Talk:Mary Daly

Why not RS?
Can you explain why you opined that Bitch is "probably not a reliable source"? It's not exactly obvious. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:07, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * It's been a few years, but if I had to guess, I'd say I probably wasn't aware of WP:RSOPINION. I've removed the tag. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:12, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Removed Third Paragraph in "Views on Men" Section Due To Misused Citations & Misleading Text
Citations #28-#30 are are improper. The claims of the (wiki) writer in this section are at best misleading (#28), at worst outright wrong (#29-30). The actual passages cited do not support the claims being made.

The wiki text: "She argued against sexual equality in Gyn/Ecology (1978),[28] believing that women ought to govern men;[29] Daly advocated a reversal of sociopolitical power between the sexes.[30]"

Citation #28: This citation directs the reader to G/E 384 & 375-376. Daly does discuss "equality of the sexes" in the cited passages. However, p.375-6 do not argue that the sexes are unequal moral agents or unequal under law, as the text of the wiki suggests. Instead Daly makes an tactical argument against the way in which "equality" discourses can be used to (a) distract women from radical change by focusing on legal reforms and (b) to de-center women from feminism, à la "feminism is humanism." Neither of these points are the same as a stance against legal or moral equality of the sexes. As written, however, the wiki passage seems to suggest precisely that, because "sexual equality" is generally understood, if one does not specify otherwise, to be from the vantage point of legal or moral "rights" discourses. It is therefore misleading not to clarify this. Page 384 suggests that "Hags" (radical women) do not find the discourse of "equality" to be especially useful to their radical aims: "[they] do not haggle over" it. This is, again, not at all the same as being against legal or moral equality of the sexes; rather, it is a question of tactics and focus.

Citation #29: This citation refers the reader to G/E p.xxvi and 15, neither of which supports the claim that Daly believes that "women ought to govern men." The misunderstanding here seems to revolve around some of the terminology Daly uses, terminology like “reversal,” which is a concept she creates in G/E. Page xxvi discusses Daly's "reversal of patriarchal reversals," which it seems the writer of the wiki text misunderstood to mean a reversal of political (governing) roles. Not so. For Daly "patriarchal reversals," a basic weapon and feature of patriarchy, are the way in which patriarchal narratives tend to tell a story about the sexes that is not just untrue, but the direct opposite of the truth. These reversals allow patriarchal culture to hide the truth about, e.g., women's power and male crimes against women. A classic patriarchal reversal states that Eve [female] came from Adam [male's] body, although it is plain biological fact that all males are born literally from women's bodies. Daly states on the same page (p.xxvi) that when we reverse the patriarchal theme "women are vessels controlled by men," "we [women] direct our own vessels/crafts [...] we become crafty." In other words, women govern themselves. She does NOT say that when we reverse the patriarchal reversals, women govern men. Page 15 in G/E again discusses the anti-patriarchal idea of women governing themselves. She states, “Women traveling into feminist time/space are creating Hag-ocracy, the place we govern.[…] we are learning individually and together to pilot the space/time ships of our voyage. The vehicles of our voyage may be any creative enterprises that further women’s process. The point is that they should be governed by the Witch within—the Hag within.” Again, this is about women governing themselves—each her own self. Men are not mentioned here. “Hag-ocracy” is way of talking about female self-governance as a metaphor for a female-centered culture where women are in control of themselves, and therefore allowed to discover themselves and create from their true selves, unimpeded by patriarchy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Menthesanscafeine (talk • contribs) 09:12, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * These are interesting interpretations and you might want to add them to the article. However, we don't delete sourced content because another paraphrasing is possible. What you may do is quote or paraphrase from the cited pages or elsewhere in the book in order to support your understanding of what she wrote or find other reliable sources on the subject of what Daly meant in Gyn/Ecology. If there are differing, even contradictory, views of what she wrote in that book, we would report all sides of the issue.
 * I don't have the book handy. It'll take me a little while to get it. But I would be surprised if she did not see inequality between the sexes in the society in which we live(d), an inequality that meant that men had more power than women had, not an inequality she endorsed.
 * I don't recall her doing a legal analysis (she was not a lawyer) but she was a self-described feminist ethicist and I'm not sure that she wasn't commenting on moral agency. She may well have considered tactics as well as ends. I don't doubt that female-centeredness was something she sought for the benefit of females and she wrote extensively on males reversing in language and history. These are all matters that could be added to the article.
 * I note that she later reached a position even further along the continuum from, about a decade earlier than Gyn/Ecology, seeking equality to, 21 years after Gyn/Ecology, she predicted "a drastic reduction of the population of males" (article & n. 31). I think women governing men comes in between, both chronologically and developmentally.
 * I suggest you draft and insert replacement content that you might expand to cover the points you raised. I'll wait a reasonable time for that or a response.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 01:01, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I want to be clear that what is at issue—at least the issue as I raised it—is a question of whether the specific citations provided actually supported, in any way, the assertions in the wiki text. They didn't. You are conjecturing that some citations that do support those assertions exist, somewhere in Daly's work, which is a logical possibility. But as of now I do not know of them, and you do not know of them, and no one else present knows of them. So I feel it was responsible to delete the text I did. I cannot disprove a negative, so I am dealing with assessing the actual citations and linked assertions that we have in front of us.

Although it may arguably be a matter of "interpretation" with the first citation/assertion I contested (the "equality of the sexes" issue), the second two are outright false as pertains to G/E, not a matter of me coming up with interesting interpretations. Anyone who read the book would understand this. I think it's very clear from the text, and is widely understood in the field, what Daly meant in the arguments that were cited in G/E. If someone wants to find other citations—in G/E or in any other book—whose contents actually do provide support for the wiki text I disputed, I am completely open to that. If those citations provide support, the assertions can come back. Until then, they can't be included any more than I could write "Mary Daly advocated a paleo diet" and cite p.45 in G/E and no one could delete it, even once they went to page 45 and saw that no evidence for this assertion exists on that page.

You say, "But I would be surprised if she did not see inequality between the sexes in the society in which we live(d), an inequality that meant that men had more power than women had, not an inequality she endorsed." I agree. She obviously did. However saying that someone "argued against equality of the sexes" is clearly a very misleading gloss on the idea that "someone noticed that inequality of the sexes existed in the world." It is begging to be misread, and would be by almost anyone, to mean that Daly was advocating against legal or moral equality of the sexes rather than merely observing inequality of the sexes (and, to boot, opposing it). That section in the wiki text was clearly written as a narrative of progress, where Daly started out believing in equal rights for men and women, started shifting focus away from equal rights, and ended by opposing equal rights in the specific guise of advocating that women should govern men. As far as I am concerned this is patently false, both in its individual parts and as a narrative. I cannot prove a negative, i.e., I cannot prove that no citations exist anywhere in the world that would support this claim (and I have not read every Mary Daly book), but I can disprove a positive: the assertions are definitely not supported by the citations given.

Thank you for the invitation to write some alternate text. Menthesanscafeine (talk) 12:22, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

deleted paraphrases were accurate
On whether "[Daly] argued against sexual equality in Gyn/Ecology", these quotations are from Gyn/Ecology (Boston: 1990 (6th [printing?], printing[?] of [19]98)), in the order cited in the article before the recent revision:

Page 384: ". . . Hags do not haggle over 'equality,' for we know there is no equality among unique Selves." Context: ". . . . This uprising of Amazon Fire . . . is the hellfire deserved and dreaded by the Grand Inquisitors. . . . [I]t is simply the expression/expansion of gynergy for its own sake, and this transcendence of Fury itself is the Renaissance of Fire. . . . This is . . . his ["the patriarchal male"'s] Last End. . . . As this Sparking communication occurs, Hags do not haggle over 'equality,' for we know there is no equality among unique Selves. Noting that one definition of the term equal is 'capable of meeting the requirements of a situation or a task,' Jan Raymond observes that what each asks of the other is that she be equal to the task at hand." The endnote is omitted here.

P. 375: "[T]okenism . . . is guised as Equal Rights, . . . which yields token victories".

P. 376: "[T]okenism . . . attempt[s] to assimilate woman-for-woman erotic love. . . . [T]he very meaning of sexuality has been dwarfed to fit patriarchal standards."

At p. 375, she appears to have equated "'unselfconscious inclusion'" with "tokenism" and argued that "[it] function[ed] to pollute the sense of sisterhood" and therefore it (along with another quality) should be "thoroughly exorcised".

P. 384 states an argument that equality is about being equal to a task and the context makes clear that Daly did not consider men to be equal to that task (they would have had their "Last End") while women, at least potentially, are. Therefore, she argued against the two genders being equal to each other; one (men's) might have had more power than the other had but the other had at least the potential for having more power than the first. In feminist discourse, equality generally means equality of power. Thus, in her view, they were not equal to each other.

Paraphrases are generally preferred in Wikipedia to quotations.

On p. 375, she put equal rights, which, it is generally agreed, refers to rights of equality between the genders, down as "tokenism" and, on p. 376, put tokenism by extension beneath "patriarchal standards". Her treatment of what is usually termed equal rights as between the genders as mere tokenism and her argument against tokenism is an argument against sexual equality as widely understood in feminism. Thus, pp. 375–376, while not being the main support for the Wikipedia passage in question, do support p. 384 and all three pages thus support the Wikipedia passage in question, the part supported by what was then note 28, "[s]he argued against sexual equality".

In the larger view of her views, whether her argument "against sexual equality" was tactical is not important except insofar as being tactical means it being only temporary. No doubt her view was partly tactical; but, in her text as cited by either of us, her argument was not that it was just tactical and therefore to be terminated in favor of "sexual equality" before other changes, essentially revolutionary, had been implemented. For the time she was writing of, she advocated against equality of either gender with the other.

On whether Daly "believ[ed] . . . that women ought to govern men" and "Daly advocated a reversal of sociopolitical power between the sexes", the following quotations are from the same printing as that for the Gyn/Ecology above:

P. 15: "Women traveling into feminist time/space are creating Hag-ocracy, the place we govern. To govern is to steer, to pilot. We are learning individually and together to pilot the time/spaceships of our voyage. The vehicles of our voyage may be any creative enterprises that further women's process. The point is that they should be governed by the Witch within—the Hag within."

P. xxvi: "My Time Traveling adventures and my life as a Pirate have been possible because of my Craft. . . . My own particular Craft involves writing and the forging of philosophical theories. . . . [W]omen under phallocratic rule are confined to the role of vessels/carriers, directed and controlled by men. Since that role is the basic base reversal of the very be-ing of Voyaging/Spiraling women, when we direct our own Crafts/Vessels we become reversers of that deadly reversal." I don't think there's any doubt that she wanted women to become those reversers. She did not want women and men to mix together in a way that would ignore their respective genders or devalue women's. She wanted the roles to be reversed, so that women's would be the more powerful role, thus that women would be more powerful than men. She did not deny that men would exist; she did not describe men being only where women would not be; and she did not describe men and women being in the same place and time and yet not, at least sometimes, exercising power over each other. There is thus no interpretational choice but that when "we [women] become reversers of that deadly reversal" women will be "direct[ing] . . . and controll[ing] . . . men" and that she was advocating for that, "a reversal of sociopolitical power between the sexes".

You were using the 1991 edition, which, I understand from worldcat.org as of last April 22, was published in London, rather than in Boston. I assume its text and pagination are the same as those in the edition I quoted from in this reply, but feel free to report any differences. I was next in line for a library copy of the 1978 edition but, according to the library, it seems to have recently been lost. I have borrowed what appears to be the 1st printing of 1990 and, at a few glances, it seems to have the same text and pagination as what I quoted above.

Daly did not "argue that the sexes are unequal [specifically as] moral agents or [specifically as] unequal under law" (re pp. 384 & 375–376) (your words except the bracketed are mine) but argued that "we know there is no equality among unique Selves" (supra) and that means that, in her view, there was "no equality" between the "unique Selves" of one gender and the "unique Selves" of the other gender, the genders being subsets of all the "unique Selves". (A potential argument that in her view "unique Selves" existed only among women and that men could therefore be equal seems difficult to sustain.) Whether the inequality was specifically moral or legal is beyond the scope of the Wikipedia fragment in question and of its sourcing (various kinds of inequality existed, regardless of whatever she may have written on it), but less-specific inequality was in the page-particular sourcing and therefore could be in Wikipedia.

She has written about reversals in stories. But pp. 15 and xxvi do not limit the concept of reversal to stories. She explicitly speaks of "the place we govern" (supra), what governing means, and that it may be through "any creative enterprises that further women's process" (supra). She sought to reverse "phallocratic rule" (supra), and that kind of rule is not restricted to phallocratic views, which is what phallocratic stories express. Rule is more wide-ranging and Daly wrote of "control" (supra), so she meant more than story reversal. This does not appear to be a editorial error in the manuscript but an intentional area of coverage in her book.

She was indeed writing of a "female-centered culture" (your words), but that is not necessarily, or usually, a female-only culture. Several writers have written of female-only cultures, at least in genres of fiction and theory, and it's hard to imagine that such a possibility had not occurred to Daly before writing either p. 15 by or in 1978 or p. xxvi by or in 1990. And we don't have to imagine that it did not or did occur to her; we can go by her words. Her words are not limited to the realm of story.

I was not suggesting that citations should be found elsewhere rather than according to the citations in Wikipedia for the now-deleted content but that the book might offer pages supporting the points you raised about content you described.

I read the book years ago. It did not appear to have been written as a tactician's guide or a political organizer's handbook but as an aspiration for the kind of world Daly wanted to find. Others may have read it as an organizer's guide or as describing an interim phase in human societal development, but that would have been their reading of it, their interpretation, and not inconsistent with Daly's intentions (I don't think she opposed political organizing in principle), but that was not Daly's main writing in this book (I think there's an organizer's short passage somewhere in it, but I don't recall that or anything else in the book contradicting the now-deleted content).

I am not arguing that what you wrote for the article is wrong, but it addresses different points. (I think parts of what you wrote should be in the past tense, since Daly is dead, but, relatively speaking, the tense issue is minor. I would also move them out of the Views on Men section, perhaps into a new section, like Views on Feminist Equality.) Therefore, what she wrote about men per se is now missing, being accurately sourced content that was deleted without replacement on point. The passages were properly supported and sourced and were neither wrong nor misleading, but perhaps the connection with the sourcing could have been written more clearly. Restoration, perhaps in a different form, is therefore appropriate and edits and suggestions to that end are welcome. It may be a good idea to clarify that, for instance, the inequality may not be explicitly and narrowly moral or legal but was, in her argument, an inequality and one that should be reversed in favor of women (not necessarily temporarily). It may also be appropriate to quote rather than paraphrase for portions.

Nick Levinson (talk) 02:53, 14 May 2017 (UTC)


 * There having been no further discussion, I'm implementing the last paragraph above by moving the new content to a new subsection, Views on Feminism, since that is what all of that content is about, and by editing the tense for Daly's statememts, since she is dead. Also, I'm adding commas, straightening quotation marks and apostrophes, capitalizing template names to prevent redirects, replacing some soft spaces with nonbreaking spaces, replacing parameters for single pages with params for multiple pages, and replacing hyphens in page ranges with en-dashes. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:31, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Removed as original research
I just removed the following paragraph:
 * She argued against sexual equality in Gyn/Ecology (1978), specifically that "hags do not haggle over 'equality,' for we know there is no equality among unique Selves", relying on a definition of equal as 'equal to a task or situation' and believing that men would have had what she called their "Last End", while women would potentially be equal to a task, thus that men are not equal to women. She wrote that "women traveling into feminist time/space are creating Hag-ocracy, the place we govern", and so believed that women ought to govern men. She wrote, "women under phallocratic rule are confined to the role of vessels/carriers, directed and controlled by men. Since that role is the basic base reversal of the very be-ing of Voyaging/Spiraling women, when we direct our own Crafts/Vessels we become reversers of that deadly reversal" and thus advocated for a reversal of power between the sexes.

Perhaps unintentionally, this paragraph takes Daly's words out of context and twists them so they're meaningless. For example, "hags do not haggle over 'equality,' for we know there is no equality among unique Selves" does not refer to equality between men and women, it refers to discussions among women ("hags") about equality among themselves. The "Last End" referred to in the following sentence? Here's how Daly describes it: "In its light, the patriarchal male is forced to see his history of holocausts, to re-view the multitudes of women sacrificed as burnt offerings to his gods. This is his 'beatific vision,' his Last End." Not quite what it seems like in the preceding paragraph, is it? Finally, twice the material summarized after "thus" represents the editor's views, not Daly's, and that's why it has no source either time—because it cannot be sourced.

I encourage Nick to look for a reliable secondary source or two that summarize Gyn/Ecology instead of inventing his own summary, which is impermissible original research. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:11, 20 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for acknowledging the possibility of good faith. I posted the preceding discussion so that it could be discussed and I assume editors had time to read it, but maybe they were too busy during the three months until I edited the article. There's an advantage to weighing in on a talk page when something like the above is posted, as quotations and paraphrases can be considered before editing. For example, one point in the newly-deleted text with which you disagreed was a point I made in the Talk subsection above, and you were welcome to respond there and then or since. That point, supra: "Daly ... argued that 'we know there is no equality among unique Selves' ... and that means that, in her view, there was 'no equality' between the 'unique Selves' of one gender and the 'unique Selves' of the other gender, the genders being subsets of all the 'unique Selves'. (A potential argument that in her view 'unique Selves' existed only among women and that men could therefore be equal seems difficult to sustain.)" You disagree. I would have been helped by knowing that.
 * There's no twisting and the resulting content was meaningful and either sourced or apparently uncontroverted, but we three editors are reading the same source differently. Daly clearly, in her writing, wanted women to have more power and men to have less, and not by eliminating men but with both women and men living in some degree of proximity. We can hew closely to the original text whether quoting or paraphrasing, but that, I think, would make the result far too lengthy, so I think concision is better. That a statement in Wikipedia is unclear is not the same as it being wrong, and both editors critiquing argued that some content would be misunderstood; in this case, the clarification that would be needed might make the passage longer than due weight.
 * Since that "Hags ... know there is no equality among unique Selves" is exclusively about women or a subset thereof, then either Daly is not considering men as "unique Selves" (an argument about Daly that I said above is difficult to sustain) or Daly is not considering men as equal to given situations or tasks regardless of uniqueness. To say all are nonetheless equal posits people who are not equal to given situations or tasks as equal to people who are equal to given situations or tasks. I think that contradicts what Daly was saying. If everyone is either equal to given situations or tasks or not, we can agree that all people exist, but that is not the same as saying that all people are equal. Daly was saying that they're not.
 * The last end: Daly, by your description, is describing men as taking pleasure in women's destruction or as having failed by causing that destruction. Thomas Aquinas (fl. A.D. 13th century) argued (http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/sum134.htm as accessed 8-26-17) that man has only one last end ("[i]t is impossible for one man's will to be directed at the same time to diverse things, as last ends") and the last end is happiness ("all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness"). According to the Vatican and its catechism: "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God ... [is] the first principle and last end of all things...." (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm as accessed 8-26-17.) But Daly said (your quotation), "[i]n its light, the patriarchal male is forced to see his history of holocausts, to re-view the multitudes of women sacrificed as burnt offerings to his gods. This is his 'beatific vision,' his Last End." Per Catholicism, a beatific vision comes to people in heaven or souls in heaven (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364a.htm & https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beatific%20vision both as accessed 8-26-17). The beatific vision is therefore, in the theology, after the person's death. Roman Catholic theology was Daly's framework. That contradicts any notion that Daly would have patriarchal men lead or substantially share in governing women or people if she had any choice in the matter, because the men would be either dead or, if alive and patriarchal, disqualified.
 * You did not specify a disagreement on her writing on "Hag-ocracy" as being part of Daly's views on men, yet you deleted that, too. I'm interested in your objection to that particular content. I don't think anyone would argue that Daly in Gyn/Ecology thought that most men were Hags and therefore that most men should be at the level of governing in a Hag-ocracy. It appears that a statement about hagocracy can be in the article as part of Daly's views on men; I'd like to know what you think of that.
 * I invite you and all other editors to add content giving Daly's views on men and/or patriarchy as found at least in Gyn/Ecology. She stated her views on both in that work.
 * It might be easier to summarize what she said of patriarchy and what women's relation to patriarchy should be and to create a separate subsection on views on patriarchy. Summaries are not original research and are permissible, especially since, as far as I know, there may not be a secondary source offering one.
 * Thank you.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 22:26, 26 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think Daly was particularly concerned about men or patriarchy, so you may be looking for something that isn't there.
 * Daly wrote in a language of her own, and I don't presume to know what she meant all the time. But I think you're 100% wrong about the "Last End". Yes, of course she knew what the phrase means in Catholicism, and its history (as well as the meaning and history of "beatific vision"). But she's not "describing men as taking pleasure in women's destruction or as having failed by causing that destruction" (and I wrote no such thing). What she wrote is that women's energy, in her language, "Amazon Fire, our life-loving, be-ing" is feared by men ("the hellfire deserved and dreaded by the Grand Inquisitors").
 * If its purpose were merely to consume them it would be less effective. In fact, it is simply the expression/expansion of gynergy for its own sake, and this transcendence of Fury itself is the Renaissance of Fire. In its light, the patriarchal male is forced to see his history of holocausts, to re-view the multitudes of women sacrificed as burnt offerings to his gods. This is his "beatific vision," his Last End.
 * I believe what she's saying is that women's energy is rightly feared by men, but not because it will kill them; because it is so powerful that it will force them to look at history through new eyes and examine the ways in which they have oppressed women. She is inverting the Catholic beatific vision, which comes after death—when it's too late to change one's behavior on earth—with a vision that passes before the eyes of the living.
 * But as I wrote, this is a language of its own, and I think we need to cite reliable secondary sources that interpret what Daly is saying instead of engaging in our own exegesis. Gyn/Ecology is almost 40 years old—surely there are feminist theologians who have written about it whose work we can cite. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:53, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. And I didn't mean that you said "... taking pleasure ... or as having failed ...."; I meant that I was building on your description, but I assume you don't support that extension, either. If her work can yield such different interpretations on multiple points just within the Daly passages we're discussing, then our summarizing may be beyond reach. It's interesting to contemplate why there seems so little published academic analysis of her works, as I agree there should be more than I've been finding and I gather she was widely taught. Her language was dense, in my experience when I first read it (albeit not so dense in her memoir), but academics deal with that all the time, so I'm still puzzled by the seeming dearth of secondary analyses. I'll put this project aside for now. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:50, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Ida Hammer and Brittany Shoot
The article says:
 * In an interview with journalist Brittany Shoot, Ida Hammer criticized Daly as transphobic for these views.

Ida who? Brittany who? Should I know? Should I care? Should the reader? Brittany Shoot is evidently a freelance journalist. In 2010, she wrote "Ida Hammer has been writing The Vegan Ideal for several years". Could be, but the domain veganideal.org is for sale, and Hammer evidently lost interest in the site in 2011. Google found nearly 13,000 results for "Ida Hammer", some of whom may (or may not) be the same woman but most of whom are definitely not. What makes her an expert on Mary Daly or transphobia, and why are we promoting her opinion as if it mattered? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Might be misleading
HI, I just searched for instances of "parthenogenesis" in Gyn/Ecology and it doesn't seem to refer to women literally doing that(although I haven't read the whole book). Since if the author doesn't hold this view, it wouldn't be fair to add it. I think it should be deleted until a source, preferably with quotes is added.Samiwamy (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I also didn't find the word "lusty" in the book.Samiwamy (talk) 02:33, 24 January 2021 (UTC)