TRN ReMix | Re:Framing Mary Daly

To make this remix, I fed my TRN essay on Mary Daly to NotebookLM as a source, asked for a mindmap, and adapted from that base. NotebookLM is a learning language model circumscribed by the source I give it from which it produces and refines some in-seeing and produces documents I can then adapt or refine further.

The summary was acceptable, if it did repeat a few strikingly phrased ideas more often that was really useful. :/

You can find the original long read in THE RADICAL NOTION issue 6, p 56+. At time of writing, the magazine was still engaged in discussing the authoritarian tactics of TRAs. O!, those halcyon days!!

I've recently read Sylvia Federici's Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women which examines the witch hunts then and now (quite literally) with more purely economic emphasis to her materialism. She is correct in her assessment that whatever little wealth women have, the new fascists will come for it as it comes for our bodily and willful freedoms. It's short and very focused.

If you read my original essay, please read it now as prompted by the latter slides in this carousel with reference to the steep rise of the Far Right globally, the light-speed and clearly fascist take-over of the US, and the blazing misogyny of this era.

For reasons of experiment and transparency, I include below a chunk of the summary NotebookLM created from my article.

I am curious what you notice about it compared to my own essay. Also, I am a creature of words. I may never get the hang of bit and byte, but thanks for being here with me as I learn in public.

From Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto: Statement from the Biophilic Brotherhood, dated January 1, 2019 BE

“We understand deeply that until all women are free no man can be free. Even when we believe that we've taken everything into consideration we acknowledge that we may be behaving as badly and as snoolishly as our forefathers. We are learning to recognize this as a culturally inherited blind spot that leads inevitably to the destruction of women and all life on Earth, including ourselves. Moreover:

We resolve to accept counsel when criticism is offered regarding our deficiencies and to make every effort to improve.

We resolve not to unduly burden our Sisters by insisting that they teach us, correct us, and explain to us.

We resolve to respect Women's Space.

We resolve to encourage all women to activate the fullness of their potential and never stand in the way.

We resolve to take responsibility for our share of domestic chores and childcare.

We resolve to meet together regularly as men to learn how to transform our violent tendencies.

We resolve to eradicate all eroticism that depends upon a paradigm of dominance and submission. We resolve to continue diligently the process of forgetting “how to be a man.”

NotebookLM's document accompanying the mindmap I prompted:

Mary Daly used the terms Sado-state and Sado-ritual to describe the intense atmosphere of male dominance enforced through violence. These concepts are central to her radical feminist analysis of patriarchy and its mechanisms of control, particularly through the persecution and annihilation of women.

Below is a detailed explanation of these terms, their context in Daly's metaphysics, and their specific application to the Witch Trials:

1. Definition and Context of the Sado-state

The Sado-state refers to the prevailing atmosphere (actually the laws and systems) of male-dominance-through-violence that is experienced by women in patriarchal society. It underpins a wider sado-society (here's the atmosphere part).

Daly positioned this violence within her broader analysis of the patriarchal world, which she refers to as the Foreground:

• Necrophilia and the Death Cult: The Sado-state is fundamentally linked to patriarchal necrophilia—a death cult that launders its brutality into culture through technology and reason. This necrophilia results in a world where flourishing is forbidden, and it culminates in the potential for environmental collapse, which Daly considered the "ultimate manifestation of patriarchal necrophilia".

• Ur-Sadism: Sadism is generalized throughout this society as the pleasurable enjoyment (either direct or vicarious) of another's pain and debasement. According to Daly's critique, the core sadism (the ur-sadism) is the othering and abjection of women.

• Thingifying: This system involves the "despiritualization," or 'thingifying,' of women, the Earth, and all living systems, thereby either draining or beating the life out of them.

2. Sado-Rituals and the Primordial Myth

Daly defined Sado-rituals as specific acts designed to maintain male supremacy and control women's agency. These rituals have two key functions:

1. Reinforcement of Matricide: They are rituals that "recreate and reinforce the primordial patriarchal mythic event—the murder/dismemberment of the Goddess without women and all be-ing".

2. Destruction of Female Power: Sado-rituals are "designed to destroy the integrity of Life and creative divine powers in women" and legitimize the "dis-spiriting and devastation of the Wild".

The collective manifestation of these rituals, linking seemingly disparate acts of violence, is known as Sado-Ritual Syndrome. This syndrome connects atrocities like "witchburnings, gynaecological practices, lynchings, pogroms, [and] nuclear arms build-up".

3. Application to the Witch Trials

The Witch Trials served as a powerful historical example of the Sado-state in an intensified form.

• Intentional Destruction of Strong Women: Daly argued the clear intent of the craze "was to break down and destroy strong women, to dis-member and kill the Goddess, the divine spark of be-ing in women". This was meant to "strike awe into some by the punishment of others".

• Beyond the Pale of Law: The witch-hunters placed these women in a category "beyond the pale of law," removing legal protections so that the worst could be done to them.

• Persecution as Punishment: The trials focused on women who performed mundane tasks (like brewing beer or midwifery) or who lived outside the patriarchal family structure (like spinsters and widows). The accusation process itself was the punishment.

• Sexual Pathology and Justification: The violence was often intertwined with sexual prurience. The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum explicitly rooted witchcraft in the supposed source of the problem: "carnal lust which is in women insatiable". Inquisitors would creatively torture women until they confessed, thereby confirming the inquisitors' own projections.

• Technological Spread: Daly credited the printing press with enabling the witch-finder's manual (Malleus Maleficarum) to spread across Europe, demonstrating how otherwise neutral technologies are put into the service of destroying women's lives.

4. Contemporary Sado-Ritual Syndrome

The sources note that patriarchy does not have much imagination, so modern forms of witch-finding and woman punishing are just new forms of sado-rituals. The ideological creation of the "TERF" (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and the campaign to hound them serve as a contemporary parallel to the witch trials.

The Gender Identity Ideology (GII) and Queer Gender Studies (QGS) complex is presented as meeting the criteria of Daly's Sado-Ritual Syndrome, including components such as:

• Obsession with purity (e.g., the ideological creation of the TERF).

• Total erasure of male responsibility.

• Use of women as scapegoats.

• Legitimation of the ritual through patriarchal scholarship (e.g., the transformation of Women's Studies into Gender Studies).

The continued threat of physical and sexual violence aimed at "voice-ful women" via social media is also accepted as part of controlling women's speech and agency in the contemporary environment of the Sado-state.

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