Mary Daly

Career

Daly taught classes at Boston College from 1967 to 1999, including courses in theology, feminist ethics, and patriarchy.

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. Daly allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.

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.

Perspectives on Daly's work

Although Daly described herself as a radical feminist, other theorists such as Alice Echols, Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth V. Spelman situated her thinking in cultural feminism, of which premises are called by Ellen Willis “antithetical” to those of radical feminism.

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 Lucia 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.

Views

On religion

At the beginning of her career, Daly had been a practicing Roman Catholic.

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".

On feminism

In Gyn/Ecology (1978), she criticized the "Equal Rights" feminist framework. Many feminist thinkers consider the choice to use an "equality" lens (also known as an "equity" or "equality" framework) a distinctive mark of politically liberal, rather than politically radical or postmodern, feminisms. Daly's argument was that the equality framework serves to distract women from the radical goal of altering or abolishing patriarchy as a whole, directing them instead towards gaining reforms within the existing system. According to Daly, such reforms leave women vulnerable because, though they grant nominal legal equality with men, the larger structures of patriarchy are left intact, and the later repeal of reforms is always possible. She also argued that the "equality" framework de-centers women from feminist thought when it encourages women to assimilate into male-dominated movements or institutions.

On men

In The Church and the Second Sex, Daly argued for the equality between the sexes and stated that the church must acknowledge the importance of equality between men and women. She wrote that women and men were created equal.

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."

On transgender persons

In Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her view of transgender persons, writing, "Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent ... in ... phallocratic technology ... Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes." "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." "The surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual kingdom ... can be said to produce feminine persons. They cannot produce women."

Daly was the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation was published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire.