Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon)
1978, pgs 109, 131-133:
"The Myth Masters are able to penetrate their victims' minds/imaginations
only be seeing to it that their deceptive myths are acted out over and
over again in performances that draw the participants into emotional complicity.
Such re-enactment trains both victims and victimizers to perform uncritically
their preordained roles. Thus the psyches of the performers are conditioned
so that they become carriers and perpetrators of patriarchal myth. In
giving the myth reality by acting it out, the participants become re-producers
and 'living proof' of the deceptive myths...
In the Sado-Ritual we find, first, an obsession with purity...Second, there
is total erasure of responsibility for the atrocities performed through
such rituals. Those doing the destruction commonly have recourse to the
idea that they are acting 'under orders', or following tradition (serving
a Higher Order). This allows the self as role-carrier to commit acts which
the personal/private self would find frightening or evil... [and also]
we find compulsive orderliness, obsessive repetitiveness, and fixation
upon minute details, which divert attention from the horror...legitimation...is
an extension of the primordial gynocidal acts."