Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism {original edition}

by Mary Daly

436 Members 2 Reviews ½ (3.55)

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Includes sections on Indian suttee, Chinese footbinding, African genital mutilation, and European witchburning.

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Mary Daly
14+ Works 2,886 Members
A radical feminist theorist and theologian, Daly was educated at Catholic schools in the United States and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She has also taught at Boston College since 1969. Shortly after she received her advanced degrees, Daly ceased to be a traditional Catholic and began challenging the church's conservatism from a show more feminist and radical or "new Catholic" perspective. She finally broke completely with the church during a period of profound disillusionment following the events of the Second Vatican Council, in which significant feminist and other liberal reforms were not enacted. This disillusionment is reflected in the influential The Church and the Second Sex (1968), which articulates a critique of the systemic sexism and intolerance of the church as an institution and a body of doctrinal texts. Patriarchy, she argues, relies on Christianity. Realizing that her feminism and lesbianism would never find an effective voice within the confines of the church or within the society at large, Daly began to purge what she saw as the influence of patriarchy in her language and her spiritual beliefs. Her first "post-Christian" book, Beyond God the Father (1973), takes as its starting point a rejection of the essential misogyny of Western Christianity in favor of a broader-based spirituality that allows for women's expression, including lesbian expression. Although Daly sees the possibility of a feminist revolution as dependent upon the physical, emotional, and spiritual connections among women, she is nevertheless somewhat suspicious of the notion of lesbianism, because it may be a limiting definition imposed upon women's experience by patriarchal culture. Indeed, for Daly, all language is suspect because it embodies a patriarchal vision of reality that it therefore helps to reproduce. She argues that female spirituality and sexuality cannot be reconstructed unless language itself is reconstructed and suggests that vocabulary should replace the masculine vocabulary that paralyze feminine spirituality. Daly's theses about language are most forcefully presented in her best-known work, Gyn/Ecology (1978), in which she asserts that women must create a "gynomorphic" language in order to cultivate "gynaesthesia," the ability to perceive the interrelatedness of things that women develop when they become feminists and work in women-only collectives. "Gyn/Ecology" is Daly's name for the new kind of knowledge that results; it replaces the patriarchal medicalization and objectification of the female body. Daly's insistence that women have been robbed of the human power of naming of the self, the world, and God, which they must reclaim in order to realize their human potential, informs her later works, in which her feminist wordplay intensifies: Pure Lust (1984) and Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (1987). show less

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Canonical title
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism {original edition}
Original title
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism
Original publication date
1978
Epigraph
Their origin and their history patriarchal poetry their origin and their history patriarchal poetry their origin and their history...

Patriarchal poetry makes no mistake... Patriarchal Poetry is the same at Patriotic p... (show all)oetry is the same as patriarchal poetry is the same as Patriotic poetry is the same as patriarchal poetry is the same. Patriarchal poetry is the same. -- Gertrude Stein from "Patriarchal Poetry," Bee Time Vine and Other Pieces
Their origin and their history patriarchal scholarship their origin and their history. Patriarchal scholarship makes no mistake. Patriarchal Scholarship is the same a Patriotic scholarship is the same as patriarchal scholarsh... (show all)ip is the same as patriarchal poetry. Patriarchal scholarship is the same. -- Myself, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism
I have dreamed on this mountain/Since first I was my mother's daughter/And you can't just take my dreams away/Not with me watching. You may drive a big machine/But I was born a great big woman/And you can't just take my ... (show all)dreams away/Without me fighting... No you can't just take my dreams away. -- Holly Near, from "Mountain Song" sung by Meg Christian, Face the Music (Olivia Records)
Dedication
The First Passage: To my mother and foresister, Anna, whose vision extended beyond the boundaries imposed by patriarchal institutions--who always encouraged me to do my own work, and who opened the way for the Labyrinthine Jo... (show all)urney

The Second Passage: To Jan Raymond, scholar of deepest integrity, true doctor of philosophy--trail-blazing Amazon/Searcher whose labrys/spirit awakens in other women the awareness of their own equality to the A-mazing task

The Third Passage: To Denise Connors, courageous Voyager, who has witnessed and understood--more profoundly than anyone I have known--the murder and dismemberment of the Goddess, and who survives to Re-member, Spark, and Spin
First words
This book is about the journey of women becoming, that is, radical feminism.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Gyn/Ecology is Un-Creation; Gyn/Ecology is Creation.
Blurbers
Rich, Adrienne; Cosstick, Vicky; Raymond, Janice; Corea, Gena
Original language
English

Classifications

Genres
Sexuality and Gender Studies, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, History
DDC/MDS
301.41 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Sociology and anthropology Formerly: Social structure
LCC
HQ1154 .D312 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
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436
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Reviews
2
Rating
½ (3.55)
Languages
English, German
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
7
UPCs
1
ASINs
10