The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone

by Barbara G. Walker

A spiritual autobiography of one woman's inner journey away from her Christian upbringing to an appreciation of the idea of a goddess and a skeptical, feminist view of society.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Womens, Gender

285 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Barbara Walker studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and then took a reporting job at the Washington Star in DC. During her work as a reporter, she became increasingly interested in feminism and women's issues.

Her writing career has been split between knitting instruction books, produced in the late 1960s through the mid-80s; and women's studies and mythology books, produced from the 1980s through the early 21st C.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baby, come back.

You know I never meant to hurt you. I love you. But sometimes you get me so mad. I can't help it, I'm jealous and righteous. That's how I am. I thought you liked me that way.

Okay, I called you weak and sinful and unclean. Sure, I could have expressed it better. I just wanted to help you. How can we work things out if I don't tell you when you're wrong? Really, I did it for us.

I said I was sorry I burned nine million of your sisters at the stake. I guess I shouldn't have tortured them first either. But maybe it wasn't that many, it's hard to be sure. And it was a long time ago. I think we should draw a line. Talking about this again will only make us both miserable.

I've told you, baby, I want to save you from the Evil One. Sometimes it's hard, but that's not my fault. Well, I know you say I made him, and that's true in a way. But it's not as simple as you think. You're just a girl, you don't understand this properly. I don't want you to spend eternity in Hell. Don't make me put you there. It's your choice.

Of course I exist. That's a terrible thing to say. Now you've really hurt my feelings. If I decided to smite you or something, a lot of people would call it divine justice. Think about that for a minute.

Baby, come back.

[Freyja Vanadis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a Christmas gift from my girlfriend at the time. She was the first woman I officially came out with, and I didn't know much about the lesbian world or even feminism in general, so she bought me a bunch of books to explore that side of life. This is one of those books.
Now that I've finished it, I have to say I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I agree with everything Barbara Walker says about men and the way they've treated women over the centuries. But then she advocated retaliation against men who batter their wives, including vandalizing their cars, harassing them in public, calling their bosses and telling them what they did to their wives, taking photographs of the wife's bruises and posting them where people can see them, stuff like that. I felt she went off the deep end there, especially about vandalizing and spray painting the guy's car. That would get the woman arrested, and a lot of the other stuff would too. I hope no one actually took her advice.
Also, she went off the deep end when she took pages and pages to describe these so-called "visions" she claimed to have about certain mythical female goddesses, and also conversations she supposedly had with friends about feminism. That stuff was completely unbelievable and just downright ridiculous.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though not a huge book, The Skeptical Feminist is a book full of radical ideas and ideals that took me awhile to digest. It starts with Walker's shift to atheism as a child, and moves into an argument for matrifocal societies as an antidote to patriarchal structures manifest in religion, war, violence, and politics. I learned in this book that though Walker speaks, in this and other of her books, of the Goddess archetype, she is not a believer of magic or the supernatural. She's a rational, scientific thinker. Her assertion that the human race holds a collective image of Mother and that this image is the one to make the basis of society is reasoned and compelling. I loved this book as it validated my own half-formed thoughts and stretched my thinking enormously.ithis book is not for everyone as she makes a compelling argument against patriarchal religion

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the books that made me who I am today. I especially loved her breakdown of all the truly terrible things the Old Testament God does to his followers, and it was a good basic introduction (along with Spiral Dance) to goddess centered spirituality.

[Heavinlei · Rating 4 out of 5]

It did take me awhile to get through but it was so good. Probably one of my favorite critiques/analyses on patriarchy and it’s role in religion.