Feminist theologian Mary Daly dies
Another theologian in Catholic circles passes away this week, this time the controversial feminist theologian Mary Daly who taught at Boston College for 33 years. I received the following message from Daly’s colleague Mary Hunt via a bulletin from Feminist Studies in Religion:
With a heavy heart, yet grateful beyond words for her life and work, I report that Mary Daly died this morning, January 3, 2010 in Massachusetts. She had been in poor health for the last two years.Her contributions to feminist theology, philosophy, and theory were many, unique, and if I may say so, world-changing. She created intellectual space; she set the bar high. Even those who disagreed with her are in her debt for the challenges she offered.
When I return from vacation at week’s end I will post more. But I want WATER colleagues, of which she was a stalwart one, to know this now. She always advised women to throw our lives as far as they would go. I can say without fear of exaggeration that she lived that way herself.
May her spirit soar and her ideas endure.
Mary E. Hunt
Hoechenschwand, Germany
Uncharitable comments will be deleted.
I will never forget coming across her works for the first time in a Chicago-area New Age bookstore in the late 1980’s. I sat on the floor for hours, totally transfixed and walked around in a daze after having spent precious discretionary undergraduate dollars on all of her books the store carried. I read them in a blaze in my crappy little apartment and felt like the top of my head was blowing off.
By the time I entered Harvard Divinity School ten years later I had parted ways with her on some things—but have never ceased to consider her a cherished spiritual mother. She inscribed my copy of Gyn/Ecology “For Victoria, Wishing you Wicked Wandering.”
This news is strangely devastating and I can see already from the dismayed chatter on FaceBook that I am far from alone in grieving her loss and celebrating her contributions.
Thank you for letting us know.
She was a remarkable woman from all accounts and from her legacy. May she rest in peace and find the place that her exodus was leading her too.
We here in Iceland grief this great theologian and send you all our condolences.
May she rest in eternal light.
May her spirit light our own.
Hers was the first feminist work I read, and my life has not been the same since.
I found so much bravery and solace in her work at a time in my life when I was lacking both. I will miss her but am forever grateful for the writing and legacy she leaves behind.
I loved Mary Daly for her outrageous self and her work for feminist liberation ~ she was an original whose works will live on long after she’s gone. I attended a lecture she gave for Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Boston… I think it was 2003. Memorable!
For your life and your work—thank you, Mary.
I’m sorry to hear of anyone’s death but she really was a true man-hater.
However, we shoudl always try to see the good in any person no matter how extreme their views, and at least her test case at Boston college served a very useful purpose exposing the misandry that tarnishes so many universities and that sexism and discrimination in the classroom is so very wrong and will never be tolerated.
I’m so sorry to hear of her death. “A true man hater”? Perhaps she just loved women greatly.
Actually she didn’t just hate men, she was rather transphobic too (although she regarded that as a male problem so I guess it’s all rooted in the whoel man-hating thing really).
Daly applauded the idea that the percentage of men on the earth should be controlled and maintained at 10% and there should be a decontamination of the earth in order for life to survive.
If wanting to rid the planet of the vast majority of men isn’t man hating then what is?
Mary Daly, along with Audre Lorde, and Andrea Dworkin, left behind a world where understanding that ‘sexism’ is directional, based on institutional power, never quite made it to the foreground. I can envision the triumvirate of the Three Revolting Hags, peace made, plotting in unison to upend patriarchy, and create a Motherworld where all are allowed to Be. To All Revolting Hags, the work is ours, but we are not at all alone.
Thanks for writing this. Here is my memorial post for her:
http://yezida.livejournal.com/213924.html
We owe a great debt.
I was a blossoming feminist in the mid-70’s and along came Mary Daly who helped me reframe my life. I credit her brilliant mind for creating a new world with the evolution continuing. She gave many of us the words we needed to express ourselves, inspired and encouraged many of us into social action, and shared pieces of her never-ending spirit with all. May she be greeted passionately by the universe.
RIP Mary Daly
I attended a lecture of hers while on vacation in Ireland in the 1990s and she was spectacular. Two+ hours of humor and energy, crazy and brilliant and radical.
She gave me courage to go and explore the “outerland” and find my heart’s wisdom
and satisfy my soul’s hunger. A thousand voices called me back. She stayed. Blessed be Mary
Reading Daly at a young age taught me about courage, breaking boundaries, re-imagining the world, and trusting myself. I was forever changed, and am deeply grateful for her life and work.
I met Mary Daly at a local retirement home several months ago. As we spoke of BC and my appreciation of Thomas Groome’s relational theology demonstrated by his remembering my name 15 years after I was in his class, frowning, she said, “Why isn’t it remarkable that YOU remembered HIS name?! We laughed together as I appreciated her pedagogy.
I may disagree with Daly’s transphobia and her marginalisation of women of colour, but otherwise, she was an incisive, legendary figure, a Profoundly Revolting Crone (the best sort!)
Blessed be as you Spin into the Background of our Being, Wisewoman
Mary Daly was my heroine of heroines! She was the greatest lesbian feminist who ever lived.
Her works never let women down, she never compromised in her demand for women’s freedom. I am so glad we have blogs to commenmorate her, because I didn’t see anything on the malestream news about her death.
I’ve been reading her books since the early 1980s, and have applied her tactics to battling male supremacy and patriarchy every day. She was the voice of such power, intellectual adventure and greatness. I loved it that she was always on women’s side, always challenging us to be intellectual greats ourselves.
I hope that we can make a film biography of her life, and that we all can celebrate who we are as truly liberated women from her example.
Mary Daly’s work changed my life, my thinking, and my writing. Gyn/Ecology. An epic of expansion for me as as young feminist art critic and art historian when it was published. I remember talking with my friend, the art critic Arlene Raven, about the book when it came out, and we both said that our writing would never be the same. Poetry, creativity, brilliance, passion—to the nth degree: thank you Mary Daly. I celebrate your life and your art.
Thank you all for your comments. I have issues with a lot of Daly’s later thought, but it is powerful to hear your stories about the impact her work had on you.
In solidarity,
m
I just got off the phone with my ex-lover from 1979 to tell her Mary Daly passed yesterday. Libby brought the book, Gyn/Ecology, into my home that year. What a touchstone for us; an old mutual friend, mentor, passed on. Mary Daly gave voice to the feminist thoughts and intuitions I had had about gender since kindergarten. I was already an organically radical genderbending woman but Mary threw the bell curve so far that, as radical as I was at the time, ironically Mary helped people accept me. Gyn/Ecology, for me, at the age of 25, opened up a road of empowerment to revisit education and truthful feminist conversation. Reading that book sparked a thirst and purpose that led me to decades of feminist studies in juriprudence, politics, arts/music, and anthropology. I have been baffled at how so little credit was given to Mary Daly, even by feminists who were so obviously borrowing and building on her groundbreaking work. It was like she was written out of history and feminist history, which I found frustrating. Last night, my ambling thoughts led me to back to Mary again, as I thought about how the Wikipedia and its variations had a name that really started with the Wickedary (again, no credits to Mary). I was prompted to dig out the NY Times 1987 review of the Wickedary and post it on my facebook. Then, today, I got a message from my friend that our mentor had passed away yesterday. My timing was based on what Mary would have called “pure lust.” I hope that Mary’s work will be revisited, studied, and honored, and keep “spinning” as did she. Thank you Scholar Warrior.
Thank you Mary Daly. You made so made of us question what we had been told was truth…to shake my world….to witness to boldness…..and to give me an image of radical….I am forever grateful.
Mary Daly continues to awaken my inner warrioress. I cannot remain unmoved by her radical and magnificent writing, with all the reclaimings of words, concepts and the core of our feminine souls. Granted, once one reads Mary, there is not going back to the ordinariness of accepting the status quo – but that is a GOOD thing.
Thank you, Mary, for your A-mazing voyage! I will read your books once more, savoring every single word, every brush of wild wings that raise me up and free my heart and soul. Love you!
I hope I never forget the evening Prof. Mary Daly came to Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and addressed us in the chapel in Bishop’s Hall, ca. 1987-88. I was a Unitarian Universalist seminarian then and Candler was in its golden age. James Fowler was my mentor, for example.
Daly was fearless, provocative and passionate.
It’s been about 15 years since I’ve read her books.
I think I’ll go to Amazon.com & see what her last titles were.
She made herstory.
Shocked at her passing; saddened that it’s been so long since she was a strong public presence.
I thank the One in whose image Mary was made for gifting her to us for a time!
Rev. Lauralyn Bellamy (ret.)
Correction: the chapel was not in Bishop’s Hall! Another senior moment! ;-)
Sorry for the typo on my URL - which I’ve just corrected!
A great woman! Boston College treated her very shabbily in the end. Academia has all too few over-the-top and outrageous professors, and every loss of such a person hurts.
Mary Daly, in I can’t remember which book, made me aware of how infant formula companies prey on new mothers to undermine breast-feeding and sell their product, often to the detriment and death of the babies involved. Thanks to her, I became a fervent breast-feeding advocate, even before my own babies were born, and still am one today.
I’m a man, and she wasn’t a man-hater. Though she was quite busy and I was a nobody grad student, Mary very generously had many conversations with me in the 90s, some in person, some over the phone ( I was studying feminist spirituality). She always left the snippers at home, if she owned any.
I also have to say, the Audre Lord essay is over-rated and really kind of a joke, one of those “you’re not writing the books I want you to write” complaints that have little or no real weight. A shame, since Lord deserves to be remembered for her better writing, and since Mary Daly is routinely and without reason labeled as some sort of unthinking ethnocentric (though she surely was, blessedly, an eccentric).
As clare said, “she … loved women greatly.” How revealing that this simple, courageous act is still so controversial. Peace, Mary—and thank you.
Her work transformed my life—when we “discovered” her in our Women and Religion group at the local UU church, we felt like we’d found a new well from which to drink. So many challenges she handed us. Such courage. May we take up her song and continue to sing…
As a young feminist, I studied with Mary Daly at Sagaris Feminist Institute in Lyndonville Vermont. She changed my mind and my life, that Radical Hag! I am forever in her debt.
May she continue to stir the Celestial Cauldron for the good of women and the planet!
Obit anus, abit onus
I wrote about Mary Daly’s death, which I mourn, on my blog as well.
I then had both the wonderful and unfortunate privilege of my blog being featured on the website of boston.com, the largest website in the city of Boston, and host to the local newspaper, the Boston Globe. Sadly, this means that, unlike the stream of comments I might get from my “regular” readers (I am so jealous reading your comments), I got quite a few very angry men who were sure to stop in just to make sure they spewed their “man-hating nutcase” reviews of her life.
If anyone on here is so inclined, I’d love to have some of your powerful comments echoed on my blog. It would do my little heart good, as I reflect on this woman’s powerful legacy, made all the more visible by the reaction to her death.
Thanks.
Hi Robin,
I just posted over at your place, and thank you for your tribute. Mary Daly will always be remembered for unfailing dedication to women who loved freedom everywhere. She was a woman’s woman!
I am a 44 year old man. I saw Mary Daly speak in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1993. Very funny person and articulate. About the “man-hating” thing. A lot of men have a hard time being alone, a lot of men have a hard time listening and relating to women, a lot of men are violent and abusive towards women, a lot of men are on a power trip and see women and other men as being beneath them. Men are responsible for large amounts of violence in the societies that make up the world. Even Audre Lorde says in an interview with Adrienne Rich that she saw the future of humanity through women and that there are more women born than men. If men see Mary Daly’s life as “man hating”, maybe they are confusing indifference with catering to the emotional needs of men, with hate. I don’t agree with some things Mary Daly says in her books but she is thought provoking. I am impressed that so many Catholic women read her work with so much profit. I see more hate in Ann Coulter than I do in Mary Daly.
Thanks K. Remember when women refuse to pay any attention to men at all, and want to work and be with women 100% this is considered manhating. How else do men insure a cheap source of labor, free sexual access to women, and plenty of breeding machines.
The very act of totally wanting to be separate from men is considered hatred. Interesting isn’t it. If Mary Daly had truly hated men, she would have avocated guns and violence against the oppressors. Terrorists, rapists, fighter jet bombers, serial killers, and war are pretty much men’s hatred not just of women but of all human beings. Dropping atomic bombs… Japan hating?
So the thing is, when the slaves revolt, and the slaves are men, they are considered freedom fighters (naturally). Women get freedom in a completely different way than men. What we do is we form our own groups, we don’t associate with men at all, and we work to develop passionate friendships with each other. That’s what women do to get freedom. Funny how this very nonviolent approach is considered the hatred of men. Men should reform, but they won’t, and I walked out of patriarchy ages ago. Who hired Ann Coulter and doesn’t report on any aspect of Mary Daly’s life? Who controls what women get to be on TV? Who is the puppet master?
It was such a breath of fresh air to read Mary Daly in the 1970’s. What a eye-opening gift to consider the notion of female divinity.
For an interesting visual aspect to this story, see an article about San Francisco artist Colette Crutcher’s mural of the Goddess/Virgin Tontanzin. The article is in part a tribute to Mary Daly:
http://lydiabreen.com/2009/12/11/the-virgin-among-us/
Thanks Lydia, your website absolutely amazing! The beauty of this goddess Tontanzin is stunning. I’m going to return it often this year for inspiration.