Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-12-28 22:01

Article here. Excerpt:

'What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide," says Camille Paglia. This self-described "notorious Amazon feminist" isn't telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can't Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that's just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation.

When Ms. Paglia, now 66, burst onto the national stage in 1990 with the publishing of "Sexual Personae," she immediately established herself as a feminist who was the scourge of the movement's establishment, a heretic to its orthodoxy. Pick up the 700-page tome, subtitled "Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, " and it's easy to see why. "If civilization had been left in female hands," she wrote, "we would still be living in grass huts."
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For all of Ms. Paglia's barbs about the women's movement, it seems clear that feminism—at least of the equal-opportunity variety—has triumphed in its basic goals. There is surely a lack of women in the C-Suite and Congress, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who would admit that he believes women are less capable. To save feminism as a political movement from irrelevance, Ms. Paglia says, the women's movement should return to its roots. That means abandoning the "nanny state" mentality that led to politically correct speech codes and college disciplinary committees that have come to replace courts. The movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one "open to stay-at-home moms" and "not just the career woman."'

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Comments

She's not addressing men or men's issues. She's just criticizing feminist orthodoxy, which is no different than she's already been doing.

Her desire to see stay-at-home moms be just as acceptable to feminist orthodoxy as eternally-single career women is not about adjusting feminism to be better for men but to get feminists to say that gee, it's fine for women to live off men. Really, does she think that's going to happen? While feminists are fine with men transferring money to women, they want it done with no kinds of strings attached. Thus they want to see it done via gov't interventions and programs, not via interpersonal relationships, including marriages and other romantic relationships. And the more involuntary it is, the better. That's the icing on the cake for them. At least she didn't suggest the ridiculous idea that feminism needs to find a way to "attract men to it." Every now and then, I read someone suggesting that somehow men have to be more involved in feminism or fem. activism, etc., and I just laugh.

As for re-creating a new-found respect/appreciation for traditionally masculine endeavors-- how does she propose it get done? Devil's in the details.

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2013-12-29 00:16

Despite the lip service she pays men, Camille is not our ally. This is evidenced by the fact that she aided one of her students in making a "dark comedy" film about male sexual mutilation. (Teeth)

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Submitted by xtrnl on Mon, 2013-12-30 04:06

A critic of feminism is not automatically an MRA. The old saw that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," doesn't hold true vis-a-vis men's rights. To me, MR isn't merely abt finding feminism objectionable in some way, though it is certainly a part of it. MR is a particular collection of rights and social issues that focus on the rights and status of males in our society. It isn't sufficient merely to reject efforts to diminish males in some way. The diminishment's been around for a very long time, well before feminism showed up, but that has just kicked it into high gear.

By analogy, in for example an important matter which one is knowledgable about, it isn't enough to confirm or deny a statement of some kind. One must do that, and issue statements, too.

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2013-12-30 05:47

Ones ideals don't need to perfectly match up to be an ally. No, she isn't an MRA, she's an anti-feminist. But that doesn't mean she isn't an ally, just because she's not actively fighting the whole battle. The lies, hostility and dishonesty of feminism need to be exposed, and she does that. She also generally (with exceptions) encourages looking at men positively, which is also a good thing, though she often attaches traditional expectations onto men, which is where disagreement occurs, but that's fine, as far as I'm concerned. She does enough good elsewhere that her pushing traditionalism isn't a big deal... we're fighting that elsewhere anyways, getting a little more of it from her won't make the challenge insurmountable.

So no, she isn't an MRA, by any stretch... but does that mean she isn't an ally? Is an ally really a matter of being all or nothing? How much longer until we start asserting "if you aren't an MRA, you're a bigot"? I'd really hate to see that

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Submitted by Kratch on Mon, 2013-12-30 13:55

Well agree to disagree, but women who abet filmmakers like Mitchell Lichtenstein are not women I hold in high regard. I think the fact that a considerable number of women can be so casual about the topic of male mutilation is very chilling and telling. I also don't appreciate her traditional views. I don't agree with her views that it is okay for men to have the soul-crushing responsibility of being the sole, or majority provider. These two thinks in conjunction = "danger, Will Robinson" IMO.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Mon, 2013-12-30 20:35