Title Page of Mary Daly’s Pure Lust showing library ‘withdrawn’ stamp
It’s about time I posted something about what this blog is for. The picture above gives a short answer to that. In this post I’ll elaborate on that a bit.
I started transcribing feminist material and publishing it here without a preconceived plan in mind for the blog. I transcribed a couple of interviews Sheila Jeffreys gave to Meghan Murphy on request by a friend, and publishing them here (on what was at that point a blog gathering dust) was just an easy way of linking to the transcripts for those that wanted them. It carried on in a pretty haphazard fashion from there, a convenient way to make a collection of resources as I happened on them. So I didn’t start out with A Plan. But now, a few months down the line, it’s about time I clarified my intentions.
I’m relatively new to feminism, by which I mean it’s only been a couple of years since a sister opened the door for me to step through. I thought I was a feminist before that, but, frankly, I didn’t know the meaning of the word – I was using it as shorthand for the everyone-agrees-with-it, no-actual-analysis-involved idea that men and women should be equal. I was also a bit of a smart aleck who thought she knew a thing or two about feminism because – and here a derisive snort is in order – I’d studied it at university. Luckily for me, I encountered an actual feminist doing actual feminism who suggested I go and read some actual feminist writing instead of the pomo stuff I was spouting, and I’m glad to report that that’s exactly what I did. So this was only a couple of years ago. And as I’m sure anyone reading this blog already knows, the whole process of consciousness-raising is long and difficult and ongoing, although not linear, and studded with epiphanies where a shift in perception can be sudden, immediate even. But the point is that two years isn’t a long time in that process. So this blog is, from a quite selfish point of view, part of my learning and consciousness raising process. I’d just come to the end of my degree (don’t assume I’m young by that; I was a mature student) and this tour through ‘The Feminist Canon’ reflects the habit I picked up in that academic world of the dutiful plough through The Canon in order to become Knowledgable about a Field. I realize there’s irony there. It’s kind of a patriarchal way of going about things. Coming from a working class background I had bust a gut to Do It Properly so I could pass as an educated person. What’s patriarchal about this is the idea that the novice is unqualified to speak until they have proven themselves fully acquainted with the (patriarchally approved) canon and have various badges and baubles to show for it. Then, and not before, they can speak with authority. The vestiges of this idea are still clinging to me and this is in large part why there are so few of my own words on this blog. Far from freeing my mind, going through that educational mill turned out to be stultifying and deadening.
That realization has made me pretty angry, because discovering radical feminism, which I had been taught was an historical phenomenon, no longer relevant in light of the progress of ideas since then, I find that there’s this whole body of work by women, by feminists, which was denied to me. It simply wasn’t there, on the reading lists, in the libraries, in the bookshops. This body of work that is utterly relevant. Not just ignored, but derided and dismissed. This derision and dismissal is a belt and braces approach to silencing on the part of the patriarchy. Mere silence and invisibility might not be enough to do the job.
Towards the end of my degree, I’d started reading feminist blogs, and then feminist books, and, my final module being on political theory, I decided to incorporate some of what I was learning into my final piece of work. I read a long article by Val Plumwood and it BLEW MY MIND. Not only because it was so clear and so perception-shifting, not only because I couldn’t believe that such work had been denied to me as a student (obviously Val P was not on any recommended reading list), but also because I clocked that the work of the men I was obliged to study for that particular topic seemed to do that thing that men do, when a woman says something and it’s ignored, then moments later a man says it and everyone throws their hands in the air and congratulates him on his brilliant thinking. THAT. I was writing my final assignment with a broken hand, my partner’s mother had just died, my daughter had just had an abortion, and my mother was recovering from an operation. So I was generally pretty pissed off at that time, had limited energy for this assignment and wasn’t in the mood to mince my words. Predictably my diatribe didn’t earn many brownie points from the marker but it was the most honest, ‘alive’ writing I’d produced in the whole five years.
So the point of this long, overly personal ramble is to give you a bit of background. Middle-aged woman with all sorts of shit going on discovers feminism despite the mind-deadening, thought-blocking, speech-preventing effects of academentia. Having got the degree out of the way I set about reading whatever I chose to read, and that has been the work of those radical feminists that was denied to me when I was an actual bona fide student. See the picture. Mary Daly’s Pure Lust, stamped WITHDRAWN from a university library. The shits.
I’ve regurgitated Mary Daly’s work on this blog. Since reading FCM’s recent post I have stopped to think: is this the parroting of which she speaks? There’s no getting around it: it is. Is there any value in doing this? Well, I hope there is. From a personal perspective, it’s given me a way of engaging with these ideas in a different way than if I’d just sat in my armchair and read them. And by putting them up here, I hope that more women will read them. Because I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but where I am these books are not on the library shelves. You have to buy them second hand, and fortunately enough copies were printed that it’s still possible to find second hand copies, like the copy of Pure Lust I ordered that arrived with its sad, dwindling list of ‘due back at the library’ dates at the front and the word “WITHDRAWN” stamped all over it. No longer relevant. A historical phenomenon. One of those old school social movements underpinned by a GRAND NARRATIVE with a naïve belief in [snort!] liberation, all of which has obviously been debunked by those indecipherable French chaps since then so, you know, don’t even bother reading them.
So I have regurgitated chunks of Mary Daly’s work on this blog both for selfish reasons and non-selfish reasons. I publish them in the hope that other women will find them more easily than I did, and in formats that mean they can be read and searched and highlighted and transferred to all manner of devices or printed out to be read the old fashioned way. Because the place where I encountered the woman who opened this door for me is no longer the place it was. I was just lucky to be in that place at that time, and I’m lucky to have the resources to buy copies of these books. I’ve thought about it and I still think this is a worthwhile thing to do. What it is not is a creative endeavour. It’s more of a virtual librarianship endeavour.
I’ve noticed that the proponents of queer theory and the like accuse radical feminists of being “stuck in the 1970s,” the assumption being made that we haven’t “progressed” to their more up-to-date stuff. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that plenty of us come to radical feminism having already read, understood, and rejected their more “up-to-date stuff.” I find in radical feminism the truth about my life, and my mother’s life, and my daughter’s life, and my sister’s life. As CBL recently commented, the overwhelming feeling upon reading the words of a radical feminist is a sense of relief: it’s not just me then. This doesn’t mean I see radical feminism as therapy – although it can be therapeutic if viewed in that individualistic sense. That’s all very well for the individual but kept on that level it doesn’t do anything. Radical feminism enables us to recognize ourselves as members of a class, or more accurately, a caste, created and maintained by men for the benefit of men. With this knowledge, we can act collectively to challenge this system of male supremacy. Once you see this reality – and it’s there in the fabric of all of our lives – you can’t unsee it, and it’s potential to destabilize, dislodge, undermine, overthrow male power is such that this knowledge must be silenced. That’s why Mary Daly’s books aren’t on library shelves any more. Like no other, she elaborates the philosophy of radical feminism, its underpinnings and its implications and how it works and what it means. There aren’t too many books being published now that build on what Mary Daly and her contemporary foresisters did in their writing, although women like Sheila Jeffreys and Catharine MacKinnon continue to be published (although not without a fight). The thriving radical feminist blogosphere is where some amazing – by which I mean A-mazing – work is being done: creative work, living work. This is not one of those blogs. It is, I acknowledge, simply an archive, a link to the words of some of those foresisters which, if the P had its way, would be erased forever.
Acknowledgment: thanks to FCM for encouraging me to put these words together.
5 November 2012 at 2:48 pm
You describe your path to radical feminism brilliantly. Many women have described many similar paths to the one you have. It’s the only politics which truly makes sense of our lives and the lives of women around us.
In sisterhood
5 November 2012 at 3:42 pm
Thank you Ruby ♀
5 November 2012 at 4:06 pm
I always recommend your blog to feminists who are ‘new’ to feminism because you provide extracts of real feminist works which men and their Male Supremacist System constantly seek to erase. It is not a coincidence that the dominant (male-centric) view is held that radical feminist writing of the 1970s is supposedly ‘defunct now!’ Much of what was written by 1970s radical feminists is just as pertinent today as it was then.
Totally agree with you ‘indecipherable French chaps since then so, you know, don’t even bother reading them’ – why bother to read incomprehensible male authors whose male myopic views do not even recognise that women exist. I’d far rather read radical feminist work because it is written in plain English not obtuse male writers who are clearly trying to prove to their male peers how clever they are!
There is immense value in what you are doing and that is ensuring the works of radical feminism are made available and yes we do need these works because otherwise we would be wasting precious time ‘reinventing the wheel and rediscovering what our foresisters had already uncovered.’
‘The overwhelming feeling upon reading the words of a radical feminist is a sense of relief: it’s not just me then. ‘ This is precisely why men and male supremacist system constantly seeks to erase radical feminist writing because such work makes plain the machinations of how men and their Male Supremacist System operate to maintain and justify male domination over all women. A little radical feminist knowledge is very dangerous to women because it tears apart the lies men tell us women and men are terrified that if sufficient women do read radical feminist work then the ‘world would indeed be turned upside down!’
I too know of a number of women who have said the same thing to me, how they chanced upon some radical feminist writing and suddenly they realised it wasn’t just ‘about them individually – something else was happening.’ That ‘something else is of course the male supremacist system which is invisible but its tentacles reaches everywhere in women’s lives.
Telling the truth about women’s lives and experiences never earns the female author/writer cookies from male dominated academic institutions.
I’m reminded of that old saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ It is when the knowledge is radical feminist work and it is only dangerous to men because they do not want their male myopic view of the world challenged by us women!
You are doing vital work and it is essential we continue referencing the work of our foresisters because otherwise the menz will succeed in once again silencing women’s writing and particularly radical feminist writing.
5 November 2012 at 9:07 pm
I am not and have never been a radical feminist, but I do worry considerably at the attempts made by some third wave feminists to get rid of the whole notion of sex. I appreciate its not binary, and that gender is socially constructed, but there seems to be attempts to negate the entire female experience in the name of “equalism”, that sexism cuts both ways, and that we must listen carefully to those of male sex who do not identify as men as they will show us the way.
Although I appreciate the challenges that the third wave brings, its dangerous, and an attempt to eradicate those who reproduce as a distinctive category – a bit like saying that in order to destroy colonialism we should just ignore racism because all people are ultimately the same.
5 November 2012 at 9:13 pm
I can’t thank you enough for doing what you’re doing–and I just found out! I’ve been reading the same radfem blogs that you have been reading, and it’s like air and water to me. I look forward to following your posts and reading your backlog of posts.
5 November 2012 at 9:15 pm
Hi, Hagocrat, well said!
Speaking of epiphanies, I had a mini-epiphany reading this. I have read a lot of academic “pomo” “feminist” texts lately, starting with the French feminists and moving to Butler. I even went to my nearest university’s catalogue to look at Women’s Studies to see if there was a course worth taking. Besides a few courses on Marxist-feminist topics, there was only Pomo. I’ve been puzzled by the turn academic feminism has taken. Young women take Women’s Studies and come out thinking it’s about Lacan, Derrida, literature, and linguistics. I explained it to myself like this: that theoretical stuff is obscure and difficult, which attracts academia, and English Departments have been overrun with Lacanians for years – evidently they have overrun Women’s Studies as well. Lacan, you will recall, is a highly fashionable post-Freudian male who has bizarre things to say about whether women exist at all.
I have tried to ignore all that since, but it keeps coming back, because the truth is, grants to women writers, publication opportunities, and exposure are much higher within academia than without. Most feminist theorists, if they want to make any living at all, end up there. And their success there depends on whether their research is in line with the current academic fashion, no doubt about it. So no follow-up work to Daly, women scifi writers, Dworkin, or McKinnon is taking place. These important writers are being marginalized. They are clearly brilliant, clearly important, so what’s the story?
One other crucial point about “feminist” research in academia: the thousands of papers being produced each year are unavailable to the public. They are locked behing academic publishing companies that are affordable online only to institutions.
So reading your article, I asked myself, what’s the actual effect of all this? And the answer came, that feminist theorists are being steered into coffins and the lid is screwed shut. The only theorizing materials we hear about these days, besides our “outsider” blogs, are derailed and slavish exegeses that follow male misogynists like Lacan (and yes, I’m talking about Kristeva, Butler, et al). The loss to feminism? Incalculable – 35 years of screwdown.
What now?
30 December 2012 at 12:44 am
Hello,
I would just like to add something to what you’ve said about “French Feminism”: what is commonly called “French Feminism” is not representative. Most books about “French Feminism” invisibilize those French feminists who are radical.
Christine Delphy has written about this, you can read her article on the (great) blog “Ressources Féministes” (http://ressourcesfeministes.wordpress.com/ressources/)
The Invention of French Feminism – An Essential Move
http://ressourcesfeministes.files.wordpress.com/2000/01/christine-delphy-the-invention-of-french-feminism-an-essential-move.pdf
6 November 2012 at 12:12 am
You are absolutely making revolution when you do this: think of all the women who only vaguely know these thinkers who will come upon this blog, the women who are very poor, at home with children, disabled in some way limiting transportation, aged, failing vision and deaf. Surely deserving of radical feminist theory? Here is Hagocrat.
Many thanks. What you may think of as the least, holds in these words the everything.
6 November 2012 at 4:43 pm
Poor and recently radicalised feminist here. This blog is a vital resource and I can’t thank you enough.
10 November 2012 at 1:27 pm
thanks for this statement hagocrat.
it helps to put all of this into words i think, because muddy thinking creates anxiety and vulnerability. we have very good and valid reasons for doing what we are doing, including the good and valid reason that intuitively it just feels right. ive been writing this whole time because it felt like the right thing to do. only later did i realize the import of writing to political movements, and i still dont know the exact mechanism of “how” it works or exactly what it does, although its becoming clearer and clearer…
if creating and preserving a radical archives is what we are trying to do as feminists, thinking persons and writers, i think its a good project. the archiving part is critical, and unrelated to thought-termination and trolling. attempting to shut other women down with daly quotes (or using them as thought-terminating or abusive “dogma”) completely misses the point, which is what daly herself was responding to in the interview i referenced. and creating “cliques” is dangerous both for safety reasons (if we let our guards down to anyone who has status) and dangerous to the integrity of our work (if we accept and assimilate anything anyone says, based on her “in” status and not on the merit of what shes saying). this is the “parroting” i was talking about, not archiving radical content! so yes, radical feminism is largely a creative endeavor, but preserving our creative work is also critically important, when everyone and their cousin is trying to erase this work and keep it not only unknown but unknowable. thanks for making this material accessible, and thanks for making a statement as to what you are doing and why. radical feminist librarians are important. i cant believe some librarian somewhere was forced (or wanted to) stamp mary dalys work “withdrawn” and tossed it into the junk pile. its criminal, really. this is the context within which we are all working.
10 November 2012 at 9:16 pm
Thank you for writing this. Two things:
1. Making obscure(d) feminist texts easily available online is definitely an admirable task to take up. Your “virtual librarianship” makes me think of that Mary Daly quote about “smuggl[ing] back to other women our Plundered treasures.” These women you’re archiving plundered gems of info, misogynists tried to re-plunder, now you’re smuggling them back to women again.
2. I grew up in poverty and then entered ‘academia’, and I really feel you when you talk about the ‘stultifying’ and ‘deadening’ effects of that transition. I sometimes feel like I’m crippled, creatively. I have difficulty speaking/writing about a topic at all if I don’t know enough about it to literally provide citation for my sentences. The ‘legitimate expertise necessary’ thing really sticks, and the lack of confidence in your own ideas it causes practically amounts to thought termination. I’m always thinking I don’t know enough to form valid opinions; I’d just make a fool of myself if I tried; the first comment on my blog entry would be an attempted refutation in the form of a quote from some Pomo bro from the 70′s, etc, etc.
Anyway, my point is, the archive is wonderful, but I’d be interested in reading your commentary, too.
10 November 2012 at 9:24 pm
Sorry I haven’t responded to the comments on this post (I have excuses, honest!) – just want to post quickly to thank everyone who has taken the time to comment, and to thank you for the words of encouragement: I really appreciate it.
30 December 2012 at 12:45 am
Thank you very much for sharing this with us, hagocrat. It’s precious.