Women’s Space

Mary Daly speaking at the Feminist Hullaballoo in Santa Fe, NM — June 23, 2007

She was amazing!  I remember thinking her wearing of green might have been intentional, consistent with her celebration of the “biophilic” (life loving).

Mary Daly passed away yesterday, Sunday morning, January 3, 2010.   Her life deserves to be honored and celebrated and for this, I have re-opened my blog.

I’ve posted photos taken at the Feminist Hullaballoo in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Saturday, June 23, 2007, together with some of my recollections and writings about this event, which, as it turns out, was one of Daly’s last public speaking engagements.

Daly:  “We are in the presence of multiple, swirling presences. I sense them here. They are our foresisters. We are creating the archaic future through biophilic connectedness…

The red of nemesis is here. We can’t stop now. We have overcome. ”

Mary refused the flowers presented to her saying she’d had a dream she’d be presented with flowers like a little old lady. She urged that the flowers be given to “someone better-looking” than she.

In an article about the event published in off our backs in October of 2007, I wrote:

After lunch came another of the moments I had so anticipated, the moment Mary Daly would speak. Daly began by asking us to summon our foresisters, and again, the names rang out: Sappho, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Sacajawea. With these “multiple swirling presences” now surrounding us, remembering that we are creating our archaic future, our biophilic connectedness, Daly urged us to leave the “State of Fear,” reminding us that in the land of fascism, “courage is outrageously contagious,” She called on us to replace the “wimpy women’s studies everywhere” with our own “hedge schools,” similar to the outdoor hedge schools Irish women created to educate girls after Ireland was conquered by the British. Daly charged us with creating traveling universities or “gyneversities” throughout the country, where women would teach women and girls all we know and need to know in order to build a new world. Rejecting e-mail and computer communication, Daly asked us to call her on the telephone to discuss our own plans to create traveling gyneversities, and she announced her home phone number from the podium, to rousing cheers and applause.

I concluded my article about the Hullaballoo this way:

The Reunion of the Wild Sisters ended with a “Grand Cauldron.” Afia Walking Tree, Alix Dobkin, Margie Adams, and others drummed and played, and the rest of us, sisters by now if we were not at first, arms wrapped around each other or holding hands, kicked off our shoes and danced together for what must have been 20 minutes or so, although it seemed much longer. The first two days of the Hullabaloo had been a joyous, celebratory reunion. The final day was more sobering, a poignant reminder, at times, of the difficulties, conflicts and struggles that linger in this movement we so love, to which so many good women have given their lives. Perhaps our answers in this new phase of the women’s movement will be found, as we discussed, in the creation of many more women’s communities, small and large, throughout the United States and the world. Perhaps our answers lie in women’s lands like Outland, places of healing, comfort, renewal. Maybe our answers will be found in Mary Daly’s traveling gyneversities now in the planning stages.

…I left Santa Fe feeling thrilled, inspired, comforted, and deeply encouraged by all I had seen and heard. I left deeply troubled and disturbed as well. I wondered how well we have really learned our lessons as a movement and whether we will be able to adequately communicate what we have learned to young feminists. Was the long silence of the wild sisters a long grieving as well? A long heartache, for some? Might it have been a long struggle to arrive at peace with the difficult conflicts and struggles of this great work? On Friday night of the Feminist Hullabaloo, Sonia Johnson made the first of several references to the following words of another great feminist leader, the late Monique Wittig. They capture well the deep sentiments, celebrations, and questions that remain in the wake of this historic event:

“There was a time when you were not a slave; remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember. The wild roses flower in the woods.  Your hand is torn on the bushes gathering the mulberries and strawberries you refresh yourself with…. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track. You know the winter fear when you hear the wolves gathering…. You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or failing that, invent.” –Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres

Mary, I will so miss your presence in this world, your Be-ing in this world.  Thank you for all you gave to us.  Thank you for Beyond God the Father, a historic, brilliant challenge to and confrontation of misogyny in patriarchal Christianity.  Thank you for an entire lifetime lived for the love of women.  Thank you for writing in my copy of your book, Pure Lust, “To Heart:  Wishing you Pure Lust,” ”lust” as you understand it  having nothing to do with “lust” as it is defined by patriarchy and patriarchal religion.

Thank you for writing brilliant books that still made us laugh our heads off, brilliant as they were, and thank you for theorizing what the laughter and Cackling of Crones might really mean and accomplish and be in the world.  Thank you for taking such incredible risks and for being so courageous.  Thank you for your relentless challenge to Christian orthodoxy and Christian patriarchy.  Thank you for your doleful and always hilarious take-downs of “academentia” and its unending parade of fool-o-crats and snools.  Thank you for never giving up, even when you were being kicked without mercy while you were down.  Thank you for your wise example of silence in the face of women who lied, who used every weapon they could create to take you down and out, and who, in fact, caused you great harm, and thank you for your example of relentlessly, loudly, unapologetically speaking your truth in the face of the patriarchs and woman-haters, who also caused you so much harm.

Thank you for Be-ing so magnificently in this world, for teaching us how to live out our lives as old women in style, with A-Mazing Amazon Grace, as Positively Re-Volting Hags.  Thank you for giving us a whole new language that raised our consciousnesses with every word, exciting, frustrating, inspiring and confounding us until all of a sudden, in a moment at times, it all came together for us and things were clear in a way we had not experienced clarity before we read this new language– our language.  Our Mother Tongue.  Thank you for creating, writing, speaking, envisioning, building, rebuilding and encouraging us until the end of your life.  You were a True Amazon, a Giant.  I will never forget you.  As much as it lies with me, I will never allow you or your work to be forgotten.

Heart

(I will be posting some of my past writings about Mary Daly and quotes from her books and writings over the next few days.)