Women's minds have been mutilated and muted to such a state that

The words of Mary Daly — “Women’s minds have been mutilated and muted to such a state that ‘Free Spirit’ has been branded into them as a brand name for girdles and bras rather than as the name of our verb-ing, be-ing Selves” — resound with both grief and defiance. In them, she exposes the violence not of swords but of symbols, not of shackles upon the body but of chains upon the mind. The mutilation she names is the systematic distortion of women’s thought, their reduction to silence, their confinement to consumer roles. The very words that should ignite liberation — “Free Spirit” — are stolen, twisted, and sold back as tools of subjugation.

At its heart, this saying reveals how language itself can be weaponized. Where freedom should mean the blossoming of the soul, society has shrunk it into a slogan for undergarments, reducing transcendence to consumption. In Daly’s view, this is the final insult: that women’s minds, which once carried the fire of creation and the wisdom of ages, have been made to believe their value lies in branding, in fitting molds rather than breaking them. It is a call to awaken, to reclaim language and with it the fullness of being.

History offers us reflections of this truth. Consider how enslaved peoples in America were stripped not only of freedom but of names, their identities erased and replaced with the language of ownership. Likewise, Daly declares that women’s minds have been denied their birthright, their Selves reduced to silence while their spirits were commodified. Yet just as the abolitionists reclaimed dignity by reshaping language and declaring truth, so too must women reclaim “Free Spirit” as the cry of liberation, not the whisper of a marketplace.

Her words also echo the eternal tension between essence and image. Societies have long sought to confine women to appearances, prescribing beauty while denying power, dictating modesty while suppressing voice. By binding the idea of a Free Spirit to bras and girdles, culture proclaims that a woman’s liberation is only skin-deep, confined to how she looks rather than who she is. Daly’s challenge is revolutionary: to break through this illusion and embrace the raw, verb-ing force of being itself.

Let future generations remember: words are not neutral. They can enslave or they can set free. To reclaim the true meaning of Free Spirit is to awaken from centuries of silence, to rise as whole Selves, untamed and unbranded. Mary Daly’s words endure as a battle cry, urging all women to rip away the false labels and speak again with the unmuted voice of their souls. For the true Free Spirit is not a garment, but the unfettered being of the human self.