Editorial: Feminist theology and feminism, R.I.P.

Submitted by anthony on Thu, 2010-11-04 18:53

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday my students and I discussed Mary Daly, the Boston College professor, feminist theologian, and professional provocateur who died earlier this year. Judging by our discussion, feminist theology has died too, and feminism with it.

Our reading for the day was a selection from Daly’s second book, Beyond God the Father (1973), which decries a sexist cycle that has patriarchal cultures creating patriarchal divinities who then sanctify in turn the patriarchal cultures that gave them birth. “If God is male,” Daly writes, “then the male is God.”
...
But there was little celebrating (and only a little more life) in my classroom yesterday. Hardly any of my students showed any sympathy for Daly’s critique of the “Superfather in heaven,” and, when I asked for a show of hands, only four of my hundred-plus students were willing to out themselves as “feminists.”
...
When I asked my students why they don’t want to call themselves feminists, they spoke of bra-burners man-haters and Femi-Nazis, which is to say that in the war of the words which was the feminist movement, feminists seem to have lost perhaps the most important battle: the battle over the meaning of the word feminism itself.'

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Comments

Thats good news!

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Submitted by crypter27 on Fri, 2010-11-05 17:48

Mary Daly used to regularly exempt male students from her classes--something only she could get away with. No man could do that to women.

She also supported proposals to reduce the male population to 10% of the overall population.

Perhaps Daly herself helped create opposition to feminism. She made it clear what feminism was about--female superiority, not equality. She certainly had no love for men.

The word "feminism" has a different meaning depending on which feminist you're talking to. It was so endlessly re-defined that it became meaningless. And we can certainly hope it's a dead ideology. Now we just have to reverse all the laws, policies, and ideas it engendered.

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Submitted by el cid on Fri, 2010-11-05 21:36

terms like feminist, socialist, marxist and liberal never go away, they just morph.

as long as certain sectors of society get special treatment under the law,
in the employment world, affirmative action, and many many more areas, they
will continue to exist. like acorn, they may change their handle; but, as long
as gov. handouts exist for these groups, they will continue to plague us all.
a hidden snake is the most dangerous kind.

many people want handouts, and playing the phony victim card will continue to work
so long as the majority of society thinks their overpriced second rate education
is an asset. i keep seeing folks with liberal arts educations, probably paid for using
our tax dollars (aa), referred to as intellectuals. these were the ones out partying
when the really smart ones were studying.

notice you don't see any of these government endorsed 'handout for halfwit' programs,
like affirmative action, being pulled back do you? and you won't. talk really is cheap,
greed (like ugly) is to the bone, and you can't fix stupid.

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Submitted by daveinga on Sat, 2010-11-06 18:23