Tokenism does not change stereotypes of social systems but works to preserve them, since it dulls the revolutionary impulse.
Interpretation
Tokenism superficially addresses diversity but ultimately maintains existing stereotypes and societal structures.
In this quote, Mary Daly critiques tokenism as a method that superficially incorporates diverse voices without challenging the deeper social systems at play. She argues that instead of fostering genuine change or revolutionary thought, tokenism serves to perpetuate stereotypes and complacency within established power structures, ultimately hindering meaningful progress in society.
In practice
In a discussion about diversity initiatives in companies, this quote can highlight the need for genuine change rather than superficial measures.
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.
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.
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.
Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality.
An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
It is written that there shall be a separation, and the sheep shall be separated from the goats. The other preachers have the sheep; I have the goats. And I have a few sheep among my goats, but they are very ragged.
Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.
Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster.
The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.
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