Re: de-tenuring of Mary Daly (fwd)

[Beth Goldstein <bg28@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Katha,

have to say i'm not so sympathetic to mary Daly's refusal to
> include men in her class. A clear violation of civil rights law.

Yes, it's a thorny issue.  On the one hand I agree with those who argue
that a woman only space is a safer space for women's dialogue, just as I
agree that a man-only space is a safer space for men's dialogue and a
gay-only space is safer for a gay person's dialogue.  On the other hand,
exclusionary tactics are always suspect and never accurately reflect the
world as it is.

And you're right to point out that an academic course is not a
consciousness raising group.  But, Daly has been doing this for the past
20 years. And the boy who tried to sue his way into the class was heavily
supported by a right wing group, the name of which escapes me, but I seem
to recall it as one of those Ivy League, power-tie, yachting on the
weekends, cigar night during the week clubs just oozing with old money. In
this regard it seems to me to be an idealogical battle with vaguely
disguised overtones of class antagonisms.  Here, I thought, is an issue in
which class interests, feminist interests and political battles intersect.

For me however, the core of the issue is the way that the administration
effectively *de-tenured* and fired a tenured professor for teaching a
course she had taught for 20 years.  Her access to a forum for criticizing
dominant views was cut off by a power structure (the administration) cowed
by a more dominant power structure (right wing money and power organized
politically).

As an academic/essayist, I find this galling.  As a person just beginning
a career in the world of ideas, I am concerned about the way in which this
action could affect the free flow of those ideas through self-censure.
"Look" I can already hear a voice in my head saying "you don't want to end
up like Mary Daly do you?"

Before this I always told myself to reign in my radicalism 'until I get
tenure.'  I have already been blackballed for a paper on Feminism and
Medical Ethics, I can't afford to ruffle any more feathers.

But, I thought, once I get tenure someplace, I'll have the freedom to
express myself fully.  Now that Mary Daly has been de-tenured and fired
for something she was doing for 20 years -- well, now I'm not so sure.
And, as Foucault rightly pointed out, the power to control the terms of
the the dialogue is the power to control the dialogue itself (which is
why anti-abortion groups consistently refer to themselves as pro-life and
not anti-abortion).  By removing Daly's voice, and doing it in so public a
fashion, the groups which oppose Daly are attempting to create an internal
move to self-censure in those who are more radical.  In so doing they
close down the discussion, and limit the number of ways in which things
can be discussed.

That's the heart of the issue for me anyway.

Beth

 On Mon, 2 Aug 1999, Katha
Pollitt wrote:

> Hi Beth -- How
> would you feel about a prof who excluded women, or people of color, so
> that male (or white) students would feel "comfortable"? As for this
> particular man not being simpatico, every teacher I know has to struggle
> with students now and then who are on strange wavelengths, hostile to
> the course design and perspective etc. That's life.  Why should Daly get
> a dispensation? If she wanted to have an all woman consciousness raising
> group she could have started one in her living room.  But academic
> classes are about something else. And the idea that a roomful of women
> with a female prof would be intimidated by a lone male, who would
> dominate (as the nation piece argued) -- honestly, what crap.. it's up
> to the prof to run the class so that doesn't happen.
>    Katha
>