sexual personae

I couldn't make it through more than a few paragraphs. Reads like a parody of that RIPfork site, like, that poorly written. Hardly "demolishing" - more like an angry little person stamping their feet at a new pop phenomenon they just! don't! understand!

Camille's Madonna fandom makes this more poignant in a way.

fuck this generation for letting someone become famous without checking if Camille Paglia fancied them, imo

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltk460YLFZ1r4vn34o1_r1_500.jpg

oops i mean http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltk460YLFZ1r4vn34o1_r1_500.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-patterson/camille-pagila-interview_b_1842500.html

i am a chump and clicked on that. lols at the title.

she sounds pretty sad

she's sad all right

counting up old grudges and calling herself ugly

i was reading some old paglia essays this week bc they are very easy to read and sometimes provocative - but they're all really terrible! her so-called erudition consists entirely of namedropping writers and directors w/out any close reading.

Academic feminism is lost in a fog of social constructionism. It believes we are totally the product of our environment. This idea was invented by Rousseau. He was wrong. Emboldened by dumb French language theory, academic feminists repeat the same hollow slogans over and over to each other. Their view of sex is naive and prudish. Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist's.

that's from an essay on rape in Sex, Art, and American Culture. putting aside the feminism strawmanning, the bizarre metaphor (feminists embalm sex like taxidermists embalm dogs? what does that even mean?) - it is so telling that this is the most critical piece of her essay. "This idea was invented by Rousseau" - oh okay, I guess I'll just take your word for it no quotes or argument or anything. "He was wrong." thanks for setting us straight!

sometimes she can come off like the Ann Coulter of culture, only w/ a somewhat more unpredictable shtick.

rousseau does not think we are totally the product of our environment.

But if there is a state where the soul can find a position solid enough to allow it to remain there entirely and gather together its whole being, without needing to recall the past or encroach upon the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present lasts for ever, albeit imperceptibly and giving no sign of its passing, with no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than simply that of our existence, a feeling that completely fills our soul; as long as this state lasts, the person who is in it can call himself happy, not with an imperfect, poor, and relative happiness, such as one finds in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, perfect, and full happiness, which leaves in the soul no void needing to be filled. Such is the state in which I often found myself on the Ile de St Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I was lying in my boat as it drifted wherever the water took it, or sitting on the banks of the choppy lake, or elsewhere beside a beautiful river or a stream gurgling over the stones

What does one enjoy in such a situation? Nothing external to the self, nothing but oneself and one's own existence: as long as this state lasts, one is self-sufficient like God. The feeling of existence stripped of all other affections is in itself a precious feeling of contentment and peace which alone would be enough to make this existence prized and cherished by anyone who could banish all the sensual and earthly impressions which constantly distract us from it and upset the joy of it in this world. But most men, being constantly stirred by passion, know little of this state, and, having only ever experienced it imperfectly and briefly, they have only a vague and confused idea of it, which gives them no sense of its charm. It would not even be good in the present circumstances for them, avidly desiring these sweet ecstasies, to take a dislike to the active life which their constantly recurring needs impose upon them. But an unfortunate man who has been cut off from human society and who can no longer do anything useful or good in this world either for others or for himself, may find in this state compensation for human joys which neither fortune nor men could take away from him.

peoepl are sexual mosnters!

her BFI book on 'the birds' actually isn't bad, definitely don't bother with anything else though.

she is so terrible. do rapists tend to like her? normally I'd feel a question like that would be unfair, but some of this is just rape apologetics.

"Women have menstruation to tell them they are women. Men must do or risk something to be men. Men become masculine only when other men say they are. Having sex with a woman is one way a boy becomes a man."

"A girl who lets herself get dead drunk at a fraternity party is a fool. A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot. Feminists call this 'blaming the victim.' I call it common sense."

"Aggression and eroticism are deeply intertwined. Hunt, pursuit, and capture are biologically programmed into male sexuality."

"Feminism, with its solemn Carry Nation repressiveness, does not see what it is for men the eroticism or fun element in rape, especially the wild, infectious delirium of gang rape."

THE FUN ELEMENT IN RAPE. ok, moving on.

"Today's young women don't know what they want."

"The theatrics of public rage over date rape are their way of restoring the old sexual rules that were shattered by my generation."

"There never was and never will be sexual harmony."

"She must be prudent and cautious about where she goes and with whom. When she makes a mistake, she must accept the consequences and, through self-criticism, resolve never to make that mistake again. Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women. Posting lists of guilty men in the toilet is cowardly, infantile stuff."

"Beware of the deep manipulativeness of rich students who were neglected by their parents. They love to turn the campus into hysterical psychodramas of sexual transgression, followed by assertions of parental authority and concern."

"Masculinity is aggressive, unstable, combustible. It is also the most creative cultural force in history."

truly one of those rare authors whose bad reputation is not just deserved but maybe not bad enough

holy smokes. did you find all of those quotes in her writings yourself?

yes, this week

tough week. but worthy.

I scanned back through this thread and, boy howdy, if a writer's worth could be judged by the quality of their defenders, Vision's methods of arguing would force me to think that the only people who like Paglia must be smug, pedantic, wannabe intellectuals who lack the breadth to deserve that designation and the sense to recognize their deficiencies.

Looking at Mordy's collection of quotes, I'd pick the final one as the least defensible, no matter what context has been lost. The three characteristics of masculinity she selects are not the salient ones. Unstable? In contrast to what? Femininity?

Then, to name masculinity as "the most creative force in human history" is so baseless a declaration as to defy analysis. Can she have failed to notice that masculinity is massively more abundant than creativity? Or that creativity is not exclusive to the masculine? Among ex cathedra pronouncements, this rates as one of the stupidest I have ever encountered.

i'll cop to not really being aware of paglia in anything other than the vaguest academic sense (i went to college!) but those quotes are amazingly, monumentally, awful

also the opening of this thread is all-time

from that interview i think "crazy old dyke" is dead on. a crazy old dyke in the right place at the right time. i'm not familiar with who it was that bought her horseshit though. confused women and men both? is her stuff on a pua / ayn rand / misogynistic nerd continuum? how did people take it seriously (did they)? xp

yeah those first two posts are basically alpha and omega

xp "dyke" is unfortunate i guess. more like hyper-closeted / repressed.

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/camille_paglias_glittering_images/

I haven't read it yet but I'm looking forward to it! (The interview, not the book. I'm done reading Paglia books forever, I think.)

HI I AM THE AMAZING RANDY