> Lest anyone say that Daly is a lone nutcase, let’s note her
> position at Boston College, which she lost not directly because
> of her anti-male views but because she broke college rules by
> not allowing men in her class.
In so far as I understand Mary Daly’s career, it appears that she gradually became a bizarre nutcase later in her career. She was trained as a Catholic theologian. She was hired in 1969 at Boston College because she seemed, at that point in her career, to be a pretty good addition to their faculty. She was Catholic (Boston is a Catholic college), had a good reputation in academia, and had published one book in which she related feminism to Catholic theology. I suspect that the Boston College faculty was thinking, " Hey, this will show the people who think we’re sexist pigs that we’re able to accommodate diverse views. We’re hiring a woman with feminist views. To those other people who are suspicious of feminism, we can point out that she’s also a good Catholic." Then Daly slowly drifted into more and more bizarre philosophical positions. By 1973 she had left the Catholic Church. I suspect that later in her career she was viewed by the other Boston College faculty members as an embarrassment. There was no attempt to get rid of her because that’s the standard attitude of academia in this situation. Even if it weren’t for tenure, academics believe that disagreement with a person’s views is no reason to have a person fired. Freedom of thought is a pretty basic value in academia.
By the time she was fired over not letting men participate in her classes, she was already retirement age, I believe. She’s 75 years old now. If your point is that Mary Daly is typical of modern feminism, you’re way off.
Andy’s been way off since he revealed that he hadn’t read any of the books he was criticizing. He’s got his argument pinned on proving that there’s this huge pool of F.U.F. out there, because he thinks he can use that as a cite to prove that feminists want to eliminate men. The truly pathetic thing is that he just refuses to believe that fiction isn’t a factual cite. It’s starting to be sort of amusing. I mean, he’s representing the people who are anti-feminist, and he’s just making feminism seem more needed now than ever.
And Andy? Again with the twenty-year old references to one or two people who aren’t mainstream. It’s been conclusively proven that you haven’t read the books you claim proves your point.
Who wants to be that Andy will post another long screed quoting some thirty-year-old quote again? What next? I’m sure his excuses in school was, “The feminists ate my homework.”
The point of “Houston” isn’t so much that the men were unacceptable for being male, but that the culture they were from was incompatible with the culture that had arisen. The women teeter on the edge of making the conclusion that the men are defectively male, but consider the possibility of making clones of the astronauts to see whether their dangerous aggression and psychological instabilities are cultural rather than genetic.
While it always warms my heart to see affirmative action turn around and bite its practicioners on the butt, I wonder if Daly merely kept her nuttiest theories under wraps until she had tenure.
Typical? Who knows. The basic fact though is that there are far more feminists who respect her than there are who condemn her. And Daly’s anti-male stance is pretty typical of anti-male attitudes found throughout feminism. Feminists who condemn man-bashing, however, certainly are not typical.
As for the idea that there is some sort of expiration date on anti-male philosophies in feminism, note that Daly’s “Quintessence” was issued in paperback in late 1999, and “Pure Lust” in 1998, and Daly was included in the 1995 anthology, “Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions.” People are still publishing and reading this stuff, and discussing it at colleges and universities.
So it’s hardly a matter of quoting out-of-print books that were forgotten thirty years ago. Daly might be a product of the Golden Age of man-bashing, but it’s obvious that some people still prefer the “classics.”
I question your right to decide who is and who is not a “modern” feminist. But if “modern” feminists disagree with Daly, you should be able to provide us with tons of cites showing them criticizing and opposing her views. Please post them here.
As for Gearhart, the same applies. Her books are still in print and endorsed by feminists who include Gloria Steinem. That’s right – Steinem praises the author who says men have to be reduced to a fraction of the population so women can rule.
And you only need search for her on the web to find fans and supporters. Here’s one current review: Wanderground 1979 ISBN 1-883523-47-8
Science fiction/futuristic fantasy. Lesbian protagonists. Separatist utopia.
Reviewed by Finder. Highly Recommended. A rich, embracing tale of potential; a portent of the future of humanity in the face of a dramatic separation of woman and man. As one begins to integrate with the Earth, to return to the natural flow of the Gaian mind, the other continues down a path of domination that will ultimately lead to self destruction. A fascinating alternative to Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” in which a connection to the Earth is not a function of gender. Similar also to Sherri S. Tepper’s “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall” in that there is a grace period in which the human race must make a choice for survival. But Gearhart takes it a step further in Wanderground, forcing us to ask the painful questions that feminists and peace activists have asked for centuries.
Gearhart’s flowing prose, the seamless weaving of thoughts, reminds me of the uplifting inner echoes of the second half of Susan Griffin’s “Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her.” The trespasses of the City of Men are revealed slowly and without the gut-wrenching horror of Starhawk’s fictionalized accounts of real-life atrocities. And yet they still speak from the mouths of those who have suffered. In every moment, the story speaks in the voices of the Hill Women and what they have become. The choices they made; the responsibilities they have accepted; their decisions, their lives, their memories. Gearhart is a brave woman for staying true to the voice of woman throughout the narrative, even in tense moments when the temptation to yield is presented almost as a test of her own conviction.
[end of cite from review]
Gearhart’s “The Wanderground” was recently republished, and two more books published. Someone is reading and buying this stuff today, not thirty years ago.
So on one hand you have people today who are publishing it, reading it, buying it, reviewing it, praising it, promoting it and recommending it to others. And on the other hand, you have the deniers who say feminists don’t go in for this kind of stuff anymore. The deniers says this even though they can’t cite a single feminist who actually objects to man-bashing books.
So if we don’t have “modern” feminists supporting these works, who exactly ARE these people? Do they not count because they are not “modern” feminists? And if so, who gets to decide what kind of feminists they are?
Don’t try for Gloria Steinem, who concludes her blurb for Gearhart’s books with “Follow her.”
To recap: We have deniers who say this sort of thing somehow just doesn’t count, because “modern” feminists don’t buy into it. Then we find those who do buy into it. We also find an amazing lack of condemnation by “modern” feminists. We see feminists fighting tooth and nail against a charge of man-bashing – yet where is the evidence that they actually condemn Daly, Gearhart and their ilk? If they do, they’re being awfully quiet about it.
Any professor who advocated reducing the number of blacks in the world, for the good of mankind, would find a limit to that pretty basic value. Daly seriously urged her followers to find ways to reduce the population of men.
As for freedom of thought being a basic value in academia, you could explain why universities then tilt so far to the liberal side. If you think they value and tolerate a range of opinion, you would then think that, for example, the commencements speakers they invite would represent a wide range of thought. However, a study was made of who gets invited
Twenty-two of the thirty-two schools surveyed did not have a single Republican or conservative commencement speaker in the entire ten years surveyed. The same schools invited 173 liberals and Democrats to address their graduating classes in the same ten-year period.
Six of the remaining schools invited only one Republican or conservative each, as compared to 38 liberals or Democrats.
The three schools (Haverford, Swarthmore and UCLA) which host multiple speakers every year did not feature a single Republican or conservative speaker as balanced against 54 liberals and Democrats.
Overall, the ratio of commencement speakers on the left to commencement speakers on the right is 226 to 15, a little over 15-1.
141 commencement speakers were not associated with a partisan viewpoint.
[end of cite]
> While it always warms my heart to see affirmative action turn
> around and bite its practicioners on the butt, I wonder if Daly
> merely kept her nuttiest theories under wraps until she had
> tenure.
It wasn’t a matter of keeping her nutty theories under wraps. She actually changed her mind on things. People do that, you know. Someone who seems pretty reasonable at first can suddenly go off the deep end and promote bizarre ideas.
> The basic fact though is that there are far more feminists who
> respect her than there are who condemn her.
Cite? How would you know?
> Any professor who advocated reducing the number of blacks in
> the world, for the good of mankind, would find a limit to that
> pretty basic value.
There have been cases with professors with tenure espousing racist theories, and there has been no attempt to fire them.
There is a difference between firing professors whose opinions you don’t happen to believe in and having commencement speakers who generally agree with one’s political opinions. Yeah, if you look at a small set of elite universities you’ll find that their faculty tends to be more liberal than average. This means that their voting tends to be more Democratic than Republican and that they tend to choose more liberal commencement speakers. There has been no firings of professors that they disagree with. Incidentally, do the same survey of commencement speakers for every college in the U.S. I suspect that the range of speakers at other colleges is greater.
Can you actually find a passage in anything Gloria Steinem has written has written that advocates reducing the number of men? If not, you can’t claim that she advocates it. Praising an author doesn’t mean that you agree with every idea in their books. It’s especially dubious if you’re claiming that Steinem praises Gearhart and Gearhart praises Daly, so therefore Steinem agrees with every idea in Daly.
Satisfying Andy Licious, please note that in the surveys you quote, only the departments of English, History, Government, and Philosophy (and in some cases Religion, Psychology, Anthropology, and Sociology) were surveyed. So in fact all the surveys are saying is that in a subset of departments in a small set of elite colleges, the majority of the faculty are liberal. Again, do this survey for all universities and for all departments. That would be a much more interesting statistic.
…though still tenuously connected to the topic at hand. Andy hasn’t read the books that he claims are F.U.F. but he declares that their topic is manhating. Then he goes off on some tangent about liberals in colleges, spiced with more feminist-bashing, for which he still does not provide a cite.
On the brighter side, he has moved from quoting obscure thirty-year-old quotes to quoting slightly more recent obscure quotes from radical feminists. But, as in the thread in the Pit, he still refuses to provide a cite that proves his allegations.
Gee, don’t suppose it’s because he doesn’t have one, do you?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Wendell Wagner *
**Satisfying Andy Licious writes:
> While it always warms my heart to see affirmative action turn
> around and bite its practicioners on the butt, I wonder if Daly
> merely kept her nuttiest theories under wraps until she had
> tenure.
How could you know what went through her mind unless you are her?
> The basic fact though is that there are far more feminists who
> respect her than there are who condemn her.
One, she has a following who are buying her books. Two, there’s a distinct dearth of any feminists who are criticizing her.
If that is not so, I invited you last time to post here any condemnation that feminists have made of Daly’s brand of ethnic cleansing. I don’t see any of them, so I extend the invitation again. If “modern” feminists oppose Daly’s views, please show all of us the letters they have written, the protests they have staged, the resolutions they have passed, or any other token of their opposition.
The fact is, some “modern” feminists are reading and promoting her works. So please show me some “modern” feminists who object to it. It’s a fair request.
> Any professor who advocated reducing the number of blacks in
> the world, for the good of mankind, would find a limit to that
> pretty basic value.
The former part of the statement may be true, the latter is not.
What grounds do you have for making that claim?
If you are praising an author who advocates the ethnic cleansing of a certain group, I would say that in the very least that the view doesn’t bother you. Anyone who praised Slobodan Milosevic would immediately find himself facing questions on whether he supported ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. You might have read that Arnold Schwarzennegger was quoted, out of context, as saying he admired Hitler’s ability to mesmerize an audience. He immediately had to answer charges of Nazi sympathies.
If you praise an author who advocates hatred, people are going to, at the least, assume you aren’t concerned enough about that hate to speak out against it, and at the worst that you embrace it. Steinem praised an author advocating reducing men to a fraction of the population under women’s rule. If she every qualified her praise and said she didn’t agree with that central tenet, you are free to post her statements here.
If you don’t post them, on what basis do you believe she objects? Perhaps you are projecting a virtue on her that she does not possess.
Incidentally, if you want to give the lie once and for all to the idea that most feminists are anti-male, you could do a lot worse than to read the archives of the Women’s Studies List Serve, full of discussions amongst professors and university students about feminism.
Yes, there are anti-male feminists; no, they are not the majority.
Let me make one correction to what I said. By saying, “there has been no attempt to fire them,” I meant among fellow professors. In some cases, there were students who wanted to have the professor who offered racist views fired. The professors, though, said, “No, this guy has tenure. There’s no way he can be fired for his views.”
In reply to my statement:
> I suspect that the range of speakers at other colleges is
> greater.
Satisfying Andy Licious writes:
> What grounds do you have for making that claim?
Because I’ve been a college student at three different universities and a grad student at two different ones and I know the range of political opinions among professors. You, on the other hand, apparently know only what you’ve read in the writings of people who were deliberately distorting the statistics to exaggerate the view of college professors.
I feel in a way that I ought to apologize. It’s me that margin is cyberstalking, from a Pit thread. I feel bad that she’s here.
I asked that the thread be closed when she showed up precisely because of this sort of thing. I’m not sure if margin is actually a real person or a bot programmed to post requests for cites.
Anyway, since I’m winning this argument here so handily, maybe it would only be fair that the bot switched to my side, as sort of a handicap. Then I’d have to explain my side making statements like just because people buy books doesn’t mean they read them.
(I wonder what they do with them over at the marginsons’ house.)
Very good. I’ll take your word for it that these feminists actually condemn Daly.
But I can’t help having a little fun by throwing back feminists arguments at them, so …
Those people criticizing Daly can’t be real feminists. They must be brainwashed, or conservatives pretending to be feminists. They’re not feminists in my book. It’s sad that they hate women. What are their real reasons for criticizing feminism? I bet they just want to keep women down.
Finally an admission that anti-male feminists exist. I wonder why I get flamed for making a statement that is so obvious on its face.
As for who is in the majority, I wonder what methodology is employed in making that assessment. If it’s the feminists’ own assessment, deduct points for denial and lip service.
Your link says of this professor: "Recently, he wrote the foreword to David Duke’s autobiography, lauding the former Ku Klux Klan leader for an “academically excellent” work that could “change the very course of history.” "
So when this professor writes positively about a known racist, it’s considered evidence that he himself also is racist. However, when Gloria Steinem writes positively about a rabidly anti-male feminist, you argue that it proves nothing.
The clarification changes an awful lot about your original claim. At any rate, were other professors asking for Daly’s removal?
And keep in mind that Daly was more than an anti-male bigot. Her beliefs are rooted in bizarre theories that a woman-dominated society would gather up magical energies and power, so that time itself would be meaningless – at least that’s as much as I can make out of her mish-mash of quasi-religious gyno-supremicism. In other words, it’s not quite the Socratic method of Western thought, so I wonder why any respectable university would find it an asset to offer indoctrination in neo-pagan goddess worship. It’s not exactly in keeping with higher learning.
So the expert here is you. And you trump any actual studies done in the field.