tehomet

I was saddened to learn today that Mary Daly has died. If you're not familiar with her work, she was a radical feminist academic, theologian, philosopher, lexicographer, and author. In my opinion, she was easily the most significant philosopher in the last hundred years. She passed away on the 3rd of January at the age of 81.

I loved her writing. My sister introduced me to her work back when I was in college studying theology by throwing the massive tome Gyn/Ecology at my head and bellowing, "Get into it!" You will maybe appreciate how incredibly important Mary's work was to my own life when I tell you I look back at this moment with gratitude.

I was raised as a feminist in the simple 'men and women are equal' sense, with the viewpoint that sees patriarchy as a inexplicable misfortune and aberration. And that's true, as far as it goes. Mary's wide-ranging and incisive writing went much further. It literally broadened my mind and opened my eyes. Once I read her work, I could understand the world differently. I could see how the world is run in systems of interconnected domination, and how overcoming patriarchy is more than simply getting women the vote, important as that is. It's about challenging the acts of a diseased culture that uses the oppression of women in religion as a template and tool as it seeks to dominate, enslave, and ultimately destroy every living thing. If that sounds scary, it's because it's terrifying! I never understood it on this level, never knew this before I read her writing. But now I know.

Mary was born into a Catholic family but grew to view all organized religion as patriarchal and herself as post-Christian. However, she was a very spiritual person in the deepest sense. I was lucky enough to meet her once, after attending one of her lectures where she described in the tones of disgust how scientists were planning to create headless creatures, "chicken-things" based on hens, who would be grown on racks to lay eggs continuously and then be eaten. Her spirituality was holistic and went beyond the 'Jehovah in drag' of some religious traditions. "Especially important was a startling communication from a clover blossom one summer day when I was about 14," she wrote. "It said, with utmost simplicity, 'I am.'" She saw feminism as the seed of the way to overthrow the sterile systems of patriarchy and restore the spinning spiral balance of nature, of culture, and of life itself.

Mary taught for many years at Boston College. Due to her uncompromising views, she was fired by them not once but twice. Her writing was pyrotechnically inventive, pure undiluted biophilia, to use one of many phrases that she coined herself, as she reshaped the very language and wrote the Intergalactic Wickedary, her own dictionary, to better express her original thinking. She dismissed college officials as "bore-ocrats" who suffered from "academentia" and "predictably reacted with 'misterical' behavior." Funny as she was, and I've just been re-reading some of her work and laughing while I cried, she was very serious about language and the way we shape it and it shapes us, for good or ill.

"Mary was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy - or any idea that domination is natural - in its most defended place, which is religion," said Gloria Steinem. Mary herself once wrote, "There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so."

Mary was fearless and creative and wild. Unforgettable. And she lived up to her name. In Hebrew, "Mary" means "rebellion."

This weekend, I:

• Did very little of a constructive nature and am now feeling guilty about it. I was pretty exhausted from a 50 hour work week, but really it was mostly sheer laziness.


• Went shopping for a new campervan. All were either too expensive or too dodgy; the search continues.


• Babysat my five-year-old niece. On Saturday, I took her to the Dead Zoo, an exhibition of natural history that includes a lot of stuffed animals and dinosaur skeletons. I have moral objections to the use of animals in this way, even for research purposes, but the niece really wanted to go and I am weak. I got my karmic payback from a huge model of a scabies mite. (I have a serious insect phobia and even the thought of scabies... *shudder*) And the stuffed members of extinct species were plain sad. But the niece had a wonderful time: mission accomplished. And it was a very interesting visit. I didn't know that there were birds so small that you could fit two or three in a matchbox, for example.


• Saw the Star Trek movie. It is as good as the reviews say. I went with a hardcore Trekker and someone who has never seen an episode. All of us enjoyed it. The effects and the mad plot and the science fictiony aspects were all great, but it was the acting, particularly Karl Urban's Bones and the Kirk/Spock interaction that made it for me. It's very easy to see how modern-day slash started with K/S. The fight on the bridge? The Spock Prime/Kirk mind meld? Yowsa.


• Went to IDAHO on Sunday, a religious service to mark the International Day Against Homophobia. It was depressing to listen to the list of Irish people who have been murdered just for being gay. But it was good to attend such an event which at least acknowledges Christianity's part in homophobia and aims to improve matters. Amusing too to hear speeches by church officials whose sweeping gilt-trimmed formal robes make them look like Darth Vader as styled by Dame Edna Everage. (Not that I should criticise anyone else's fashion sense; today I am wearing purple velvet and probably resemble a small mobile sofa.)