Beyond God The Father Toward A Philosophy Of Women 39;s Liberation
Renau Sheard
In Mary Daly's second book she challenged the most basic assumptions aboutpatriarchal religion and announced her new position as a "post-Christian" feministscholar. As such, Daly no longer considered herself a Catholic feminist and, furthermore,judged the Catholic feminist movement to be moribund. In the following excerpts, Dalydefined feminism as revolutionary, not reformist, and encouraged women to redefinewhat was central and vital based on women's "experience of becoming." Although manyCatholic feminists read and were influenced by Beyond God the Father, probably fewwomen followed Daly and left the Catholic feminist movement since the movement wasgrowing rapidly at this time.
But if the word "theology" can be torn free from its usual limitedand limiting context, if it can be torn free from its function of legitimatingpatriarchy, then my book can be called an effort to create theology aswell as philosophy. For my purpose is to show that the women's revolution,insofar as it is true to its own essential dynamics, is an ontological,spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society andsparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becomingof women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to dowith the search for ultimate meaning and reality, which some would callGod.
Women have been extra-environmentals in human society. Wehave been foreigners not only to the fortresses of political power butalso to those citadels in which thought processes have been spun out,
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creating a net of meaning to capture reality. In a sexist world, symbolsystems and conceptual apparatuses have been male creations. Thesedo not reflect the experience of women, but rather function to falsifyour own self-image and experiences. Women have often resolvedthe problems this situation raises by simply not seeing the situation.That is, we have screened out experience and respondedonly to the questions considered meaningful and licit within theboundaries of prevailing thought structures, which reflect sexistsocial structures.
As Simone de Beauvoir sadly notes, women who have perceivedthe reality of sexual oppression usually have exhausted themselves inbreaking through to discovery of their own humanity, with little energyleft for constructing their own interpretation of the universe.[B] Therefore,the various ideological constructs cannot be imagined to reflect a balancedor adequate vision. Instead, they distort reality and destroyhuman potential, female and male. What is required of women at thispoint in history is a firm and deep refusal to limit our perspectives, questioning,and creativity to any of the preconceived patterns of male-dominatedculture. When the positive products of our emerging awarenessand creativity express dimensions of the search for ultimate meaning,they can indeed be called both philosophical and theological, butin the sense of pointing beyond the God of patriarchal philosophy andreligion.
The power of presence that is experienced by those who have begunto live in the new space radiates outward, attracting others. For thosewho are fixated upon patriarchal space it apparently is threatening.Indeed this sense of threat is frequently expressed. For those who arethus threatened, the presence of women to each other is experienced
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as an absence. Such women are no longer empty receptacles to beused as "the Other," and are no longer internalizing the projections thatcut off the flow of being. Men who need such projection screens experiencethe power of absence of such "objects" and are thrown into thesituation of perceiving nothingness. Sometimes the absence of womenthat elicits this anxiety is in fact physical. For example, when womendeliberately stay away from meetings, social gatherings, etc., in orderto be free to do what is important to ourselves, there is sometimes aninordinate response of protest. Sometimes the absence is simply noncooperation,refusal to "play the game" of sex roles, refusal to flatterand agree, etc. This too hints at presence of another space that womenhave gone off to, and the would-be users are left with no one to use.Sometimes, of course, the absence of women takes the form of activeresistance. Again, it throws those who would assume the role of exploitersback into their sense of nothingness.
In this way then, women's confrontation with the experience ofnothingness invites men to confront it also. Many of course respondwith hostility. The hostility may be open or, in some cases, partially disguisedboth from the men who are exercising it and from the womento whom it is directed. When disguised, it often takes seductive forms,such as invitations to "dialogue" under conditions psychologically loadedagainst the woman, or invitations to a quick and easy "reconciliation"without taking seriously the problems raised. Other men react with disguisedhostility in the form of being "the feminist's friend," not in thesense of really hearing women but as paternalistic supervisors, analysts,or "spokesmen" for the movement. Despite the many avenues ofnonauthentic response to the threat of women's power of absence, somemen do accept the invitation to confront the experience of nothingnessthat offers itself when "the Other" ceases to be "the Other" and standsback to say "I am." In so doing men begin to liberate themselves towardwholeness, toward androgynous being. This new participation in thepower of being becomes possible for men when women move into thenew space.
Entry into the new space whose center is on the boundary of theinstitutions of patriarchy also involves entry into new time. To be caughtup in these institutions is to be living in time past. This is strikingly evidentin the liturgies and rituals that legitimate them. By contrast, when womenlive on the boundary, we are vividly aware of living in time present/future.
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Participation in the unfolding of God means also this time breakthrough,which is a continuing (but not ritually "repeated") process. The centerof the new time is on the boundary of patriarchal time. What it is, infact, is women's own time. It is our life-time. It is whenever we are livingout of our own sense of reality, refusing to be possessed, conquered,and alienated by the linear, measured-out, quantitative time of the patriarchalsystem. Women, in becoming who we are, are living in a qualitative,organic time that escapes the measurements of the system. Forexample, women who sit in institutional committee meetings without surrenderingto the purposes and goals set forth by the male-dominatedstructure, are literally working on our own time while perhaps appearingto be working "on company time." The center of our activities is organic,in such a way that events are more significant than clocks. This boundaryliving is a way of being in and out of "the system." It entails a refusalof false clarity. Essentially it is being alive now, which in its deepestdimension is participation in the unfolding of God.
Mary Daly was born in Schenectady, New York, on October 16, 1928.[3] She was an only child. Her mother was a homemaker and her father, a traveling salesman.[6] Daly was raised in a Catholic environment; both her parents were Irish Catholics and Daly attended Catholic schools as a girl.[7] Early in her childhood, Daly had mystical experiences in which she felt the presence of divinity in nature.[6]
Before obtaining her two doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the College of Saint Rose, her Master of Arts degree in English from the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in religion from Saint Mary's College.
Daly was first threatened with dismissal when, following the publication of her first book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968), she was issued a terminal (fixed-length) contract. As a result of support from the (then all-male) student body and the general public, however, Daly was ultimately granted tenure.
Daly's refusal to admit male students to some of her classes at Boston College also resulted in disciplinary action. While Daly argued that their presence inhibited class discussion, Boston College took the view that her actions were in violation of title IX of federal law requiring the college to ensure that no person was excluded from an education program on the basis of sex, and of the university's own non-discrimination policy insisting that all courses be open to both male and female students.
In 1998, a discrimination claim against the college by two male students was backed by the Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian advocacy group. Following further reprimand, Daly absented herself from classes rather than admit the male students.[9] Boston College removed her tenure rights, citing a verbal agreement by Daly to retire. She brought suit against the college disputing violation of her tenure rights and claimed she was forced out against her will, but her request for an injunction was denied by Middlesex Superior Court Judge Martha Sosman.[10]
A confidential out-of-court settlement was reached. The college maintains that Daly had agreed to retire from her faculty position,[11] while others assert she was forced out.[12][13] Daly maintained that Boston College wronged her students by depriving her of her right to teach freely to only female students.[14] She documented her account of the events in the 2006 book, Amazon Grace: Recalling the Courage to Sin Big.
Daly published a number of works, and is perhaps best known for her second book, Beyond God the Father (1973). Beyond God the Father is the last book in which Daly really considers God a substantive subject. She laid out her systematic theology, following Paul Tillich's example.[17] Often regarded as a foundational work in feminist theology, Beyond God the Father is her attempt to explain and overcome androcentrism in Western religion, and it is notable for its playful writing style and its attempt to rehabilitate "God-talk" for the women's liberation movement by critically building on the writing of existentialist theologians such as Paul Tillich and Martin Buber. While the former increasingly characterized her writing, she soon abandoned the latter.
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