Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Mary Daly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979, 485pp., $14.95)

That's not an issue.

That's not an issue any more.

Then why do you keep on bringing it up?

You keep on bringing it up because you are crazy.

You keep on bringing it up because you are hostile.

You keep on bringing it up because you are intellectually irresponsible.

You keep on bringing it up because you are shrill, strident, and self-indulgent.

How can I possibly listen to anyone as crazy, hostile, intellectually irresponsible, shrill, strident, and self-indulgent as you are?

Especially since what you're talking about is simply not an issue.

(Any more.)

Mary Daly has written a wild, whirling, terrifying, ecstatic, haggard book. In Beyond God the Father Daly was reasonable, temperate, civilized, and continually emphasized in the most charmingly responsible way that she was speaking to men as well as women; between that and Gyn/Ecology a great deal of life and consciousness (and undoubtedly the book reviews of Of Women Born et al.) has happened; the result is a quantum leap that will be seen, beyond the shadow of a doubt, as “anti-male.” Daly says so herself and adds dryly: “Even the most cautious and circumspect feminist writings are described that way” (p. 29). So what the hell. Gyn/Ecology does not bother to make the usual ritual gestures of deference, liberalism, compassion, humanism, and whatnot (“I'm not angry! I'm not threatening! Don't kill me!”) As Daly says, the “primary intent of women who choose to be present to each other … is not an invitation to men” (p. x). The way in which the glossy surface of patriarchy has closed over the feminism of only a few years ago is amazing: “Of course all that was true six or seven years ago, but we've taken care of those questions and it's very rude to mention them now. Besides, the women's movement is dead.” Gyn/Ecology is a terrifying book because of its bad manners, because of its poetry, because it rips through the thin veils of the accommodations under which we all shelter, and because it threatens us with a return to the basics – and the anger and terror they rouse.