Humanity Should be 10% Male 90% Female (BC Prof Mary Daly)

What Is Enlightenment? (Issue 16) ^ | Fall/Winter 2002 | Susan Bridle

[beckett]

What Is Enlightenment (Susan Bridle): Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article "The FutureIf There Is OneIs Female" writes: "At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race." What do you think about this statement?

Mary Daly: I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.

WIE: Yes. I find myself now thinking that's a bit shocking.

MD: Well, it's shocking that it would be shocking.

WIE: So it doesn't sound like your vision of a separate nation for women is something you see as an interim stage that would eventually lead to men and women living together in true equality.

MD: No. That's a very old question. I answered that to audiences twenty-five, thirty years ago. I just don't think that way. See, right now, I would be totally joyous to have a great community of womenwhether men are somewhere out on the periphery or not. I don't have this goal of: "Oh, then we can all get together again!" That doesn't seem to be a very promising future. So why would I think about it? I think it's pretty evident that men are not central to my thought.

WIE: I have one last question. At the beginning of this interview, you spoke about the experience of being deeply at one with that which animates all of life. I wanted to ask you what you think about the possibility of becoming identified with that as who one ultimately is, having that as one's ultimate resting place, or ground, so to speak, and where one's gender would no longer be a primary reference point.

MD: I don't know if that has anything to do with my experience. I have my own experience of oneness. Sometimes I have ecstasy and a kind of active repose in connection with nature. It's tremendous. But I never forget that I'm a woman, because this is me. I know who I am. I have Female integrity.

[Mr. K]

Who would lift the heavy loads, run the heavy equipment, and kill the spiders?

[Billthedrill]

The object of a species is to procreate. The object of a society is rather more than that. Daly doesn't seem to understand the difference.

If, in fact, we only need men to breed babies, then I'm afraid that's all we need women for as well. Daly thinks that second point is an archaic remnant of patriarchy; in fact, it's the clear implication of her own argument.