As Harpies and Furies, Feminists in the tradition of the Great Hags are beyond compromise. It is said of the Goddess Demeter after her daughter Kore (named "Persephone" after being abducted by Hades and brought to the underworld) was stolen from her, that she compromised. She had stated flatly that she would not allow the earth to bear fruit again unless her daughter was returned to her. But, according to the patriarchal myth, when Zeus decided that Perspephone should live with her husband (Hades) for three months of the year and pass the other nine months with her mother, Demeter set aside her anger and bade the soil be fertile. But Persephone had tasted of the pomegranate; she was possessed by her husband, and every year when the cold season arrived she went to join him in the deep shadows. The myth expresses the essential tragedy of women after the patriarchal conquest. The male myth-makers presented an illusion of reunion between Demeter and Persephone-Kore. The compromise can be seen as forced upon Demeter, but it was fatal for her to undervalue the power of her own position and set aside her anger, just as it was fatal that she taught the kings of the earth her divine science and initiated them into her divine mysteries. The patriarchal Greek myth-makers (re-makers) constructed a typical phallocentric plot when they (through Zeus) seduced her into the apparently satisfactory—even triumphant—compromise. However, the fact that the daughter was allowed to return for a "period of time" says everything about patriarchy.

Those who live in the tradition of the Furies refuse to be tricked into setting aside our anger at this primordial mutilation, which is the ontological separation of mother from daughter, of daughter from mother, of sister from sister. Women choosing Hagocracy refuse to teach divine science to the kings of the earth, to initiate them into our mysteries. Hagocracy is the time/space of those who maintain a growing creative fury at the primal injustice—a fury which is the struggle of daughters to find our source, our stolen original divinity.

Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology