That was followed by my fourth Radical Feminist book which is Pure Lust: The Elemental Feminist Philosophy, a sequel to Gyn/Ecology. Gyn/Ecology takes on the atrocities against women worldwide and in all eras of patriarchy, and shows that they are interconnected it detects patterns of atrocities. The third one was Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism‚ and this is perhaps the best known, although Beyond God the Father is widely read in universities and divinity schools. My next book was Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation and that was published in 1973 in America and shortly after that in England. It caused me to be fired from Boston College back in 1969, and then it brought about my re-hiring because suddenly I was famous so they couldn’t just exterminate me. It could be seen as merely a reformist book, but it was my great breakthrough. That one was specifically about oppression by the Catholic Church and, in a broader sense, Christianity. It was published in the US in 1968, and later around the world. The first book, The Church and the Second Sex, was in a sense the least radical, although for its time it was very radical. I think it’s best to have the chronology. So far you’ve written seven books on Radical Feminism. There are women who use ‘ecofeminism’ and that’s okay but I think it doesn’t express the profundity and urgency strongly enough. There is a desperate commitment in my writing to ecology and feminism.

The definition as I wrote it is still the one I would maintain, but in the current crisis of life on earth and the danger to all animals, plants, rocks, minerals, as well as women from the phallocrats who are destroying the planet, I now say ‘radical ecological feminism’.

And I define it as “way of be–ing characterised by (a) an Awesome and Ecstatic sense of Otherness from patriarchal norms and values (b) conscious awareness of the sadosociety’s sanctions against Radical Feminists (c) moral outrage on behalf of women as women (d) commitment to the cause of women that persists, even against the current, when feminism is no longer ‘popular’ in other words, constancy.” Radical Feminism goes to the root of oppression and the way out. It is derived from the Latin radix, meaning root. First of all the word ‘radical’ means ‘going to the roots’. There are several definitions but I’ll give you the core of it. Well, I actually define that in my Wickedary, which is a ‘dictionary for wicked women’. Professor Daly, what is Radical Feminism? SUBSCRIBE NOW Interview Mary Daly Mary Daly is a world-renowned Radical Feminist philosopher, theologian and author.

Gyn/Ecology by Mary Daly