Patriarchy appears to be everywhere. Even outer space and the future have been colonized. As a rule, even the more imaginative science-fiction writers (allegedly the most foretelling futurists) cannot/will not create a space and time in which women get far beyond the role of space stewardess.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the pervasive influence of patriarchy, suggesting it extends even into imagined futures and realms like outer space.
Mary Daly's quote highlights the limitations placed on women's roles not only in contemporary society but also in speculative fiction, where even the most advanced scenarios continue to reflect traditional gender roles. By depicting women predominantly as 'space stewardesses,' it underscores the struggle for women's representation and agency in both literature and reality, implying that patriarchy is deeply entrenched and resistant to change even in our most creative visions of the future.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion on gender representation in media.
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-whic h are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!
Patriarchy has stolen our cosmos and returned it in the form of 'Cosmopolitan' magazine and cosmetics.
Courage to be is the key to revelatory power of the feminist revolution.
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.
Within a culture possessed by the myth of feminine evil, the naming, describing, and theorizing about good and evil has constituted a maze/haze of deception. The journey of women becoming is breaking through this maze - springing into free space, which is an a-mazing process.
I had explained that a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan
A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.
Girls actually need superheroes much more than boys.
Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.
Rich cultures, patriarchal cultures, value thin women, like ours; poor ones value fat women. But all patriarchal cultures value weak women. So for women to become physically strong is very profound.
Women's lib, Frannie had decided, was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society. Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn't get with child, but a woman could---every four-year-old knows it. And a pregnant woman is a vulnerable human being. Civilization had provided an umbrella of sanity that both sexes could stand beneath.
Gender-dominated environments are not good... particularly in the financial sector where there are too few women. In gender-dominated environments, men have a tendency to... show how hairy chested they are, compared with the man who's sitting next to them. I honestly think that there should never be too much testosterone in one room.
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