon Press, Boston 1987, ISBN 0-8070-6733-4 .
  • Outercourse: The Bedazzling Voyage, Containing Recollections from My Logbook of a Radical Feminist Philosopher . HarperSanFrancisco, 1992, ISBN 0-06-250194-1 .
  • Quintessence ... Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto . Beacon Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8070-6790-3 .
  • Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big . Palgrave Macmillan, 1st ed. Jan. 2006, ISBN 1-4039-6853-5 .

Selected items

  • The Spiritual Dimension of Women's Liberation . In: Notes From The Third Year: Women's Liberation. 1971.
  • A Call for the Castration of Sexist Religion . In: The Unitarian Universalist Christian 27 (Autumn / Winter 1972), pp. 23-37.
  • God Is A Verb . In: Ms . (Dec 1974), pp. 58-62, 96-98.
  • Prelude to the First Passage . In: Feminist Studies. Issue 4, Number 3 (Oct. 1978), pp. 81-86. The text is from the book Gyn / Ecology , which was not published at the time.
  • Sin big . In: The New Yorker. February 26 and March 4, 1996, pp. 76-84.

Dissertations

  • Natural Knowledge of God in the Philosophy of Jacques Maritain . Officium Libri Catholici, 1966, OCLC 2219525 .
  • The Problem of Speculative Theology . Thomist Press. 1965. OCLC (4 records) .

further reading

Books

  • Marlies Fröse (Ed.): Utopos. No place. Mary Daly's Critique of Patriarchy and Feminist Politics. 1st edition. AJZ Druck und Verlag , Bielefeld 1988, ISBN 3-921680-71-9 .
  • Erika Wisselinck : Women think differently. To the feminist discussion. As an introduction and to think further. 1st edition. Christel Göttert Verlag, Rüsselsheim 1992, ISBN 3-922229-26-3 .
  • Eveline Ratzel (Ed.): The BIG SIN - The lust to sin: Mary Daly and her work . 1st edition. Christel Göttert Verlag, Rüsselsheim 2011, ISBN 978-3-939623-32-8 .

Obituaries

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Margalit Fox: Mary Daly, a Leader in Feminist Theology, Dies at 81 . The New York Times. January 6, 2010. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  2. ↑ Thomas C. Fox: Mary Daly, radical feminist theologian, dead at 81 . In: National Catholic Reporter . January 4, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ Matt Stefon: Mary Daly. American theologian, philosopher, and ethicist . In: Encyclopedia Britannica
  4. ↑ It is Title IX of the United States Education Amendments of 1972
  5. ↑ Michael Seele: Daly's Absence Prompts Cancellations. (No longer available online.) The Boston College Chronicle, March 4, 1999, archived from the original on November 19, 2014 ; Retrieved November 5, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Mark Sullivan: Judge Denies Daly's Bid for Injunction . The Boston College Chronicle. May 28, 1999. Archived from the original on November 19, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  7. ↑ Mary Daly Dies at 81 . In: Associated Press , January 6, 2010. Retrieved January 13, 2010. 
  8. ↑ Catherine Madsen: The Thin Thread of Conversation: An Interview with Mary Daly . In: Cross Currents . Fall 2000. Retrieved January 23, 2010.
  9. ↑ Mary Daly Ends Suit, Agrees to Retire . The Boston College Chronicle. February 15, 2001. Archived from the original on March 6, 2015. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  10. ↑ Tina Pippin: Mary Daley In: Encyclopedia of American Religious History by Edward L. Queen II, Stephen R. Prothero, Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr. Verlag Sonlight Christian, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-8160-6660-5 , P. 326
  11. ^ Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite: Mary Daly's 'Courage to Sin Big' . In: The Washington Post . January 5, 2010. Archived from the original on January 20, 2010. Retrieved on August 25, 2011.
  12. ↑ Martin Kettle: Unholy row as feminist lecturer bars men . The Guardian. February 27, 1999. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  13. ↑ a b c Caryn D. Riswold: Two Reformers. Martin Luther and Mary Daly as Political Theologians . Wipf & Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR 2007, ISBN 1-59752-826-9 , pp. 33, 34 f ..
  14. ↑ writing against the phallocracy , diestandard.at, 14. October 2008
  15. ^ A b Rosemary Radford Ruether: Women and Redemption: A Theological History . Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1998, ISBN 0-8006-2947-7 , pp. 218-9.
  16. ^ A b Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Marilyn Frye, Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly , Penn State Press, 2000, pp. 60, 267, ISBN 0-271-02019-9
  17. ↑ Lucy Sargisson: Contemporary feminist utopianism . Routledge, London; New York 1996, ISBN 978-0-415-14175-8 , p. 184.
  18. ↑ Lorde Audre : An Open Letter to Mary Daly . Crossing Press, Berkeley 1984, pp. 66-71.
  19. ↑ Audre Lorde's letter is discussed in Daly's book Outercourse .
  20. ↑ Amazon Grace (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 1st ed. [1st printing?] Jan. 2006), pp. 25-26 (reply text).
  21. ↑ Amazon Grace , supra, pages 22-26, further pages 24-26 and 15-16, citing Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde , by Alexis De Veaux (NY: WW Norton, 1st ed. 2004) ( ISBN 0393019543 or ISBN 0-393-32935-6 ).
  22. ↑ Amazon Grace , supra, page 23 ("week" on pages 24 & 23).
  23. ^ Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Marilyn Frye: Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly . Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. 2000, ISBN 978-0-271-02018-1 , p. 114.
  24. ↑ Nicholas King: Whispers of Liberation: Feminist Perspectives on the New Testament . Paulist Press, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-8091-3816-6 , p. 41.
  25. ^ Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Marilyn Frye: Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly . Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. 2000, ISBN 978-0-271-02018-1 , p. 114: ““ Daly's first work, The Church and The Second Sex, was written in a Roman Catholic context. She argues for equality between men and women. The church must acknowledge the importance of striving for equality, otherwise it will look as if Christianity is an enemy of human progress. At the end of the 1960s, Daly argued for the fundamental equality of women and men in theological terms. She looks as Thomas Aquinas's concepts of woman and soul. ""
  26. ^ Ginette Castro: American feminism: a contemporary history . New York University Press, New York 1990, ISBN 978-0-8147-1435-5 , p. 46: "" Mary Daly asserted that woman is equal to man from her origin, for God created her as a perfect being in His own image ... Mary Daly gives an egalitarian reinterpretation of the Creation myth ""
  27. ^ Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Marilyn Frye: Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly . Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. 2000, ISBN 978-0-271-02018-1 , p. 114: “In her second feminist work, Beyond God and Father (1973), Daly continues to criticize the essentialist concept of woman. She still sees equality between the sexes as an important goal, even though women's autonomy is primary. However, she no loner thinks in terms of equality, but rather in terms of difference, and she describes her position as radical feminism. "
  28. ^ A b Susan Bridle: No Man's Land Archived from the original on December 14, 2007. In: What Is Enlightenment? . No. 16, 1999. ISSN  1946-0805 . Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  29. ↑ Daly, Mary, Gyn / Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, Mass .: Beacon Press, pbk. [1st printing? Printing of [19] 90?] 1978 & 1990 (prob. All content except New Intergalactic Introduction 1978 & prob. New Intergalactic Introduction 1990) ( ISBN 0-8070-1413-3 )), pp. 70-71 (page break within ellipsis between sentences) ( New Intergalactic Introduction is separate from Introduction: The Metapatriarchal Journey of Exorcism and Ecstasy ).
  30. ↑ Brittany Shoot: The Biotic Woman: Talking About Transphobia and Ecofeminism With Ida Hammer . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  31. ^ In Notes From The Third Year: Women's Liberation (NY: Notes From the Second Year, Inc., 1971). Pp. 75-79.
personal data
SURNAME Daly, Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American radical feminist, theologian, and professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Schenectady , New York
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2010
Place of death Gardner (Massachusetts)