Talk:Mary Daly

Can anyone identify who (aside from the Goddess Herself, and the illuminating experiences of awareness+female gender+catholic theologian role) were influences on Mary Daly's early work?

The circumstances

From the press release http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/rvp/pubaf/chronicle/v9/f15/daly.html of her employer, Boston College: "Daly, a radical feminist, gained notoriety during the years at Boston College over her refusal to admit male students into her theology classes. Boston College had consistently reprimanded Daly, insisting that her actions were in violation of University policy and Title IX of federal law...After refusing to admit two male students into her class in 1998, University administrators once again confronted Daly and insisted that she admit the students in accordance with school policy.

Refuses questions from men

Would someone explain under what circumstances Daly has refused to take questions from men? I understand that she used to insist on the right to teach women and men separately, for the benefit of the women, and that there was significant opposition on legal and other grounds. If she refused to take questions from men in a lecture that she had restricted (even illegally) to women only, those circumstances should be mentioned. As the article stands, one gets the impression that she refused any sort of communication with men, which is really quite different. If it is true that she made that sort of blanket refusal, I would like to see proof. Shorne 19:34, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: refusing questions from men, see the controversies link or her own web pages. Or check out http://www.wie.org/j16/daly.asp to see her patiently deal with an interviewer who wants her to focus on men. See http://www.jorjet.com/jorjetnet/interviews/maryd/ regarding how originally her students were *all* men. She eventually decided to reserve time for women; some men, and some women, cannot tolerate that. See http://www.cios.org/mailboxes/gender/03039100.522 and http://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/daly2.html for fascinating and thoughtful threads on this "issue". I myself attended a visiting lecture she gave in the 1980s; it was publicized, and announced during the lecture, that men were respectly requested NOT to take the microphones during the Q&A section, so that women could have the time. Of course, some men felt their rights were trampled, and were furious when the overwhelming response from almost all the other women and men there was to shut up or leave. It's amusing to see how her page has been vandalized in the past; she provokes strong reactions.

RE: her influences: Nelle Morton. Roman Catholicism. Simone deBueavoir. Monique Wittig. You might want to read Significant Contemporary Feminists: A Biocritical Sourcebook, ed. Jennifer Scanlon, which I have seen referenced but not read myself. Of the 1960s and later feminists - hard to pick out who is the influencerand who is the influenced, in that Cauldron.

Penis Envy?

Removed "Mary Daly might be [been argued to] suffering from penis envy" - This is just silly, and is unsourced, so seemed to refer to a consensus within psychoanalysis, which is absurd. ps. To the above - why are you referencing things that you havent read? Best, lookatyougo May 10, 2006.

Jesiut-run institution

What does that have to do with her dismisal? IT sounds as if a comment is being made aginst the Jesuits. If no reason is put forth, I will delete it.66.211.136.146 22:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The university itself might disagree with you; I think it is relevant; as a Jesuit institution, the school has history of respect for both academic freedom AND Roman Catholic dogma/tradition; a challenging dynamic for these scholars. However I have adjusted phrasing slightly; it was a Jesuit run institution when she was hired as well as when she was retired...

witch hunt

it says "The real figure seems to be between 40-60,000 (see the Wikipedia Witch Hunt article for more details.)". pls don't send to another article just to find the source. so I added {{fact}} there Towsonu2003 22:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I added sources. I also added {{fact}} to the person who'd quoted the 200,000 figure in the notes section.

It should be noted that, even accepting the 200,000 accusations figure (which is twice as high as Lavack's - which I've read, as opposed to Barstow, which I haven't) and assuming they all ended up in executions, which isn't true, then Daly was out by a FACTOR of 45 (in reality, given 100,000 deaths, she was out by a factor of 90. Given the - far more likely - lower figures of 60 or 75,000, then she's out by a factor of over 100.) She has never, to my knowledge, commented on or retracted her figure of 9 million, even as that figure was taken and used by others for political and ideological ends. As such, she stands responsible for perpetrating an intellectual fraud. Maybe I'll write a paragraph about this in the article, but I'm not sure how well it stands on the guidelines for biographies on living people. Steve3742 6 March 2007

I've edited the notes bit about Barstow that someone wrote - I've now read the statistical part of her book and the 100,000 figure isn't a "conservtive estimate" according to her (though it might be to the anonymous author), hence it's not NPOV. So I've deleted the "conservative estimate" bit. If the anonymous author wishes to say that 100,000 is a "conservative estimate", then they need to cite a source who's written that. It's also obvious that the author is using Barstow as a source for the 200,000 accusations and 85% women stats too, so I've removed my {{fact}} and put that in.

I disagree with Barstow, by the way, I think her methodology is suspect - she bases her estimates on Lavack's and then increases his figure using dubious justification. But people are free to quote her as a source, but not to add weasel words like "conservative estimate." Barstow doesn't think 100,000 is a conservative estimate, she considers it to be her most accurate estimate. And people using her as a source should say that. Steve3742 13:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I noticed someone's edited my contribution. I agree with some of it - 'witches' being in inverted commas, "murders" instead of executions - but I've put back the stuff about the comparisoms to the Holocaust and refined the stuff about the figure's acceptance amongst the neo-pagan and feminist communities.

Then there was "seems to be" for the real figure, which I've changed to "almost certainly". This needs a lengthy digression:

Any period in History will have its uncertainties and innaccuracies. The further back you go, the more of them there are, as a rule. So people can say stuff like "it's impossible to say exactly how many..." and they're absolutely right. They can also say "some authorities have placed the figue at..." and there will often be someone they can quote who has done this. For example, I could say "It's impossible to say how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, but some authorities have said it could be as few as 100,000." This would be technically true - we don't know for certain how many were killed and some authorities (David Irving and other charlatans) have said it was as low as 100,000. So, technically true. But a lie nevertheless. Because we know the figure to be between 5.5-6.5 million and the figure of 6 million represents an educated guess. Irving et al are all charlatans, lying to press a point of view.

So, too, with the Witch Hunt. A statement like "It's impossible to say how many women were killed in the Witch Hunt, but some authorities have said it could be as many as nine million" is technically true, just as the above statement was. But it's a lie nevertheless.

There has been a great deal of research into both the Witch Hunt and the Holocaust and whereas we don't know the exact figures of the numbers of murder victims in both cases, we do have figures we can use. When people like Lavack and Barstow come up with figures based on metriculous research over a number of years that vary between 60-100,000, they're not just guessing, like Daly appears to have done, they're giving accurate estimates. They could be wrong, of course, but not by a factor of 100 as Daly says they were. To say that they are out by that much is like saying that David Irving could be correct, that all the other Holocaust researchers were wrong and out by a factor of 100. At the very least, this position needs backing up with proof, research, etc. Neither Daly nor Irving have produced anything like that. So I think I'm justified in saying that the true figure is almost certainly between 60-100,000.Steve3742 17:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I notice someone keeps changing my contribution. That's fine, it's part of Wikipedia, but if the person who does this could post here and say why they've changed it, then maybe I wouldn't just change it back. I'm a little annoyed at giving detailed reasons for what I wrote only to have it changed WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD BEING WRITTEN BY THE CHANGER TO SAY WHY. Write about what you've done here. I may agree with it or at least some of it, if I know why.Steve3742 12:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I assume you must be talking about my edits, since I just edited the article. But I'm not at all sure which change exactly you're objecting to. It's great that you've spelled out the reasoning behind your edits here, and I'd be glad to discuss any of my changes as well, but I need to know what you think should be different. I can't just guess! -- Shunpiker 17:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, for a start there's the phrase "has been criticized as having no basis in research" when referring to the nine million figure, I think this should be "has no basis in research", which I've changed it to. The reasoning is pretty much set out above, but basically 1) Daly did no research, she just quoted Gage without checking the accuracy of the figures; 2) Gage, too, did no research, she quoted another guy, again without checking; 3) the actual figure was arrived at by finding the number of witch burnings over a five year period in one small part of Germany and extrapolating to cover the whole of Europe for a 200 year period. Using the same method, we could determine the number of Jews killed in Denmark during WWII and then extrapolate over the whole of Europe. This would result in a figure of less than 500,000 Jews killed during the Holocaust - a Holocaust denier's wet dream. This "research" is not actually research. Hence, i think it's accurate to say that the figure "has no basis in rsearch", as opposed to "has been criticized as having no basis in research".

Secondly, the whole Gynocide thing and Holocaust comparisoms. The figure of nine million is not just high, it's incredibly high. I wrote "ridiculously high" to start with, but maybe that's too judgemental. It does, I think, need an adverb - is "incredibly" OK? The reason is that Barstow, with her figure of 100,000 is high, nearly twice as high as most other historians' estimates. But nine million - that's ridiculously high, incredibly high, astonishingly high - it needs an adverb to distinguish it from a merely high estimate (like Barstow's).

Daly knew what she was doing with words like "Gynocide" and numbers like nine million. The comparism with the Holocaust is implicit if not explicit (I haven't read the article for a while and so can't remember if she makes an explicit comparisom, like you say. But it's definitely implicit.) And I think this needs to be said. Hence I've said it.

So, that's my reasoning. If you disagree, change it, but an explanation as to why would be nice.Steve3742 12:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Steve, Thanks for the response. I'm pretty sure "incredibly" falls under the "words to avoid/words which editorialize" category:

Adverbs such as ironically, amusingly, (un)fortunately, and interestingly (as well as their adjectival forms) express an editorial opinion: the editor has found something to be ironic, or amusing, or interesting, etc. Others may not share this opinion, so use words like these with caution.

Personally, I find the figure of nine million incredible, but it's clear from the article that others do not. I don't think it's compatible with WP:NPOV for Wikipedia to issue such a judgment. If you want to call attention to the magnitude of the discrepancy -- which seems reasonable to me -- it would be better to find wording which avoids hyperbole.

As for "has no basis in research", we need attribution for that assertion. It's essentially an academic euphemism for "made up out of whole cloth". It may or may not be true, and I'm sure it has been asserted by others (hence my wording), but I don't think the article should assert it without sourcing. I also think that it would be useful to include any response Daly has to her critics on this point. -- Shunpiker 16:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Incredible doesn't express an editorial opinion, it represents the fact that the figure of nine million falls outside the range that a reasonable person could agree with. Re Holocaust denial again, somebody could say that Irving's figure of 100,000 was "incredibly low" and I don't think that would fall under "words to avoid/words which editorialize" or WP:NPOV. Or would I be wrong in thinking so?

I'll attribute the "has no basis in research in a few days (I'm at work at the moment and don't have time)

To the best of my knowledge, Daly has never responded. If you can find a response, I agree it ought to be used here. Steve3742 16:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Steve, It seems to me that you're saying "People who believe or don't believe in X aren't reasonable." Everybody's got opinions like that, but it's not neutral to enshrine them in unattributed narrative. The addition of "since been disproven", like "has no basis in research", also requires references. Until these issues are resolved, I think it would be best to tag the section as a {{pov}} dispute. -- Shunpiker 15:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Shunpiker, I am indeed saying that people who believe nine million people were killed in the Witch Hunt aren't reasonable. They either 1) have read Daly or Starhawk and not bothered to check it; or 2) hold an opinion that disagrees with ALL research done in to the subject. I consider both to be unreasonable. Re Holocaust denial again, I don't think it's wrong to say that people whio deny the Holocaust are unreasonable because they either 1) have read David Irving and not bothered to check it or 2) hold an opinion that disagrees with ALL research done in to the subject.

OK, "has no basis in research" references. This is topsy turvy. I can't prove she did no research, just that the conclusions she came to disagree with EVERYONE who HAS done research. I think it's up to her to prove she has done research and to say what it is. I've already quoted enough people who have done research and have come up with figures between 60,000-100,000. Find ONE result, based on research, that says otherwise. Daly, to the best of my knowledge, refuses to comment or defend her statement so I think we can conclude that she can't. As such, I think "since been disproven" is also OK - EVERY piece of research supports it and shows what Daly said to be wrong. How much more (dis)proof is necessary?

I don't agree with the {{pov}}, for the reasons aboveSteve3742 11:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've given some thought to this and I believe that "unreasonable" has two different meanings here. This ties into philosophical debates about connections between belief and knowledge, which I studied briefly at University.

OK, if a lot of people, perhaps a majority, belive something, then it's not unreasonable for someone who knows and talks to these people to believe that this is true - even if it isn't. For example, it's not unreasonable for a lot of people, perhaps the majority of the western world, to believe that Marconi invented the radio - even though he didn't (look at the Wikipedia article if you don't believe me and you'll see it was David E. Hughes in 1878.) But most people believe that it was Marconi. This belief isn't unreasonable for someone WHO HASN'T STUDIED IT. People tend to belive what they hear from others. This is meaning 1 of the word "unreasonable".

However, if people then research into something, look up what others have studied about it, check out the facts, etc., and find that what they previously thought was untrue then they can be expected to change their beliefs. Not to do so would be unreasonable in meaning 2 of the word. People who still claim that Marconi invented the radio after studying the history of the radio are being unreasonable.

Now I contend that Wikipedia, being an encyclopedia, uses meaning 2 - that an unreasonable belief is one whiuch A WELL INFORMED individual cannot rationally hold. And I hold that to say that nine million people were killed in the Witch Hunt is just such an unreasonable belief, and I believe that I have adequately documented why above. I am aware that a large number of people hold this belief, just as a large number of people believe that Marconi invented the radio. But they're wrong, in both cases. It's not unreasonable (using meaning 1) for people to believe these things, but it the beliefs are unreasonable (using meaning 2).

As such, I believe that using phrases like "incredibly high number", "has no basis in research" and "has been disproven" in the article does not violate WP:NPOV. Steve3742 12:35, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Steve, you state your convictions clearly. But no amount of supporting evidence can change "incredibly high" to anything but a subjective judgment. Quoting a notable historian saying, "x is incredible," would be encyclopedic. But saying "x is incredible" without attributing the judgment is introducing an irreducible opinion. Wikipedia should not assert unattributed opinions, no matter how well-informed. Put differently: "Incredibly" editorializes regardless of the strength of the arguments that could be summoned to support the editorialization. But don't take my word for it. Let's get some other editors looking at the article. -- Shunpiker 17:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

If any of us here had been writing a book at the time in which it was relevant to know the number of people killed but determining that number was not the point then we would have either quoted published research at the time. The extrapolation behind the figure Daly quoted is demonstrably wrong - but it wasn't then. Even if an attempt at determining the number was done at the time it would still seem high to us now; because obtaining further historical sources has generally led to lower estimates as the bigger incidents led a larger mark on history and so biased the figures used for extrapolation. To say that Daly's figures had no basis in research is nonsense. Consider that people here have been comparing other people's figures, are any of you actually trawling through ever relevant archived document in Europe? No. You are doing research by examining other sources. This is what Daly did. 83.147.166.27 (talk) 21:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure that the state of research into the witch craze was that bad in 1973. But, for the sake of argument, lets grant it. Since then? There's been lots of well documented, well researched books on the witch craze since at least 1980. And I'm not aware of Daly ever saying she was wrong in any of the later editions of her book or elsewhere. That is irresponsible and could be considered intellectual fraud. Steve3742 (talk) 01:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

To resolve this dispute, how about, instead of "incredibley high" you put "this figure, 100 times greater than the majority of other estimates", or even "extremely high"....I think it is also fair to use the word 'disproved' - if you can't use it here then you can't use it any historical essay, you might as well say that holocaust deniers can't be disproved.

82.35.102.252 (talk) 12:15, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

"Any period in History will have its uncertainties and innaccuracies. The further back you go, the more of them there are, as a rule." -- What nonsense, that's an absurd rule. Uncertainties and inaccuracies are based upon the number of documents left for historians to work with. It's perfectly possible for things to degenerate while chronologically growing closer, indeed it happens fairly often. Consider the Greeks. 131.111.243.37 (talk) 04:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, a throwaway remark I made 2 years ago seems to have really got under your skin. Still, I can defend it.

You are, of course, right to say that it's the number of documents left for historians to work with that determines the uncertainties and innaccuracies about a particular time in history. But I maintain that AS A RULE, the further back you go, the less documentary evidence you have, and the more uncertain this documentary evidence becomes (a recanting of a story that is itself recanting a story, and so on.) There are exceptions, of course - you mentioned the Greeks, the Dark Ages could be considered another - but it's the way to bet. We know more about Rome than we know about Greece. We know more about Greece than we know about Babylon. And so on.

A bit off topic, that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve3742 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Oops

The edit I recently made was an attempt to revert vandalism. However, it didn't seem to work... --°° $ūp£® $pÝ 0 °° 00:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Neuhaus?

As Richard Neuhaus is a conservativeCatholic opposed to all other forms of feminism apart from Daly's radical feminism, is it not POV to include his reference as a bibliographical one? One might as well say that the men's rights movement is virulently misogynist (it is, but that's a matter for another edit...)

Calibanu (talk) 04:33, 23 June 2008 (UTC)User: Calibanu

There's a question of whether the source is a WP:RS at all. Per WP:RS#News organizations, an opinion column should only be used as a source for its author's opinion, not as a source of fact (as it is in this case). This is particularly inappropriate in the case of a WP:BLP. — [[::User:Malik Shabazz|Malik Shabazz]] ([[::User talk:Malik Shabazz|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Malik Shabazz|contribs]]) 04:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Gendercide vs. "evolutionary process"

Here are some things Mary Daly might have meant that might not be called gendercide

• Selective abortion
• Genetic manipulation
• Group natural selection: every nation with more than a few males blows itself up
• Mass suicide
• Forced evacuation into space

WhyDoIKeepForgetting (talk) 05:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Those things could still be considered gendercide. Шизомби (talk) 18:36, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that you have to "consider" then gendercide argues against using that word in the article. Unless a WP:RS uses that word with respect to Daly's philosophy, I recommend against including the word in her biography. — [[::User:Malik Shabazz|Malik Shabazz]] (talk · contribs) 20:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. Those things could be defined as gendercide. However, I do agree a source would be desirable to do that in the article. I'm not pursuing one. Шизомби (talk) 03:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

"Views on men"

I added the "Undue" template because (a) nowhere does the article discuss Daly's views of women, who are the primary focus of her work, and (b) one of the two paragraphs isn't about men at all. The extrapolation that parthenogenesis doesn't involve males is a Wikipedia editor's, not Daly's; she doesn't discuss men at all in the cited section of Pure Lust. And while Daly does discuss the Virgin Birth in connection with parthenogenesis, what does that have to do with her views on men?

The second paragraph consists solely of an outrageous quotation that is, in my view, of questionable encyclopedic value.

I'd appreciate other editors' thoughts on the section. — [[::User:Malik Shabazz|Malik Shabazz]] (talk · contribs) 06:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I partially agree, and I was the one who used that title. I'm not sure what the parthenogenesis quote means, if it means anything at all. Why is "Self" capitalized? How could a person create herself? If it means existentially, how does parthenogenesis help? If Daly has ever said more directly that she supports parthenogenesis, it would be better to quote that.

On the other hand, the "outrageous"ness of the second quotation is due to the subject of the article, and it is directly related to her work. It is certainly a notable, important, and unusual belief. Her "main" work is not just about women, but about the relationships between women and men as individuals and groups. Discussing how women can escape male domination is necessarily somewhat about men.

I think it would be best to fold in the second quote somewhere else in the article, probably the "Works" section. I would prefer to call that section "Work" (singular) or "Views".

On the other hand, these two views are related in the imagining of a world without men. If the first view can be substantiated, they might fit together as a subsection of "Views". WhyDoIKeepForgetting (talk) 06:59, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Read in context, the first quote is clearly not biological, and it has nothing to do with men. Pure Lust isn't available for view at Google Books or Amazon.com, so I'll type the relevant section:

The word parthenogenesis is derived from the Greek parthenos, meaning virgin, and from genesis, which means origins, and which stems from the verb gignesthai, meaning to be born. The fact of biological parthenogenesis in some species has been demonstrated. However, parthenogenesis means more than reproduction or procreation. Anne Dellenbaugh has shown that this can be heard as a New Word: [MS note: a New Word is an old word with a new meaning, and is usually denoted by a capital letter]

Within a phallocentric semantic context, parthenogenesis is a method of reproduction. But wrenched from this context and heard with a radical feminist consciousness, Parthenogenesis names a wholly different phenomenon. Hearing it in this new way requires a qualitative leap into Self-consciousness, for Parthenogenesis names nothing less than the process of a woman creating her Self.

And of course this extends to all forms of Spinning female creativity.

It seems pretty clear that Daly and Dellenbaugh are not advocating parthenogenesis as a means of eliminating men, but are discussing the birth of female consciousness and creativity. Daly writes in the middle of the following paragraph that "no father is required for this creation" — of course not, the woman has "created her Self", she didn't need a man to do it. That's Feminism 101, not gendercide. — [[::User:Malik Shabazz|Malik Shabazz]] (talk · contribs) 07:29, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I said "imagining a world without men", not gendercide. WhyDoIKeepForgetting (talk) 17:24, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't mean to attribute that view to you, but in the past that quote has been cited by other editors as evidence that Daly supports gendercide. — [[::User:Malik Shabazz|Malik Shabazz]] (talk · contribs) 02:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That quote demonstrates that Daly believes men or masculinity or maleness constitute "contamination" of the Earth. Enthusiastic readers will connect the dots even if Daly doesn't say "go kill". Rulatir (talk) 16:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

source for death information

I haven't seen a media report of her death. Sources? 12.197.7.22 (talk) 13:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)