From: dwelch@devnull.mpd.tandem.COM (Dan Welch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: camille paglia
Date: 19 Nov 92 00:23:29 GMT
Organization: Tandem Computers (MPD) Austin, TX

In article <1ebqqnINNpb5@agate.berkeley.edu> uunet!idacrd!desj@ncar.UCAR.EDU (David desJardins) writes:
>Camille Paglia is an anti-feminist who calls herself various other
>things.

The rest of your post leaves me wondering whether you actually read
anything she has written.  If you did, your comprehension skills need
a little work.

Paglia calls herself a feminist -- and adds that the people she is
attacking are not feminists at all, not in the true sense of the word.
I think she is right, too.

>It's easy to understand why feminists are angered by her.  It's
>mostly not just because of the substance of her ideas, but because
>she actually seems to hate and despise women who stand up for
>equality.

This is a pretty common misinterpretation of her writings, mostly by
the very feminists (and their supporters) who are angered by her.  In
fact, she despises the feminists, *not* because they stand up for
equality, but because they *aren't* standing up for equality.  It is
her position, and a completely correct one IMHO, that the more popular
feminist stances treat women as victims and helpless children who
aren't willing or able to think and act for themselves.

>For example, she frequently writes of her sense of just retribution
>when a woman acts in a way which she does not approve of, and is
>raped and/or murdered in return.

At this, I can only shake my head in bewilderment.  How in the world
did you get this from her writing?  What she really says is: if a
women is going to place herself in a dangerous situation, she has to
be prepared to deal with the consequences of it.  In other words, if
women truly want to be equal, they can't expect society to treat them
like little china dolls.

"Just retribution"?  Give me a break.  It's more like, "Be careful
what you ask for, because you just might get it."  She is saying that
the feminists don't understand what it means to be equal -- that being
equal implies negatives as well as positives.  This is something that
Faludi, for example, completely misses.

>But she does conclude that because they are natural, it is
>unreasonable to expect them to be eliminated, and anyone who behaves
>as if they do not exist is behaving irrationally and deserves
>whatever they get.

Do you disagree with this?  It seems that you do, but why?  A women
who ignores the fact that she is vulnerable to rape *is* acting
irrationally.  If I walk through the middle of Times Square at night,
waving money around, should I be surprised if I get mugged?  After
all, I was just behaving as if crime didn't exit.

Look, if I want to rape a women, there is not much that she can do
about it, self-defense aside.  I am 6'2", 200 lbs, and could easily
overpower 90% of the women in the world.  I could outrun them,
outfight them, kill them if I wanted to -- and I'm not even
extraordinarily strong.  This is not boasting, it is just the facts of
the matter.

What stops me from doing it?  Certainly not my inner nature, my sex
drive, which tells me to have sex with as many women as possible in
order to insure my genes get passed on.  It is my social conditioning
that such behavior is bad.  I would never even think seriously of
doing such a thing, but only because the inhibitions are ingrained so
deeply into my subconscious.  Paglia's position is that women
achieving equality is going to loosen the inhibitions men have against
harming them -- a risk she is perfectly willing to accept, by the way.

A lot of feminists blame society for the problems that women have.
But Paglia's claim is that society is the only thing that protects
women.  A man who is out attacking women is suffering not from too
much social conditioning, but too little.  Why do you think it is that
we call such a man "an animal"?  The problem is that people want to
believe that nature is basically benign, which is silly.  Nature is
brutal by necessity.

I think Paglia is a real feminist, who supports real equality between
the sexes -- with all that implies.  She says, "You want equality?
You have to reach out and take it; no one's going to give it to you.
But beware, because it is a Pandora's Box, full of unexpected things,
and you will have to accept them all, or else go back to hiding behind
the petticoats and skirts."  This is a women who I could treat as an
equal.

Daniel Welch

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