Although
Cosmic Cat's write up is well written, it is only
true to a point. I would like to correct two aspects of the write up, so that there will be no misunderstanding.
First, although Mary Daly did call herself a Positively Revolting Hag, Cosmic Cat does not have the reason correct. She did not call herself that because of the controversies she caused or the way she conducted herself. This title is a part of her rhetoric. Daly believed that there are two worlds: the patriarchal foreground and the Background, a society in which women are Self-identified and free from the oppressive ideals of the male dominated foreground. In the Background, women use titles such as Hags, Crones, Spinsters, Fates, Scolds, Shrews, Soothsayers, Virgins, Websters, and Weirds - words that have negative connotations in the foreground. This is Daly's rhetoric - she takes words that are generally derogatory toward women and transforms them into ideas of empowerment. In the Background, a Hag is one of the most respecting member of society, only second to a Crone, who has completed her journey.
The second correction I would like to make is the
spelling of the title of her book,
Gyn/Ecology. This, too, is a part of her rhetoric. She believes
gynecology to be another
oppression put upon women by the
patriarchy of the
foreground, and in order to correct the meaning of this word to suit her own purposes and the purposes of the women in the
Background, she changes its meaning by adding the
slash in between the Gyn and the Ecology, making it a much more empowering
idea. She calls this method
Be-spelling.
Source used: Feminist Rhetorical Theories, by Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin