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Feminism and the Courage to Be
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​voyaging with the intimately ultimate
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Sin Boldly
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“The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin'.” 
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― Mary Daly

"I urge you to Sin. ... But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism - or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism - which are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy.  Sin against the infrastructure itself!"

​- Mary Daly

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Consider the Clovers of the Field
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“Especially important was a startling communication from a clover blossom one summer day when I was about 14,” she wrote in an essay in The New Yorker in 1996. “It said, with utmost simplicity, ‘I am.’ ”

​-- NY Times Memorial, Margolit Fox, 2010

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“Courage to be is the key to revelatory power of the feminist revolution.”

― Mary Daly

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The Cosmic and the Personal
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Think Galactically
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“...the essential task of feminism is not to go looking around for a ready-made theory and then try to make it relevant to our (little?) "issue" or "problem". This is self-depreciating in the extreme, a fact that is obvious if one realises that feminism is cosmic in its dimensions.” 
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― Mary Daly

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Speak the Truth

“Every woman who has come to consciousness can recall an almost endless series of oppressive, violating, insulting, assaulting acts against her Self. Every woman is battered by such assaults - is on a psychic level, a battered woman.” 
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― Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism

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Go Overboard

“There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so.” 
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― Mary Daly

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​Wonderlust

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​“The very word philosophy terrifies many women. In Quintessence I strive to exorcise this patriarchally embedded fear that undermines our intelligence and passion. We were all philosophers when we were five years old. Re-Calling our connections with nature at that age, many women can Re-member our sense of wonder and our urgent need to know. We were always asking “Why?” This state of mind can be called Wonderlust—meaning a strong and unconquerable longing for Elemental adventure and knowledge.

What happened to our Wonderlust? Our visions, dreams, and far-out questions have been stunted by phallocratic society and its institutions. When we come into contact with our own deep and passionate intellectuality, we become intolerably threatening to the patriarchy. This is why there is an overwhelming taboo against women becoming philosophers, that is, seekers of wisdom on our own terms/turf.

Philosophy—of our own kind, for our own kind—is a source of wholeness and power that rightfully belongs to women. Breaking the patriarchal taboo against it—against us—we break out of the state of deception. Moreover, we open gateway after gateway into our own Other-world, our Homeland. From this perspective we can See, Name, and Act to end the atrocities perpetrated against ourSelves and all the Biophilic beings.” 
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― Mary Daly, Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future

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​One Billion Rising

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​​SHE

Alive Phoebe Lou
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Alice Phoebe Lou

​​"I think that women who were part of the women's movement and now are of crone age, with a mind and a heart not fully employed, may be realizing that they are waiting for an assignment. Idealistic, altruistic, passionate young women are also feeling and responding to the call to activism. For women of any age, an assignment presents itself as an invitation. Your assignment is what you feel it is. It may be an opportunity that you realize is meant for you. It may come to you as an inspiration or urge. The women's movement that changed the world for American women and rippled out to influence the world was the sum of individual women doing whatever they were moved to do, once they became aware of inequality and injustice. The vessel that supported them through their changes and those they brought into the world was their women's group. I believe that the thought that women together can change the world is emerging into the minds and hearts of many of us, and that the vessel for personal and planetary evolution is the circle with a spiritual center."
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— Jean Shinoda Bolen in Urgent Message from Mother

Alice Phoebe Lou wrote to tell me about the lyrical repetition in her vocal performance and said it's key to the song:

She looked out to the horizon
She didn't have much left to see 
Greed had taken the trees away
Greed had taken the bees away
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"(The) repetitive lyrics have a sense of powerful femininity behind them, inspired by women who go against the prescribed boundaries and pave the way for other women to be empowered and realize their strengths. It was born being played on the streets of Berlin and it feels incredible to release it into the world, at a time that feels just right, as women everywhere tell their stories and are heard."

​-- Bob Boilen, NPR, 2/22/2018