From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: A Room of One's Own with a View to Kill
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 20:27:15 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <JMC.92Sep28112354@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>There are all female rock bands, and even a magazine _Bitch_,
>probably no longer published, was devoted to them.  My daughter
>Susan was co-editor.
>

	Sure; Paglia's interviewer (I forget his name, he did the Olympics)
	mentioned some, including the Patti Smith one r.a.b.bit mentioned.
	Paglia pooh-poohed these, said that the cutting-edge groups
	are all male -- Metallica and a few others I don't recall.
	In any case, I don't think she was making a categorical statement
	that admits of no exceptions, rather that this is an good example
	of the difference between the sexes: males are more agressive:
		Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality.  It's
		part of the sizzle.  Girls hurl themslves at guitarists,
		right down to the lowest bar band here.  The guys are 
		strutting.  If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you
		see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being
		aroused by male lust.  It attracts women.  It doesn't
		repel them.  Women have the right to freely choose and
		to say yes or no.  Everyone should be personally
		responsible for what happens in life.  I see the sexual 
		impulse as egotistical and dominating, therefore I have
		no problem understanding rape.  Women have to understand
		this correctly and they'll protect themselves better.
		If a real rape occurs, it's got to go to the police.  The
		business of having a campus grievance committee decide
		whether or not a rape is committed is an outrageous 
		infringement of civil liberties.  Today, on an Ivy
		League campus, if a guy tells a girl she's got great tits,
		she can charge him with sexual harassment.  Chickenshit
		stuff.  Is this what strong women do?
		-- October '91 Playboy (good pictorials in this issue, BTW :)' )
	
	and elsewhere that 'Male and female brains are different.'
	The message I get from her is that
		a) Men and women are different, including biologically
		and mentally different, implying differences in outlook
		(I'm reminded of a short essay by a transexual who had
		been a reporter with a successful Mount Everest attempt
		and the differences he-->she notes).

		b) Modern feminism is paranoid, rigid, behind the times,
		anti-sexual, unaware of these differences.

		c) Perhaps most importantly, that as long as people are
		unaware of their own biological natures, as long as
		they are unaware of the underlying biological/cultural basis
		for their own behaviour, the more easily they will be
		led by the nose, the more friction and mis-understanding
		there will be between the sexes.  Paglia says of
		_Sexual Personae_ (which I have not read) "It was
		intended to please no one and to offend everyone.  The
		entire process of the book was to discover the repressed
		elements of contemporary culture, whatever they are, and
		palpate them."  I note that this is precisely the same
		agenda that Philip Wylie states clearly in his 50's book
		_An Essay on Morals_, that the more people are unaware
		of the psychological bases for their behaviour (he likes
		Jung) the more they will be at the mercy of these forces,
		and of people who will use these forces to manipulate them.
		
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu