From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: Paglia (was: Cross-Writing)
Organization: Clark University
Date: 6 JAN 93 16:59:41 GMT

MG:
>Some critics have argued, in their misogynistic way, that women are less
>capable or incapable, of the kinds of artistic achievements,
>toughmindedness, intellectual prowess, or range that men are capable of.
>(I note that Camille Paglia seems to say this in SEXUAL PERSONAE.)

HH:
>We must understand _Sexual Personae_ differently, then; because it doesn't
>seem to me that Paglia says that.

MG:
>Well, due to the fact that my library is currently elsewhere just now, I
>don't have a copy of SP with me. But I do have Paglia's cancelled preface
>for SP, as it appears in her SEX, ART, AND AMERICAN CULTURE. Sadly, it
>does not include her famous remark about how, if civilization had been
>left to women, we'd be living in grass huts.

I'm in the reverse situation: I happen to have SP at hand, but not SA&AC,
which is out on loan to someone at the moment, so I can only refer to the
quotes you've given.

The cancelled preface is exactly that: it didn't appear in SP. In this preface,
Paglia states more of her personal opinions than find their way into SP.
While I disagree with some of them, I don't find them misogynistic.

For the record, I admire Paglia personally and think she makes some
interesting points, but I disagree with a lot of what she has to say.  (For
example, I don't think that Elizabeth Taylor is a great actress.)

You quoted Paglia:

        "At midlife, I now accept that there are fundamental sex differences
        based on hormones.... There is no masculine power or privilege I
        did not covet. But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was
        forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot
        escape her hormonal identity.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "hormonal identity".  Maybe
Paglia's big childhood ambition was to break Roger Maris' home run record.

        One of the themes of this book [SEXUAL PERSONAE], unpalatable to
        liberal well-wishers, is woman's limitation by the body....

I don't know what she goes on to say after that.  I don't happen to think
limitation is a big theme in _Sexual Personae_, at least not intellectual
limitation.  The theme I came away with was that society as we know it grew
out of the fundamental sex differences between men and women, as opposed to
the theory which says the differences are socially constructed.  Paglia
claims that our civilization was constructed by men as a way to assert
their power over women, whom they deeply feared.  I think that makes a
certain amount of sense.

        "Here are my conclusions, after a lifetime of observation
        and reflection. Maleness at its hormonal extreme is an angry,
        ruthless density of self, motivated by a principle of 'attack'
        (cf. 'roid rage,' produced in male bodybuilders by anabolic
        steroids). Femaleness at its hormonal extreme is first an acute
        sensitivity of response, literally thin-skinned (a hormonal effect
        in women), and secondly a stability, composure, and self-containment,
        a slowness approaching the sultry.

        Biologically, the male is impelled toward restless movement; his
        moral danger is brutishness. Biologically, the female is impelled
        toward waiting, *expectancy*; her moral danger is stasis....

She puts this better in the first essay in SP: "Estrogen tranquilizes,
but androgen agitates.  Men are in a constant state of sexual anxiety, living
on the pins and needles of their hormones."  There are obviously hormonal
differences between men and women.  What is less obvious is whether or not
these differences affect intellectual capability, and if so, how much, and
what does it mean.

        Equality of opportunity, a crucial political ideal that all must
        support, should not be confused with sexual similitude, which
        remains a wishful fiction.

Of course, males and females are not the same biologically.  But they should
be given equal opportunity under the law.  Nothing misogynist about that.
Sounds downright feminist to me.

        Some past tests (never entirely reliable) suggested that female
        intelligence occupies the broad median of the spectrum and that women
        do not reach the heights and depths of men, who may be genius or
        moron. This rings true to me.

Paglia and I part ways on this issue.  I don't know what tests she's talking
about.

        I do not believe that the historical absence of great
        women composers, mathematicians, and philosophers is entirely due to
        social factors, that is, to woman's lack of access to education and
        monitoring.

I disagree with her on this point, too.

        Note, for example, in this liberated age, the rarity of
        world-class female chess players. Chess shops and parks all over the
        world are filled with men, not women. Obsessed computer hackers are
        mostly male.  Even sex crimes and mass murders demonstrate the
        greater conceptualism of men, who have a monopoly on fetishism and
        perversion...."

This corresponds to what she writes in the first essay of SP:  "Women who
excel in mathematics do so in a system devised by men for the mastery of nature." Who knows?  Maybe women are not generally as well suited to be
chess champions as men are.  That doesn't mean that there could never be a
woman chess champion.  Neither does it mean that women are incapable of
artistic achievement, toughmindedness, or intellectual prowess to rival
males (unless you equate intellectual prowess with being a chess champion).

Here are some quotes from the first essay, "Sex and Violence, or Nature and
Art":

        All the genres of philosophy, science, high art, athletics, and
        politics were invented by men.  But by the Promethean law of
        conflict and capture, woman has a right to seize what she will and
        to vie with man on his own terms.

I can't argue with this.

        Western science and industry have freed women from drudgery and
        danger.  Machines do housework.  The pill neutralizes fertility.
        Giving birth is no longer fatal. And the Apollonian line of
        western rationality has produced the modern aggressive woman who
        can think like a man and write obnoxious books.

You bet.

        We could make an epic catalog of male achievements, from paved roads,
        indoor plumbing, and washing machines to eyeglasses, antibiotics,
        and disposable diapers.  We enjoy fresh, safe milk and meat, and
        vegetables and tropical fruits heaped in snowbound cities.  When I
        cross the George Washington Bridge or any of America's great bridges,
        I think: *men* have done this.  Construction is a sublime male poetry.
        When I see a giant crane passing on a flatbed truck, I pause in awe
        and reverence, as one would for a church procession.  What power of
        conception, what grandiosity: these cranes tie us to ancient Egypt,
        where monumental architecture was first imagined and achieved.  If
        civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living
        in grass huts.  A contemporary woman clapping on a hard hat merely
        enters a conceptual system invented by men.

I agree with this, more or less.  The grass huts line is hyperbole, of course,
designed to get people's attention (and it works).  However, I find it less
disagreeable than, for example, the claim of some feminists that women are
naturally more nurturing, kind, and loving than men.  But Paglia's point here,
as I see it, is not to stress women's incapacity, but to comment on the glories
created by male-dominated civilization.  She goes over the top in order to
counter the belief of some feminists that the oppressive "patriarchal"
civilization results only in evil.  I don't see her saying that women are
unable to invent antibiotics or design bridges; just that, if women choose to
do so, they will be entering fields created by men.

In relation to our other discussion, Paglia could be paraphrased to say: a
woman who writes literature is attempting to enter a conceptual system
invented by men.  By virtue of being a woman, she is an outsider, and will
likely be treated as such, and lumped with her "own kind".  In this case,
I think Paglia would agree with Oates.

It's incorrect to imply, as you do, a similarity between Paglia and the
authors and literary critics who have demeaned women's contributions to
literature. The latter are attempting to show that women writers are
inferior because of their "femaleness", and their inability to "write like
men". Paglia's claim would be that *all* women who write are "writing
like men". Her comments in _Sexual Personae_ on Emily Bronte and Emily
Dickinson are particularly telling, as she stresses their toughminded
masculinity. It's also interesting to compare Paglia's essay on Dickinson
with Oates' essay on Dickinson, "Soul at the White Heat: The Romance of
Emily Dickinson's Poetry", which is included in the book that started
this discussion: _(Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities_.

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books