Summary Of The Metaethics Of Radical Feminism By Mary Daly

Mary Daly, a radical feminist philosopher of the 1900s, is the author of the famous literary work, entitled: Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. In this book, Daly comprises her feminist ideas and beliefs into three separate passages. Despite the fact that the specific content in each passage explains different topics and theories, Daly’s overarching goal for writing Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism is to fully describe the idea of women becoming a “Be-ing” and the “rough journey” of women becoming entrenched in a need to practice radical feminism (1). To begin, the first passage in Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism takes on the argument that radical feminist philosophy - a philosophy centered on

With regard to the second passage, Daly discusses the acts of “goddess murder” that women perform, including: Indian suttee, Chinese footbinding, African genital mutilation, European witch burnings, and gynocides (viii). Although all of the practices are serious and remain vital as examples in proving the philosophy of radical feminism, Chinese footbinding and Indian suttee stand out among the rest.

First, the Indian rite of suttee, also known as widow-burning, occurs when women are burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands (114). If a widow refused to be burned with her husband, the only other option was prostitution as it was widely known that the widow would still quickly die due to venereal diseases (115). Mary Daly convinces her readers that this act of suttee transformed a woman from her “real self” to “the self as a role performer” (118). She further explains that it is the patriarchal scholarship that “perpetuate[s] the legitimization of female sacrifice” (119). In fact, Daly explains that because women are thrown into fire - a “source of energy” - males then seek to consume and drain women of all their energy