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.
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
We have no right to luxuries while the poor want bread.
Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.
Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything, without anguish, death, winter waiting along it with their eyes open through the dew.
The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.
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