Is the job of feminism done? More women than men are now in college, and the employment prospects of men seem to have taken a particularly significant dive in the current economic crisis. Yet the upper reaches of our society continue to be addled by testosterone. Presidential contenders compete over how shamelessly they can sweep their personal misogyny under the rug. The economic downturn can be largely chalked up to an army of besuited males gambling, cheating, "innovating", and cronying their way into financial armeggadon, and thence into the pockets of the government for bailouts and bonuses.
Women were among the most significant and prophetic obstacles to this headlong descent into what Mary Daly might term our financial phalloclasm- such key officials as Sheila Bair, Brooksley Born, and Elizabeth Warren. The Occupy Wall Street movement might usefully consider a name change to Castrate Wall Street.
bored, Chairman of the: any bore-ocratically appointed bore who occupies a chair- a position which enables him to bore others all the more.
Dragon: Primordial Female Foe of patriarchy whom the gods, heros, and saints of snooldom attempt to slay over and over again; Metamysterious Monster, Original Knower and Guardian of the Powers of Life.
Her-etical: Weird Beyond Belief.
Mary Daly passed away almost two years ago, and the brief mentions of her life in the media piqued my interest enough to read one of her works- "Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, Conjured in Cahoots with Jane Caputi". A "Webster" being "A Weaver of Words and Word-Webs". Daly was a poet and wordsmith, a philosopher and theologian, curiously educated and employed throughout her life by Catholic institutions, at least until her refusal to admit men to her advanced women's studies course at Boston University finally brought a discrimination complaint and retirement in 1999. She was a creature of the liberal 60's and Vatican II, when the church's windows were opened and fresh breezes such as Jungianism and Feminism found a brief audience.
Papal Bull: the most sacred form of bull. Wholly, Holey, Holy baloney.
Incarnation, The: supremely sublimated male sexual fantasy promulgated as sublime christian dogma; mythic super-rape of the Virgin Mother, who represents all matter; symbolic legitimation of the rape of all women and all matter. See Sadospiritual Syndrome.
omniabscence: essential attribute of the wholly ghostly divine father, who is acclaimed by the the-ological reversers as "omnipresent"; attribute of the dummy deity who is never there, no all there, and therefore does not and can not care.
Daly was also a great humorist. Her Wickedary is a hilariously ascerbic re-valuation of all values, setting women as "Biophilic", "Shrewd/Shrewish", and many other positive, inverted, new-age-y attributes, while condeming the "snoolish", "bore-ing" daddy-ocracy with its daddygods and Big Lies that destroy not only women in a mire of silence and oppression, but the entire biosphere, as becomes clearer by the day.
Biophilia: the Original Lust for Life that is at the core of all Elemental E-motion; Pure Lust, which is the Nemesis of patriarchy, the Necrophilic state. Compare necrophilia N.B.: Biophilia is not in ordinary dictionaries, though the word necrophilia is.
Broom: Hag-ridden vehicle propelled by Rage, Transporting Dreadful/Dreadless Women out of the State of Bondage.
Her favorite symbol was the Labrys- the double headed axe of antiquity with which she notionally split phallocentric words into new and better forms, like her famous construction Gyn/Ecology, and which also carried feminist and lesbian overtones.
Naming: Original summoning of words for the Self, the world, and ultimate reality; liberation by Wicked Women of words from confinement in the sentences of the fathers; Truth-telling: the only adequate antidote for phallocracy's Biggest Lies; exorcism of patriarchal labels by invoking Other reality and by conjuring the Spirits of women and of all Wild natures; Re-calling the Race of Radiant Words.
patriarchy 1: society manufactured and controlled by males: Fatherland; society in which every legitmated instution is entirely in the hands of males and a few selected henchwomen; society characterlized by oppression, repression, depression, narcissism, cruelty, racism, classism, ageism, objectification, sadomasochism, necrophilia; joyless society, ruled by Godfather, Son, and Company; society fixated on proliferation, propagation, procreation, and bend on the destruction of all Life 2: the prevailing religion of the entire planet, whose essential message is necrophilia.
foolosophy: fooldom parading as wisdom. See academentia.
phallosophy: inflated foolosophy: "wisdom" loaded with seminal ideas and disseminated by means of thrusting arguments.
It isn't only in its word-smithing and attitude that the Wickedary excells, however, but also in Daly's introductory essays, which are prose poems of revolt by the Revolting Hags of Wildness. One might note in passing that she puts all the male attributes in lower case, while the transvalued female terms are excited into capitalized status. A sample:
"Wielding our Witches' Hammer, Websters Dis-close the Glamour of words, their magical/musical interplay as they Sound and Resound together in complex combinations. We Dis-cover connections, not only among words, but among the realities they Name."
"Daredevil dolphins, declaring and end to jumping through hoops, take Muses for Be-Musing rides. Mischievious monkeys mimic men of science. Denouncing the latter as "missing links to nothing," whose sadistic kinks require final solution, the foment revolution. Encouraged by guinea pigs, rabbits, and mice, they "deconstruct" cages, mazes, treadmills, and other shocking tools employed by evil "experts"/fools."
"Other Spirited animals also Denounce. The formerly baited and "dancing" bears, for example, dance rings around rippers who have used them for atrocious a-Musement. Viragos dance with them, proclaiming the end of such tyranny. Sagacious Seals, Denouncing their "training" in prestigious aquariums- the degrading institutions where they learned to bounce balls in return for a fish- Bark Out Loud their Seals of Disapproval and Distain. Bitches Bark with them, Outshouting the users of animals, women, and words."
"Spinsters Spinning Widdershins- turning about-face- feel/find an Other Sense of Time. We begin by asking clock-whys and then move on to counter these clock-whys with Counterclock Whys- Questions that whirl the Questioners beyond the boundaries of Boredom, in to the flow of Tidal Time/Elemental Time. This is Wild Time, beyond the clocking/clacking of clonedom. It is the Time of Wicked Inspiration / Genius, which cannot be grasped by the tidily man-dated world.
The man-dated world is clockocracy- the society that is dead set by the clocks and calendars of fathered time. ..."
One might think all this overkill, and Daly certainly took things to extremes. She was quite enamoured of the society of bees, whose males are barely tolerated and cast off with their one and only mating flight. For humans too, she proposed limiting males to 10% of the population. I take it all quite tongue in cheek, recognizing that when it comes to religion and values, literal belief and systemic seriousness are the most dangerous falsehoods. Daly knew very well that the Dolphins were not taking the Biophilic Revolting Hags for rides in the surf, but used this mythic poetry to open her listener's imagination to a trans-value system, while indicting and getting a rise out of her antagonists.
"... Brainstorming, Be-Spelling women Distemper in both of these senses, throwing bore-ocracy out of its odious order and smoothly working adjustment by Raising Hailstorms and Tempests and Otherwise Exercising Disturbing Elemental Powers.
To Be-Spellers overthrowing dronedom/clonedom it is clear that such disturbance/derangement is absolutely necessary. The Spelling of Soothsayers throws the old order out of order, Dis-covering New/Archaic Orders. In this Stormy atmosphere other women begin to Realize their own Ecstatic E-motional Disorder. Finding her Rage and Hope, a woman observes the melting away of plastic passions that had possessed her, blocking the flow of Elemental Communicating Powers. The old guilt, anxiety, depression, bitterness, resentment, frustration, boredom, resignation and- worst of all- feminine full-fillment begin to disappear. Seeing these as pseudopassions injected into her soul by the fathers of fixocracy, she flushes them away. As she exorcises these plastic parasites she begins Be-Spelling. She finds it especially efficacious to begin Spelling/Be-Spelling Out Loud."
Looking at societies like contemporary Afghanistan and Pakistan, where an unoppressed woman can hardly be observed without being beaten or raped, and where the incessent quest for "honor" among males has made their societies a living hell for everyone, her proposals might, however, not be so far-fetched.
Courage to Sin [sin derived fr. Indo-European root es- to be]: the Courage to commit Original Acts of participation in Be-ing; the Courage to be Elemental through and beyond the horrors of Obscene society; the Courage to be intellectual in the most direct and daring way, claiming and trusting the deep correspondence between the structures/processes of one's own mind and the structures/processes of reality; the Courage to trust and Act on one's own deepest intuitions.
- Saudi malegarchy.
- Archetype of the monster.
- Speaking of which ... those communist Muppets!
- Did Rome fall due to inequality and debt-bondage?
- Too big to police? Corruption has won.
- Church, coming to a public school near you.
- Carbon spewage worse than ever.
- Apparently Hayek wasn't such a big fish after all.
- Afghanistan: $10 billion a year, or else we go all crazy again.
- Poor children need better resources and teachers, not worse.
- Intriguing view of the individual / institution divide.
- Yes, Newt actually wrote a dissertation.
- The cycle of authoritarian parenting, existential insecurity, and political extremism keeps turning.
- On the role of Darwinism in economic inequality.
1 comment:
Nice post. What great language!
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