Mary Daly is dead.
I first read her in 1989. She was fun and exhilarating, even though I rejected her absolutist understanding of gender. Her fundamental sense of joy and her description for a transgressive, destabilizing laughter continues to appeal to me. And I think she was right that God is more like a verb.
Daly was mistaken about the relationship between technology and feminism: technology has done much to liberate women, allowing them to be economically independent from men. Her understanding of ancient religion was fanciful, if provocative. Mythology was a way of concealing violence as much as it was a form of ancient wisdom. I also think that “patriarchy” is too vague, at some point, to be helpful.
When I was in high school, I was intrigued by her non-response to Audrey Lorde. I admit, at the time it was proof she was a selective thinker. But in retrospect, her non-response was done out of respect for her sister, an awareness that the public sphere was not the location for such a fight.
