BusterB: Mary Daly

A diary entry from 11 August 1999, Wednesday 22:00

I read the following story on-line at work:

BC protest has unexpected twist: Embattled feminist professor in controversy again

By James Bandler, Globe Correspondent, 08/11/99

With TV cameras whirring, Mary Daly, the radical feminist, philosopher, and theologian, jiggled a key in the door at Carney Hall and the lock did not turn.

"I can't get in," exclaimed Daly, turning the key to Room 467, where she has spent at least 10 of her 33 years as a Boston College professor. "Do you see? It just doesn't work. But it did work last night."

It was the perfect, albeit ironic, photo opportunity for Daly, who is in a celebrated fight with the college over its demand that she resign from her tenured teaching job for refusing to allow men to attend her classes. Daly, 70, called a press conference yesterday to protest the college administration's request that she remove all personal property from her office by yesterday, a demand she described as BC's latest assault in a campaign to "silence and erase" her.

Daly is suing BC for breach of contract.

"I never really anticipated that it would get this violent, so crude, so low-down," Daly told the assembled throng of journalists and supporters. "But here we are."

But Daly's effort to portray herself as a martyr to the cause of feminism was blunted by the rambling nature of her statements, inconvenient questions from reporters, and by a mysterious turn of events surrounding the purported change of locks on her office door.

At the center of the legal dispute is the question of whether Daly is legally retired: BC says she is; Daly says she is not. So far, a judge in the case has appeared to side with the college. In a ruling last month, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Martha Sosman said the school "had adequate cause to terminate Daly" irrespective of the outcome of the case concerning her refusal to allow men into her classes.

During the press conference, Daly said Sosman would have her conscience to reckon with but in an interview, Daly was less tactful, describing Sosman as a disappointment to the gender and "an Aunt Tom." She pressed her claim that she is the victim of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine federal law against discrimination by gender. The legal action against her started last fall when senior Duane Napquin, who was kept out of Daly's classroom, received legal backing from a conservative group, The Center for Individual Rights, in Washington, D.C.

"It is very clear that I'm a target," Daly said yesterday. "CIR has Boston College as a willing collaborator and no doubt the Vatican."

Daly's lawyer, Gretchen Van Ness, arrived late for the press conference. A day before, Van Ness had lost a court case representing a woman who had been denied access to a rally held by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In response to a reporter's question, Van Ness said there was nothing inconsistent about her role in the two cases, saying the Daly case involved a private university while the Farrakhan case involved a public meeting.

Several of Daly's supporters attended the conference bringing "Mary Daly Defense Fund" brochures and, in one case, a "witch's broom" to sweep the office.

But most of the attention was focused on the mystery of Daly's locked door. At the beginning of the press conference, one of Daly's students said she had opened the office door the previous day to discover a disquieting scene. All of the pictures had been removed from the walls, she said, and all of Daly's possessions had been stacked in the center of the room.

Daly accused the administration of "breaking and entering." But the administration offered a less sinister explanation. BC spokesman Jack Dunn said the college had merely painted the walls to prepare the office for its new occupant and he denied Daly's claim that the school had changed the lock on the door, suggesting that Daly had intentionally used the wrong key.

"The locks weren't changed, which is what makes this whole thing so annoying," Dunn said. "Suddenly the lock issue is overshadowing the main issue, which is Mary Daly's desire to discriminate against her male students."

Upon learning that Daly could not get into the room, Dunn summoned a janitor and by the end of the news conference someone had opened the door. Journalists crowded into the office. Copies of Daly's books, "Pure Lust" and "Outercourse," lay in piles. The walls appeared to have been recently painted and spackled. Journalists left, and Daly slipped into a black limousine and headed to her next interview.

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 08/11/99.

After I read this, I just shook my head. Thank God the university fired her, but what took them so long? She's 70, for God's sake. Why are scum like this allowed to teach in the first place? I decided to search the Web for more information about Mary Daly and her nasty, poisonous little philosophy. What I came up with shocked me, and changed my mind, however briefly, about a lot of things.

I found a site called the "EcoFem" discussion group. This group is run by some university out of Colorado or California, and it is full of the most amazing postings. The posters were mostly women, but there was at least one man. They all agree with Mary Daly, and think that what she's doing is wonderful. Some quotes (paraphrased, since I can't recall them exactly):

"The atmosphere changes dramatically when there is a male in the room."

"Dr. Daly said that the women opened up tremendously and there was such a wonderful feeling of camaraderie without males present."

"This isn't the same thing as 'men can't concentrate on Physics with women in the room'... this is different."

One woman disagreed with the group. She, like Daly, is a professor, and said that she simply controls her class to make sure that the men don't interrupt the women and that women get their say. She added that, "... if some Neanderthal interrupts, I just say, 'I believe that Ms. X was trying to say something.' If the woman doesn't want to continue, I ask, 'Don't you have anything to contribute?'"

"Neanderthal"? Nice! I bet I'd do just fine in her class!

One woman remarked that she preferred going to a "Woman's College" because at least 60% of the instructors were female, which was better than a mainstream college.

Of course, I have ideas about all of this. I wondered whether it has ever occurred to any of these brainwashed feminazis that what Mary Daly's classes do and what Women's Colleges do is to teach women to be losers. After all, if you spend all of your learning time with only women, what happens when you get a real job, and have to deal in a co-ed environment, where Mommy isn't holding your hand and keeping the nasty boys at bay? Now I know where all of those harassment complaints come from: simpering, pampered girls who haven't had to deal with yucky boys for years and then finally get shoved out into the big, wide world.

That, however, wasn't the important thought.

The important event was that this bulletin board blew my mind. Really!

I couldn't believe that there were women in existence that were so bigoted, so self-rationalizing, so sexist as this. I realized that no argument, no reason, no screaming, threatening or pleading would make any of these sponge-brains "get it." These women were just far too far gone. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Mary Daly hates men. She excludes them from her classroom (although she reportedly will deign to teach them privately... I wonder what she could teach that would possibly be worth learning). Mary Daly is a snake, and these women idolize her.

What this did was change my perspective. These women were idiots. These women were The Enemy. Women in everyday life, the ones who tell "stupid man" jokes and rejoice over "getting one over" on a man—any man—are small potatoes compared with these fruitcakes. Not only that, but these fruitcakes are unassailable. Nothing I could ever say or do would change their minds because they're steeped in sewage.

This left me with a few ideas.

These sorts of people: rabid feminazis, calm feminazis who think they're reasonable, feminist men who think they're progressive, ordinary women who actually don't like men, ordinary women who have swallowed some of this same shit, ordinary men who have swallowed it to suck up to women or keep the peace, ordinary men who have swallowed it because they have zero self-esteem... I'm going to have to learn to deal with all of them. They're not going anywhere.
Nothing I can write or say can change these people's minds. It may change some people's minds, but it won't make the world a feminist-free place. These goons are here to stay and I'm going to have to decide what I'm going to do with them in my life.
I can't despise every woman with feminist views, or I won't like any women at all, pretty-much. Most Canadian women are sexist. By comparison with these dweebs, they're hardly sexist at all, but I'm going to have to learn to cope with the mild cases more gracefully.

I think that the first point bears stressing. I'm going to have to learn to deal with all of these kinds of women and feminist men, the kinds with whom I don't agree at all. Otherwise they're going to ruin my life. And you know what? It won't be any skin off their noses. They won't care. And you know what? It won't be their fault. It'll be my fault, because I couldn't cope with them, couldn't put them in the right place in my life.

Women, all the way from the most rabid feminazi to the woman who thinks of men as just a bit less than human, do not belong in the high-ranking place I've made for them in my life. I'm going to have to learn to relegate them to the bottom of the list of my priorities or I'm going to pay for it in mental suffering.

Mary Daly Up Projection PMS No Means No No Means No Redux Stereotypes Accountabiliphobia Victims and Oppressors Drivers and Passengers Mary Daly
	A diary entry from 11 August 1999, Wednesday 22:00 I read the following story on-line at work: BC protest has unexpected twist: Embattled feminist professor in controversy again By James Bandler, Globe Correspondent, 08/11/99 With TV cameras whirring, Mary Daly, the radical feminist, philosopher, and theologian, jiggled a key in the door at Carney Hall and the lock did not turn. "I can't get in," exclaimed Daly, turning the key to Room 467, where she has spent at least 10 of her 33 years as a Boston College professor. "Do you see? It just doesn't work. But it did work last night." It was the perfect, albeit ironic, photo opportunity for Daly, who is in a celebrated fight with the college over its demand that she resign from her tenured teaching job for refusing to allow men to attend her classes. Daly, 70, called a press conference yesterday to protest the college administration's request that she remove all personal property from her office by yesterday, a demand she described as BC's latest assault in a campaign to "silence and erase" her. Daly is suing BC for breach of contract. "I never really anticipated that it would get this violent, so crude, so low-down," Daly told the assembled throng of journalists and supporters. "But here we are." But Daly's effort to portray herself as a martyr to the cause of feminism was blunted by the rambling nature of her statements, inconvenient questions from reporters, and by a mysterious turn of events surrounding the purported change of locks on her office door. At the center of the legal dispute is the question of whether Daly is legally retired: BC says she is; Daly says she is not. So far, a judge in the case has appeared to side with the college. In a ruling last month, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Martha Sosman said the school "had adequate cause to terminate Daly" irrespective of the outcome of the case concerning her refusal to allow men into her classes. During the press conference, Daly said Sosman would have her conscience to reckon with but in an interview, Daly was less tactful, describing Sosman as a disappointment to the gender and "an Aunt Tom." She pressed her claim that she is the victim of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine federal law against discrimination by gender. The legal action against her started last fall when senior Duane Napquin, who was kept out of Daly's classroom, received legal backing from a conservative group, The Center for Individual Rights, in Washington, D.C. "It is very clear that I'm a target," Daly said yesterday. "CIR has Boston College as a willing collaborator and no doubt the Vatican." Daly's lawyer, Gretchen Van Ness, arrived late for the press conference. A day before, Van Ness had lost a court case representing a woman who had been denied access to a rally held by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In response to a reporter's question, Van Ness said there was nothing inconsistent about her role in the two cases, saying the Daly case involved a private university while the Farrakhan case involved a public meeting. Several of Daly's supporters attended the conference bringing "Mary Daly Defense Fund" brochures and, in one case, a "witch's broom" to sweep the office. But most of the attention was focused on the mystery of Daly's locked door. At the beginning of the press conference, one of Daly's students said she had opened the office door the previous day to discover a disquieting scene. All of the pictures had been removed from the walls, she said, and all of Daly's possessions had been stacked in the center of the room. Daly accused the administration of "breaking and entering." But the administration offered a less sinister explanation. BC spokesman Jack Dunn said the college had merely painted the walls to prepare the office for its new occupant and he denied Daly's claim that the school had changed the lock on the door, suggesting that Daly had intentionally used the wrong key. "The locks weren't changed, which is what makes this whole thing so annoying," Dunn said. "Suddenly the lock issue is overshadowing the main issue, which is Mary Daly's desire to discriminate against her male students." Upon learning that Daly could not get into the room, Dunn summoned a janitor and by the end of the news conference someone had opened the door. Journalists crowded into the office. Copies of Daly's books, "Pure Lust" and "Outercourse," lay in piles. The walls appeared to have been recently painted and spackled. Journalists left, and Daly slipped into a black limousine and headed to her next interview. This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 08/11/99. After I read this, I just shook my head. Thank God the university fired her, but what took them so long? She's 70, for God's sake. Why are scum like this allowed to teach in the first place? I decided to search the Web for more information about Mary Daly and her nasty, poisonous little philosophy. What I came up with shocked me, and changed my mind, however briefly, about a lot of things. I found a site called the "EcoFem" discussion group. This group is run by some university out of Colorado or California, and it is full of the most amazing postings. The posters were mostly women, but there was at least one man. They all agree with Mary Daly, and think that what she's doing is wonderful. Some quotes (paraphrased, since I can't recall them exactly): "The atmosphere changes dramatically when there is a male in the room." "Dr. Daly said that the women opened up tremendously and there was such a wonderful feeling of camaraderie without males present." "This isn't the same thing as 'men can't concentrate on Physics with women in the room'... this is different." One woman disagreed with the group. She, like Daly, is a professor, and said that she simply controls her class to make sure that the men don't interrupt the women and that women get their say. She added that, "... if some Neanderthal interrupts, I just say, 'I believe that Ms. X was trying to say something.' If the woman doesn't want to continue, I ask, 'Don't you have anything to contribute?'" "Neanderthal"? Nice! I bet I'd do just fine in her class! One woman remarked that she preferred going to a "Woman's College" because at least 60% of the instructors were female, which was better than a mainstream college. Of course, I have ideas about all of this. I wondered whether it has ever occurred to any of these brainwashed feminazis that what Mary Daly's classes do and what Women's Colleges do is to teach women to be losers. After all, if you spend all of your learning time with only women, what happens when you get a real job, and have to deal in a co-ed environment, where Mommy isn't holding your hand and keeping the nasty boys at bay? Now I know where all of those harassment complaints come from: simpering, pampered girls who haven't had to deal with yucky boys for years and then finally get shoved out into the big, wide world. That, however, wasn't the important thought. The important event was that this bulletin board blew my mind. Really! I couldn't believe that there were women in existence that were so bigoted, so self-rationalizing, so sexist as this. I realized that no argument, no reason, no screaming, threatening or pleading would make any of these sponge-brains "get it." These women were just far too far gone. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Mary Daly hates men. She excludes them from her classroom (although she reportedly will deign to teach them privately... I wonder what she could teach that would possibly be worth learning). Mary Daly is a snake, and these women idolize her. What this did was change my perspective. These women were idiots. These women were The Enemy. Women in everyday life, the ones who tell "stupid man" jokes and rejoice over "getting one over" on a man—any man—are small potatoes compared with these fruitcakes. Not only that, but these fruitcakes are unassailable. Nothing I could ever say or do would change their minds because they're steeped in sewage. This left me with a few ideas. These sorts of people: rabid feminazis, calm feminazis who think they're reasonable, feminist men who think they're progressive, ordinary women who actually don't like men, ordinary women who have swallowed some of this same shit, ordinary men who have swallowed it to suck up to women or keep the peace, ordinary men who have swallowed it because they have zero self-esteem... I'm going to have to learn to deal with all of them. They're not going anywhere. Nothing I can write or say can change these people's minds. It may change some people's minds, but it won't make the world a feminist-free place. These goons are here to stay and I'm going to have to decide what I'm going to do with them in my life. I can't despise every woman with feminist views, or I won't like any women at all, pretty-much. Most Canadian women are sexist. By comparison with these dweebs, they're hardly sexist at all, but I'm going to have to learn to cope with the mild cases more gracefully. I think that the first point bears stressing. I'm going to have to learn to deal with all of these kinds of women and feminist men, the kinds with whom I don't agree at all. Otherwise they're going to ruin my life. And you know what? It won't be any skin off their noses. They won't care. And you know what? It won't be their fault. It'll be my fault, because I couldn't cope with them, couldn't put them in the right place in my life. Women, all the way from the most rabid feminazi to the woman who thinks of men as just a bit less than human, do not belong in the high-ranking place I've made for them in my life. I'm going to have to learn to relegate them to the bottom of the list of my priorities or I'm going to pay for it in mental suffering.