Drug company milks breast cancer for fun and profit...

according to a post on one of my favorite blogs, the Feminist Peace Network.

The guy who talks in Tough Guise

Here is a link to the web site of Jackson Katz, the narrator of the film Tough Guise that we've been watching in the Mary Daly group.

documentary discussion

We Haven’t Come a Long Way. And We’re Not Babies

Kathy McCallie October 27, 2010

“Step by Step” is a documentary film about the women’s movement in the 1940-1970’s illustrating the power of courageous hard-working women to make a difference in the world. As a middle-aged woman who remembers the efforts to pass the ERA, I was profoundly moved watching the film. One lingering impression is the reality that women have been working decade after decade to chip away at sexism and gynophobia with only modest gains. I admit up front that I tend to be cynical, always the first to argue that the glass is half empty. Nonetheless, I felt impatient and discouraged remembering how much hope I used to have back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Back in those days there was an ad campaign that used the slogan: “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” Maybe it was for cigarettes. I just remember glossy pages of womens’ magazines carried the ads, and I liked them. The ads seemed to proclaim that women were making political progress toward equal rights. They depicted some old scene of a woman doing oppressive labor contrasted with a jazzy, new image of a liberated woman. Then the ERA failed to pass. How could that have happened? As my consciousness was raised further, I no longer liked the ads that suggested women should be grateful for the progress we had made. The pervasive message from the society claimed that women had it pretty good as compared with other times and places: “At least you aren’t being beaten and abused! You women have it better in the United States than just about anywhere in the world. You should be grateful for all the progress you’ve made.” After that I put up a poster on my office wall that read: “We haven’t come a long way, and we’re not babies!” After ERA failed, I was furious for several decades. My fury was reawakened watching the “Step by Step” documentary.

The film reminded me of how much enthusiasm and energy there was in the feminist movement in those days. Where is the movement now? Our Mary Daly discussion group feels like a lifeline to the hope that feminist consciousness survives. Let’s keep talking and reading – keep moving on the outercourse journey. I hope you will watch the documentary with me and tell me what you think about it.

Katha Pollit on Anita Hill

Katha Pollit at The Nation has an interesting commentary about the weird phone message that Clarence Thomas's wife left for Anita Hill.

Mary Daly reading from the Wickedary

Here is a link to an audio clip of Mary Daly reading from the Wickedary.

This clip comes from KPFA in the SF Bay area, and they also have a cool women's blog.

Communion

I am not a usually a church goer, but the other week I did go to church at a very nice place called Church of the Open Arms. They used inclusive language to talk about god, alternating male and female pronouns. I'm not saying this will turn me into a churchgoer, but I found it encouraging.

Here is something that I realized during the middle of the service. At the start of communion, the pastor raised up a loaf of bread with the traditional words, "take eat, this is my body." Suddenly, it was perfectly clear that this had nothing to do with Jesus. No icky and confusing concepts like transubstantiation or "real presence" are required to explain it. You just have to leap to the obvious conclusion that the bread is literally made from the body of the Earth, and that is the source of the connection with the divine. Another patriarchal reveral reversed.

I don't think Mary Daly ever directly addressed the subject of communion, but in the Wickedary she does define the patriarchal "absence of Presence."

 lack of content and purpose; the normal nothingness of bore-ocracy; the routinized rule in snooldom, absence of soul. Examples: negation of meaning in a conversation, lack of affection or intelligence in a face; nonresponse to a question or to an act of love

Which pretty much sums up what I saw and experienced when my mother used to take me to the Lutheran church when I was a little girl.

What I'm learning from Mary Daly

I came to the Mary Daly group a few months ago and it's become a very important part of my life. Outercourse is challenging reading and so we often read only a few pages in our time together. Even so, I find myself thinking about Mary Daly's words during the week. She obviously pondered her use of language, as well as the language used in books she studied, religious and other. And now I often think of the words I hear and speak ... trying to listen carefully to learn how I might be using words in ways that minimize myself and other women.

I grew up in a home in which my brother and father were favored. Implicit in every interaction with them was the understanding that I should defer to them. If I disagreed, my mother, father and brother were displeased with me (my younger sister seemed to live in her own world most of the time). They would ask why I was always "starting an argument" or why I "wouldn't leave well enough alone". I tried to learn different ways to express my opinion, thinking that if I could just express myself the right way, they would want to know what I thought. I know now that, unless my view of reality jived with theirs, to them I was just plain wrong and further discussion was futile.

Expressing myself, being honest about what I thought, meant that my mother and father and brother were unhappy with me. And not expressing myself, just agreeing with them, meant that I could have a relationship with them, albeit very limited, but it was something. The problem with this was that I grew constantly more distant from my own self, more unhappy and more depressed. Eventually it became difficult for me to know what I even thought and to become constantly apologetic when expressing an opinion.

And so in my journey to find myself, I learn from Mary Daly, a woman who was not afraid to disagree with male authority, not afraid to express herself, not afraid to know herself, not afraid to trust herself.