Feminist philosopher Mary Daly fought repeatedly with Boston College from 1966 to 2001 over her controversial books, her status as a professor and her freedom to reserve some classes for women only. Raised Roman Catholic but prevented by Catholic colleges from studying philosophy, she instead earned a doctorate in English in the U.S. then two more, in philosophy and theology, in Switzerland. Ironically, Jesuit-run BC then hired her to teach. Influenced by thinkers ranging from Thomas Aquinas to French feminist Simone de Beauvoir to Virginia Woolf, she developed a sweeping analysis of "patriarchy" as the root of women's oppression and of all social ills in which people are treated as objects. After her first book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968), she rapidly moved from "reformist" to "radical, post-Christian" feminist. Women operating on patriarchy's boundaries, she wrote, can spiral into freedom by renaming and reclaiming an ancient woman-centered reality that was stolen and eradicated by patriarchy.
we learned a lot about mary daly and her work in the history of feminist thought this past semester, and she was one of the first radical feminists that helped me to understand their philosophies as well as one of the foremost feminist philosophers regarding spiritual feminism. my only critique of mary daly is of her transphobia (she has seen "transsexualism a "male problem" and claimed that post-operative transsexuals exist in a "contrived and artifactual condition--wikipedia). her works are definitely worth musing over, however, and her look on radical feminism can help one to better relate these philosophies to a reality. rest in peace, mary daly. october 16, 1928 – january 3, 2010.
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