Words are double-edged like Labryses. When we see that, our minds become Labryses, and the words become Labryses so that we can use them in all directions, like Amazons riding our horses and swirling the Labryses from side to side. Grammar released is a way of putting words together that creates different rhythms, different vibrations in the atmosphere.

Daly’s eminence as a feminist philosopher is unparalleled. She holds a total of seven university degrees, including three doctorates (in religion, theology, and philosophy). Her books have not only become classics of feminist philosophy; they also represent her own evolution in thinking—a "Lust for Metamorphosis"—from feminist reformation within the established Church, to "a Journey beyond the State of Lechery and academentia," to the Be-Witching of the Websters’ Wickedary. Her creative use of language—through punning, alliteration, hyphenation, capitalization, tracing word derivations to "Dis-cover" old meanings that speak to women of their power, and the "Spinning of Word-Webs" evidenced in Gyn/Ecology and Pure Lust has resulted in the Wickedary (written "in cahoots with Jane Caputi"). The Wickedary is a full-scale, many-layered, profound and humor-filled radical feminist "Metadictionary" with definitions of a kind that no "dick-dick-dictionary" has ever included:

Homesick, adj. 1: sickened by the home 2: sick of the home; healthily motivated to escape the patriarchal home and family.

Presbot, n. : the president as he appears on television: the Talking Head of State; the president as robot: mechanical imitation of a political leader capable of experiencing emotion and thought processes. Example par excellence: Ronald Reagan.

"Academentia"

Daly, a sparkling-eyed woman with a Wicked sense of humor, lectures on Radical Feminism to audiences filled with appreciative—sometimes awed—women, as she did to packed crowds at the National Women’s Music Festival Writers’ Conference in Bloomington earlier this year.

Yet Daly has been a subject of controversy since the late Sixties, when she was fired from her teaching position at the Jesuit-run Boston College, after publication of The Church and the Second Sex. In 1969, thousands of students (most of them male, since the College of Arts and Sciences in which Daly taught did not admit women students at the time) protested the firing in demonstrations that lasted over several months. As a result, the college was forced to reinstate her with tenure.

Daly’s doctorates in philosophy and theology are from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. "I thought that by getting degree after degree, finally I’d learn something. And I did learn something, but not exactly what I was supposed to learn." At Fribourg, all Daly’s professors were male, and all her classmates were male—two hundred priests and seminarians. "These priests and seminarians wouldn’t sit next to me, though—because I was sin, you know, woman. So there was always a space on each side of me. They were all wearing their black dresses, eyes cast down. So I spent seven years in the thirteenth century. And meanwhile, I was teaching American students. It was a very diversified life. I did really think in the Sixties—and it wasn’t a completely illogical thought—that by getting all that academic legitimation, I could find a place where I could teach and exchange ideas and be creative. And I a way, it’s worked."

When she first began teaching at Boston College, all her students were male. "And we got along very well," Daly shrugs winningly. "They liked me." When she was fired, these students rallied to her defense. "I also enjoyed debating with them at one point. I used to accept questions from men. I debated with William F. Buckley on television. It was the late Sixties, and it was very easy because he’s so dumb. And I was on panels, too: I would be on one side, with Father Schnookalooka and Brother No-It-All on the other."

Now Daly teaches women in her classes. "If you’ve ever had the experience of teaching feminist philosophy or feminist theory in a mixed class, you’d see that with even one male, one little quiet, gentle, sensitive male, it’s very different from the vibes in a room that consists entirely of women. There can be problems among women, granted, but it’s very different."

Getting tenure has given Daly some measure of academic security, but she has continued to be harassed for her views. "The Church and the Second Sex bothered them. I was demonstrating back in the Sixties that women were oppressed by the church. That bothered them. Actually it probably bothered them more than my later, more sophisticated work because they were better able to understand it. In fact by 1970 I was no longer arguing for equality within the church—that would be like a Black person trying to get equality in the Ku Klux Klan. Not only impossible, but most undesirable."

During the question-and-answer time of her talk at Bloomington, Daly was asked why she remained at Boston College instead of going to another school. She replied that there was no non-harassing situation anywhere in academia. Then she was asked why she stayed in academia at all. She responded, "Because I have this peculiar need to eat. Moreover, I teach Radical Feminist philosophy to women, and that is important."

Daly said, "in some ways I’ve been lucky to have that Catholic background, because they are so grotesque. Once you’ve seen through it, you have the whole picture. You see it very vividly. All of the archetypes are very very explicit. Whereas I think there are disadvantages in coming from a liberal Protestant or a liberal Jewish environment. It’s more seductive, more difficult to see the archetypes in sharp outline."

Lesbian/lesbian

The word "Lesbian" is defined in Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary:

Lesbian n : a Woman-Loving woman; a woman who has broken the Terrible Taboo against Women-Touching women on all levels; Woman-identified woman: one who has rejected false loyalties to men in every sphere. N.B.: Websters point out that the terms gay or female homosexual more accurately describe women who, although they relate genitally to women, give their allegiance to men and male myths, ideologies, styles, practices, institutions, and professions. Lesbian is capitalized to indicate Woman-identification. The word lesbian, when it is used to refer to degraded caricatures of Lesbian reality, actually means pseudo-Lesbian or sadolesbian. Such portrayals are commonly disseminated in the popular media, in pornography, and in pseudo-Lesbian books, magazines, graphics, films, and video. See Terrible Taboo; Amazon; Spinster; Woman-Touching woman.

"By the circumstances of our lives, women are forced to live in geographically very different places. I’m not talking only about lover relationships that are affected by distance. At the same time there is a kind of intimacy that spans space and time to such an extent that space is less important than it would seem. For example, I can go to Australia or Ireland and be with women who seem to be thinking on the same wavelength—and who are. And it’s as if we’ve been knowing each other for years, we’ve been having conversations for years. So evidently there is—I think ’networking’ is a corny word, but there is this bonding across space and time. Whereas geographically I can be surrounded by fembots in suburbia. So Physical Ultimacy is—I think of psychic powers as physical, they’re natural, not supernatural—expanding to their ultimate point or points our psychic powers to communicate. But psychic to me isn’t dichotomized from physical or erotic. Anything really worthwhile to me that is E-motional or passionate is also very psychic. I’m not setting up opposites—it’s one of these dichotomies that isn’t really necessary, like the dichotomy between matter and spirit. I think of Spirit/Matter, not of a body that "has" a soul. Your whole be-ing is Spirit/Matter, matter is spiritual.

The Problem of ’Women’s Spirituality’

"Although I use the word spirituality or spiritual," says Daly, "There is something inadequate about that word that almost leads to misunderstanding, because it does imply a dichotomy." Daly subtitled Pure Lust "Elemental Feminist Philosophy" to get away from "a word like spiritual, because Elemental says all of it."

I think that we don’t understand one tenth of one percent of our powers, but they are perfectly natural powers, and work in perfectly natural ways. If I’m writing, that’s an Elemental, Spiritual Act.

"I think that one of the problems with much that passes under the name of women’s spirituality is that it’s a regression into very old patriarchal patterns. And ’goddess’, as the word is sometimes used, really means the same as ’god’. It’s just god wearing a dress, and it’s legitimating very feminine attitudes. One expects this from theologians or christianity or eastern mysticism, but one doesn’t expect it from feminists. But if women have really not been using their minds, they’ll slide back into old stereotypes and archetypes—they’re all there, ready for us to slide into. It’s like obsession with motherhood, or family, or coupledom, or a lot of the other forms—they’re right there ready to hold us back from independence and strength."

Feminism and Pseudofeminism

In Pure Lust, Daly defined "Radical Feminist" using four criteria. The first is an "intuition of radical otherness in relation to all patriarchal patterns." This sense of Otherness, Daly says, is "ecstatic. It isn’t just grimness. It ’s consciousness coming from glimpses of the possibility of Happiness." The second criterion is "a knowledge of the punishments," the sanctions that will come down on you for being a feminist. "You’ll be punished just as much for being a little bit feminist as for being a feminist all the way," she says. Third is "a sense of moral outrage for women as women" and fourth is "persistence, even against the current, even when feminism is no longer popular. By default," says Daly, "anything that fails on any of these scores will be pseudofeminism or plastic feminism," and will be inadequate.

"I think there’s a lot of plastic feminism around these days. It can go from sadomasochistic behavior on a physical level, to the psychic level, to wimpy women’s studies, tokenism, all the trashing and confessionalism, journals that really are murder by boredom—there’s just a deadly way of making feminism boring. It takes all kinds of forms from disguised horizontal hostility, to just blah dulled-out mechanism, to opportunism. Think of the rageless academic crap that gets published as feminist theory in in the Eighties, as contrasted with the stronger stuff that was published earlier. I’d say one characteristic of pseudofeminism is the absence of Rage toward the oppressors who are doing their best to destroy women and the entire planet. There is an inability to Name the oppressors. And I also think that authentic Rage and a sense of humor go together—when one is lacking, usually the other is lacking. Of course, the word ’feminism’ may not be adequate to Name what the powerful thing is we are trying to Name: anti-patriarchal, Metapatriarchal Powers."

Weaving Words

Even though women’s experience has been ignored and erased throughout history, women have alwys spoken—and words get compiled in dictionaries. "That’s the wonderful thing about the dictionary—it keeps archaic and obsolete words for a long time," says Daly. "one of the worst things that could happen would be a cleanup of the dictionary so we have only more and more foreground meanings left. But as long as there still are those archaic and obsolete definitions, we have clues. It’s an incredible experience to race through the dictionary and catch the threads. One word leads to another, and it’s very magical." Part of Daly’s work has been to Dis-cover ancient meanings of words that reveal women’s powers and to employ words in New ways that Name our experiences. Responding to a question about integrating such words into our own speech today, Daly says, "It’s a delicate thing, because I think you have to get a sense of what feels authentic to you. Integrate them when they feel good to you, when they feel right. But also, move to Dis-cover others. Because there are others that are screaming to be let out. There are thousands of words rattling their cages ready to break loose."

Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary, says Daly, is "the process of freeing words from the prisons of patriarchal patterns. Under the rule of snools, words are beaten down, banalized, reduced to serving the sentences of father time." The Wickedary is "a declaration that words and women have served the fathers’ sentences long enough. Websters ride the rhythms of Tidal Time. We’re unleashing our energy with our words. Our words name this rush of aura energy, of connectedness with each Other, our Selves, with Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Like birds uncaged, our soundings rush and soar, seeking sister vibrations."

Pure Lust contains quotes from the Wickedary, though at the time she was writing Pure Lust, the Wickedary didn’t yet exist. It seems perfectly natural that a book gathering together the threads Daly has woven in her life as a Radical Feminist would follow from the deep Spinnings of Pure Lust. "I didn’t know then that it was actually going to be a book. I had already started—and then I decided to do it. That means it was sort of in the cauldron in the early Eighties, but actual work on it, incarnating it, was during summers and vacations while I was teaching ’84-’85, and during the academic year ’85-86 I worked on it full-time."

Why does she include ’Intergalactic’ in the title? "I see our Journeys as going and going and going and swirling. What it means metaphorically is a journey among the stars. I don’t mean by ’Intergalactic’ that we have to get there in klutzy space ships. We are connected with the stars, there is astral influence. The tides are affected not only by the moon, but also by the farthest stars. So when I say ’Intergalactic,’ I mean moving among the galaxies."

© 1987 Jorjet Harper

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