Nags, shrews and snools
David Sexton
One of the great tenets of feminism is that since language is man-made, it Condemns women to silence or to distor- tion — to 'telling it slant' in Tillie Olsen's phrase. Is there any truth in it? One reason for thinking there might be is the extent to which women's language, or some women's language, has been changing re- cently. Not only are women saying more, they are saying something different. Just how different Pure Lust reveals. Mary Daly has been hailed as 'the most Important Radical Feminist thinker around'. She is an associate professor of theology at Boston College, Mas- sachusetts, and this elephantine volume follows Gynl Ecology of 1979 and Beyond God the Father (1973). It is an eye-opener. Ms Daly thinks man the source of all Thallocracy is the most basic, radical and universal societal manifestation of evil, underlying not only gynocide but also genocide, not only rapism but also racism, not only nuclear and chemical contamina- tion, but also spiritual pollution.' Men have also committed verbicide, so that for women 'words have become mere noises echoing each other in the father's flatland, Foreground, which is the place of babble- spheres.'
This is to be changed by re-naming: 'As Dragons/Dryads women drive away the phallic presence of absence, not by the use of a holy name/noun, but by Wholly Naming actions, ideas, symbols, feelings that is, by naming these events in Gyn/ Ecological context.' Ms Daly herself attempts to write a language that is free of unwanted associations — a form of allitera- tive chant, decorated with typographical freaks. Words are given arbitrary new histories — ('we are not surprised to hear that dream is said to be etymologically related to the Latvian word (dufiduris) meaning gadfly, wasp. For Metamorphos- ing women sting and provoke each other to Change'). For this purpose, Webster's Dictionary is converted into 'Websters' Wickedary'. It was Wittgenstein who re- marked 'the feeling of disgust we get if we utter an invented word with invented de- rivative syllables'. Daly's prose is in fact thrillingly horrid; it reads like Carlyle under the influence of Finnegans Wake.
There is little in the way of developed argument, though there is a structure of sorts — 'The Wanderers of this Work meander through three Realms of Spheres, coursing first through Archespheres, the Realm of Origins; then through Pyro- spheres, the Purifying Realm of Fire; and last through Metamorphospheres,, the Realm of graceless/Graceful transforma- tions', she graciously explains. The main business of the book is to name again — to invent or reclaim new terms of praise for women and terms of abuse for men. Women are Nags, Crones, Shrews, Brews- ters, Websters, Weirds, (I'm not making this up), biophilic, 'the proud Prudes who prance through the Realms of Pure Lust'. Men are snools, fixers, prickers, plug- uglies, necrophilic, running the sadostate or cockocracy.
There is in fact nothing whatever to do with lust as ordinarily understood here — it is 'a Work of Feminist Erraticism', she says swankily, not feminist eroticism. Daly rarely stoops to mentioning anything in particular, since she is invoking states of consciousness, not dealing with matters of fact. History, like etymology, is freely available for revision therefore (the holo- caust? — 'nine million women were mas- sacred during the witchcraze in Western Europe'). The few men reviled by name constitute an eclectic bunch: Gandhi, T. E. Lawrence, Dag Hammarskjold, Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Dustin Hoffman.
Pure Lust consists of alternate, abstract commination and hymn. What Mary Daly is doing is creating a religion, founding a church of elect women — 'Nag-Gnostics' — which is why she refers to herself as a `scribe'. These women are said to enjoy 'Elemental powers of Geomancy, Aero- mancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy', and to have metamorphosed into another species 'In her Self-transcending dimensions, each woman may be compared to angels'. Nag-Gnosticism is about right; this is the second century revisited (Daly's particular obsession is naturally the Virgin Mary, of whom there are dozens of pages of abuse here). None of this may seem to have much to do with feminism as a whole; however, once feminism is made the exclusive means of interpreting the world, it is inevitable that it should present itself as a religion. We can be grateful to Mary Daly for showing us what it will look like.
`Leaping with Wonderlust, Weaving new Wonders, we intend to be Fore-Crones of Gnostic Nag-Nations,' she declares. How many are currently following her this far down the garden path is unclear; it has every appearance of still being a fairly exclusive sect. Still, Lusty Women are biophilic, and in an engaging footnote she thanks 'the Wise cat Persephone and the Witchy cat Adele, as well as the warrior cat, Earl Grey. Others include the lovely garter snake who sometimes crosses the threshold of the loft where I have been working; a tall emu and several wallabies, koala bears, and kookaburras whom I met in Australia; a stunning parrot who resides in Munich and who eloquently announces: "Scheiss auf Goethe!" whenever her spirit moves her to do so. Also important is a young bull residing in Leverett, Mass. . . . I am indebted also to several deer, a number of field mice, and two particular rabbits . . .' Well, she'll never walk alone.
The Woman Book of Love and Sex, in contrast, boasts no less than 15,000 contri- butors in the form of those who responded to questionnaires in Woman magazine, making it the largest survey of its kind in Britain. It also breaks new ground; the level of acceptable public talk about sex is changing, for better or worse. Americans have been specifying in print for some time, but British women are just getting into their stride.
The statistics are dull enough (no-one being a statistic, though one correspondent hopes to be — 'I'm dying to see the results and find out if I'm the norm'), and the advice predictable. What makes the book worthwhile are the one-line quotes from the accompanying letters, which, in home- ly style, reveal the British male to be what Ms Daly might call a snool or worse: 'He had all the technique and refinement of a tumble drier'; 'I've had a vision of myself as a hole in the mattress'; 'Sex to him was a prescription. I was to be taken four times a day whether I felt like it or not . . .'; 'he only makes up to me when he wants sex, patting me on the bottom when we're getting ready for bed and saying, "Am I all right for tonight?" '; 'I found he'd bet with his mates he'd get me into bed. The bet was £150 for a new drum kit'; 'When I bump into the man I feel like vomiting'; 'I felt like a piece of meat'; 'I'd rather have had a bag of chips'. Tactfully The Woman Book of Love and Sex will not be published until a week after St Valentine's Day.
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