MARY THOM, former editor of Ms. Magazine and a guiding force of the American feminist movement, died on Friday. The New York Times, which never fails to inform us of the deaths of even the most marginal of feminist leaders, reports in her obituary:

Ms. Thom never married, and her friends said her true love was her motorcycle, a 1996 Honda Magna 750. On it, she zipped around town — to dinners in the West Village, feminist talks, and back home to her apartment on the Upper West Side.

On Friday, she was riding on the Saw Mill River Parkway shortly after 4 p.m. when she hit a car, throwing her onto the road, the Westchester County police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Ms. Thom was 68 years old.

—- Comments —

Jay of Goshen, who sent the obituary, writes:

Mean of me, but I laughed at this.

Hannon writes:

Thank you for posting notices of the demise of individual figures in the feminist movement. I do not revel in their deaths, but it is good to have a reminder that bad ideas can and do die, along with their agents.

 Aaron S. writes:

I am reminded of this trailer for the 1968 movie Girl on a Motorcycle; suffice it to say that Ms. Thom looked nothing like Marianne Faithfull.

 Will G. writes:

It appears her ‘true love’ treated her worse than the patriarchy.

Jay writes:

This didn’t occur to me when I sent you the obit.

Mary Thom died in the arms of her one true love: her motorcycle. Perhaps it was a double suicide.

I’ve read that a lot of single passenger accidents are suicides. Of course, she could have just been drunk. And I wonder what happened to that other car, which the NY Times blandly ignores. She was driving on the Saw Mill Parkway, so the other car wasn’t parked.

The Saw Mill Parkway is beautiful and attracts drivers going to and from nice places. The driver of the car she hit is likely either injured or traumatized. Does the NY Times, or her “sisters” care? Nope.

Bruce writes:

It always bothers me to read about a feminist (particularly a butch one) named “Mary.” Such a beautiful name.

Alex writes:

“Ms. Thom never married, and her friends said her true love was her motorcycle.”

Sublimation.

Charles writes:

I read in another newspaper that Miss Thom had just retrieved her motorcycle from winter storage. As we bikers know, this is the most dangerous ride of the year: our skills are rusty and extra caution is needed. I’m a nice enough guy to hope that even vile leftists will take this advice.

 Laura writes:

“I read in another newspaper ….”

Has anyone ever heard of Ms. Thom before? And yet she has been the subject of admiring obituaries across the land.

The obituary pages of the major newspapers make idols of the most marginal of leftists.

Charles responds:

In response to your question, I had never heard of Mary Thom and doubt that many other people have either. I see now that I found the fact that she had taken her bike from winter storage on the CNN website. Her death also was covered by NPR, Huffington Post, etc.

Buck writes:

Aaron S. writes:

I am reminded of this trailer for the 1968 movie Girl on a Motorcycle; suffice it to say that Ms. Thom looked nothing like Marianne Faithfull.

Wrong. :-) If you look at images of Marianne Faithful today, in many they look a lot alike.

Which was the more “authentic woman?” Marianne Faithfull the non-castrated British actress/singer, who “freely” loved men in life and in the movie and was poorly (very fake) depicted as riding an actual Harley Davidson or Ms. Thom, the female eunuch who disdained men and straddled inauthentic rice burners for forty years?

What a choice. Ms. Thom “never owned a car” and looked like stereotypical Harley rider, but was actually in “true love” with her bikes. The beautiful, promiscuous, adulterous and free-love spirited (in life and the movie) Marianne Faithful played a character who fantasized a carnal knowledge of her authentic Harley Davidson. As different as they look(ed) and acted, there are similarities. In the movie (spoiler alert), Marianne Faithfull’s character crashes her motorcycle and dies (hyper-reckless and perhaps subconsciously suicidal). And today, Marianne Faithful, a recovered hard-core drug addict, looks a lot like Ms. Thom — not well kept, too well fed and unattractive (not just because of their ages) — and as if she now belongs on that Harley.

In a convoluted way, they had a lot in common. Neither of them had a traditionalist bone in her body.

Aaron S. writes:

Point taken from Buck, although I should really have been more explicit about the layers of irony intended. He’s right about the current-day Ms.Faithfull. That said, one of the reasons that Girl on a Motorcycle is interesting is not that it’s good (it’s actually pretty bad), but that it succeeds in conveying certain truths in spite of itself. While ostensibly a paean to female liberation, and to liberation generally, it actually demonstrates that the protagonist has delivered herself into greater subjection and death under the illusion of excitement.

Perhaps we should say that Faithlfull’s real-life persona just exhibits a slower and less spectacular tragic arc; the movie version allowed her to leave a pretty corpse.

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