A review by atticmoth
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation by Mary Daly
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
3.0
I’ll start by saying I am aware of the author’s negative views on transgender people, but I don’t think reading an author should mean one necessarily agrees with everything they think. I am a firm believer that there’s something to learn from everything, and I think it’s counterproductive to cancel a dead person anyway, especially when I picked up this book used for $3.
That being said, I did get a lot out of this book, and it definitely challenged me more than most of what I read. I am not in the habit of reading philosophy, so it was very hard to understand. I would take a few tries to understand a sentence, then a paragraph, and then have an aha! moment when I finally get what she was trying to convey. I really enjoyed engaging with the text actively this way; it felt like being back in school! But despite the many good points Daly made, I had trouble figuring out how they would tie back into the rest of the book, and I’m not exactly sure what the thesis was. The full title is Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, but the whole thing is approached very theologically, so it seemed to be sort of an effort to establish a new feminist theology, which would in turn transform our own ontology because…?
The best part about Beyond God the Father is that unlike most books of theory, it spends most of its time proposing solutions, instead of simply describing problems. Even if these solutions are discussed in an extremely vague sense, it’s better than the theorists who only complain. It gave me a lot to think about, especially on language — Daly calls it the “castrating of language” — reminding me of Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères. Everything Daly proposes does seem to be within the context of those who are already some form of religious/spiritual, because nonbeing is apparently existentially terrifying, whereas most atheists I know have already confronted that idea and find it comforting. She makes a lot of criticisms within a Christian framework while claiming to reject that very thing, for example calling things she doesn’t like “idolatry”. Is this short-sighted, or is it a clever rhetorical tool to bring over dissenters?
While a minor part of the book itself, the most glaring issue it had was in its discussion of race. Daly, like other second-wave feminists, draws comparisons between women’s liberation and black liberation, but unlike porto-intersectional feminists like Andrea Dworkin, certain biases are not addressed. Why exactly is a black god less revolutionary than a female god? What makes misogyny “the root and paradigm of various forms of oppression”? I agree that liberal feminists often outright ignore the existence of misogyny, and that it is a throughline to basically everything, but to not back up why it’s the origin of racism seems a very self-centered white way of thinking. Daly discusses minority mens’ capacity to perpetuate misogyny, but does not find it within herself to discuss the opposite, which Dworkin does extensively in Right Wing Women. Perhaps this is a question of authorship — Dworkin was jewish so she knew why true intersectional thinking is necessary. Daly’s most absurd assertion about race was that “it was not the women who brought slaves to America. Women have been pawns in the racial struggle.”
Despite this book’s (and the author’s) shortcomings, the thesis that women’s liberation is going to help human nature as a whole is very inspiring and smart. I respect any book that makes me reflect and self-reflect this much, and would recommend it if you’re interested in a point-of-view that’s not often heard from.
That being said, I did get a lot out of this book, and it definitely challenged me more than most of what I read. I am not in the habit of reading philosophy, so it was very hard to understand. I would take a few tries to understand a sentence, then a paragraph, and then have an aha! moment when I finally get what she was trying to convey. I really enjoyed engaging with the text actively this way; it felt like being back in school! But despite the many good points Daly made, I had trouble figuring out how they would tie back into the rest of the book, and I’m not exactly sure what the thesis was. The full title is Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, but the whole thing is approached very theologically, so it seemed to be sort of an effort to establish a new feminist theology, which would in turn transform our own ontology because…?
The best part about Beyond God the Father is that unlike most books of theory, it spends most of its time proposing solutions, instead of simply describing problems. Even if these solutions are discussed in an extremely vague sense, it’s better than the theorists who only complain. It gave me a lot to think about, especially on language — Daly calls it the “castrating of language” — reminding me of Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères. Everything Daly proposes does seem to be within the context of those who are already some form of religious/spiritual, because nonbeing is apparently existentially terrifying, whereas most atheists I know have already confronted that idea and find it comforting. She makes a lot of criticisms within a Christian framework while claiming to reject that very thing, for example calling things she doesn’t like “idolatry”. Is this short-sighted, or is it a clever rhetorical tool to bring over dissenters?
While a minor part of the book itself, the most glaring issue it had was in its discussion of race. Daly, like other second-wave feminists, draws comparisons between women’s liberation and black liberation, but unlike porto-intersectional feminists like Andrea Dworkin, certain biases are not addressed. Why exactly is a black god less revolutionary than a female god? What makes misogyny “the root and paradigm of various forms of oppression”? I agree that liberal feminists often outright ignore the existence of misogyny, and that it is a throughline to basically everything, but to not back up why it’s the origin of racism seems a very self-centered white way of thinking. Daly discusses minority mens’ capacity to perpetuate misogyny, but does not find it within herself to discuss the opposite, which Dworkin does extensively in Right Wing Women. Perhaps this is a question of authorship — Dworkin was jewish so she knew why true intersectional thinking is necessary. Daly’s most absurd assertion about race was that “it was not the women who brought slaves to America. Women have been pawns in the racial struggle.”
Despite this book’s (and the author’s) shortcomings, the thesis that women’s liberation is going to help human nature as a whole is very inspiring and smart. I respect any book that makes me reflect and self-reflect this much, and would recommend it if you’re interested in a point-of-view that’s not often heard from.