In Memory of the Great Mary Daly, Radical Elemental Feminist (October 16, 1928 – January 3, 2010)

[this photograph of Mary Daly is from her website, linked to below.]

I just found this out. I am shocked. This is where I found out the news of Mary Daly's death.

Here's a link to her website: http://www.marydaly.net/

What follows is from here.

:(

• Jan. 4th, 2010 at 12:11 PM

So, I have been away from eljay not because of impending birth, but because I have my daughter's cold and it sucks, and I don't have anything much of note to say.

But today I found out that Mary Daly died yesterday, and that makes me sad.

"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 Daly, Outercourse

From the crop of radical feminists of the 1970s, she was definitely my favorite. Her book Gyn/Ecology struck me as delightfully witty, verbose, and angry when I was in high school; she was the sort of feminist one would name-drop in conversations about "man-hating" along with Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, et al - she was not the politically correct wishy-washy feminist of today. She was a separatist, she did not hold truck with ideas like "unpacking privilege" (to her a feminist was a feminist was a feminist, regardless of color or income), and she held a lot of views that would get you soundly booted from feminist these days. She was one of my favorite non-fiction authors, thinkers, and someone I aspired to one day meet. I did not get the chance.

While I don't know that she will be missed, she should be. We lost one of our most lively female thinkers yesterday.

• Mood: sad