From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: soc.singles,soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: Camille Paglia on "Men"
Keywords: Any Comments??
Date: 10 Apr 92 05:02:12 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Livermore CA

In article <hrrjj!l.sheaffer@netcom.com> sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:

:            CAMILLE PAGLIA  on "Men"
:            (Esquire, October, 1991, p. 138)

:            (She is the author of "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence
:            from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.)"

	First comments on this article: after reading it, I wondered
if Camille Paglia is really aware that she is a woman, and that if she
is, why she hasn't given herself a sex change. According to her
statements, motherhood is dangerous to civilization, which is an
_exclusively_ male creation.

:            Thinking  about  sex  as the century closes,  we  must  give
:       the  question of homosexuality centrality.  Modern  homosexuality
:       is,  in  my  view, a product of  the  intolerable  pressures  and
:       repressions of the affluent ambitious nuclear family, marooned by
:       the  breakdown  of the vast multigenerational,  extended  family,
:       still powerful only among the working class.

	Or it is more likely the result of homosexuals banding
together so that they can act as a group. Has Camille Paglia ever been
to the Castro St. district of San Francisco? Well, it would be a 5-6
hr. plane ride from Philadephia, but she might travel an hour or so by
train to New York City, where there is also a big homosexual community.

:            The fate of masculinity is intimately tied to homosexuality.
:       Worldwide,  in  Greece and Rome as in the Near East,  China,  and
:       Japan,  pretty boys have usually been considered by men to be  as
:       sexually desirable as women. This seems to me perfectly  natural.
:       Judeo-Christianity is unusual in finding the practice of boy-love
:       abhorrent.

	Certainly correct. And let us not forget Islam, at least in
principle. In practice, however, man-boy love is found in such places
as the combination of Catholic priests and altar boys.

:            Exclusive  sex or love affairs between adult men is  another
:       matter. This phenomenon is so rare, when we consider history as a
:       whole, that it requires explanation. I see two principal kinds of
:       male  homosexuality.  The  first and most ancient  is  rooted  in
:       identification  with  the  mother, perceived as  a  goddess.  The
:       castrated,  transvestite priests of Cybele, honored in  discolike
:       rites   of  orgiastic  dance,  survive  in   today's   glamorous,
:       flamboyant drag queens.

	Exclusive in our society? How many homosexuals of either sex
had had relationships with the opposite sex? More than a few before
they realized their real preference. 

:            The  second kind of homosexuality represents a turning  away
:       from  the mother and a heroic rebellion against her  omnipotence.
:       Such  homosexuality  disdains femaleness  and  esteems  perfected
:       masculinity,  which  it  symbolizes  in  the  hunk,  the   tautly
:       muscular, arrogantly architectural male form first fully imagined
:       by the Greeks. Greek athletics were a religious spectacle of  the
:       beauty of masculinity, formalized in the _kouros_ sculptures that
:       began the Western high-art tradition.

	Jill yourself off, Camille ;-)

	This "turning against the mother" business sounds like what a
male-dominated society would want men to do; that is one thing to
complain about in sexist stereotyping. If it is necessary for men to
dominate women, then this must include their female relatives. In a
nonsexist society, men would not have to separate themselves from
their female relatives.

:            There  is  nothing  deviant or effeminate in  this  kind  of
:       homosexuality.  On  the contrary, I view the modern gay  male  as
:       occupying   the  ultimate  point  on  a  track  of   intensifying
:       masculinity shooting away from the mother, who begins every  life
:       story. Gay men and straight men have much more in common than  do
:       gay men with lesbians or straight men with straight women.  Every
:       man must define his identity against his mother. If he does  not,
:       he  just  falls back into her and is swallowed up.  This  is  the
:       agonizing myth-pattern in the comic, matricidal _Psycho_, one  of
:       the hauntingly emblematic films of our time.

	But maybe gay people just prefer the same sex. Sometimes a
cigar is just a cigar. I think that Camille Paglia out to try to find
out for herself whether or not gay men really hate their mothers.
Anecdotal evidence from the _Lavender Book of Lists_ would suggest
otherwise.

:             Contemporary feminists, who are generally poor or  narrowly
:       trained  scholars, insist on viewing history as a weepy  scenario
:       of  male  oppression  and female victimization. But  it  is  more
:       accurate  to  see men, driven by sexual anxiety away  from  their
:       mothers,  forming group alliances by male bonding to  create  the
:       complex structures of society, art, science, and technology.

	What kind of Freudian claptrap is this??? Is there documented
evidence of little boys lusting after their mothers on a regular
basis??? Personally, I think Freud's theories are a big joke.

	And why is the female dangerous to civilization, anyway?

	True, the more dominant members of the more well-known and
"developed" societies have usually been male, but that does not mean
that women are natural nobodies. Women have also participated in the
building of civilization, even if they have been denied the most
attractive positions.

	But there is evidence of earlier societies in which women
fully participated in "civilization". See Marija Gimbutas's works on
Neolithic Europe, or some recent anthropological work on the position
of women in gatherer-hunter society, such as that by Eleanor Leacock.
Gimbutas posits a takeover of an earlier, sexually egalitarian society
by a much more militaristic and male-dominated one that spread all
over Europe, so she does not agree that a female-centered society is a
necessarily "lower" order of society.

	That statement that feminists are "generally poor or narrowly
trained" is something of an insult; what specially qualified Camille
Paglia?

	And is Camille Paglia not aware that she is a woman who hopes
to make a contribution to scholarship, which according to her own
theorizing is a fundamentally unfeminine activity? At least feminism
is self-consistent here, since according to feminism it legitimate for
women to pursue careers, and being an activist feminist is certainly a
career.

:            Every  gay man pursuing another man is  recapitulating  that
:       civilization-forging movement away from the mother. Lesbians,  in
:       contrast,  refuse  to  leave the mother. Gay  men  may  seek  sex
:       without  emotion; lesbians often end up in emotion  without  sex.
:       Male  homosexuality, pushing outward into risky alien  territory,
:       is   progressive   and,  overall,   intellectually   stimulating.
:       Lesbianism,  seeking  a  lost state of blissful  union  with  the
:       mother,  is  cozy, regressive, and, I'm sorry to say,  too  often
:       intellectually enervating, tending toward the inert.

	I wonder if Camille Paglia has tried to find out what lesbians
generally think of their mothers, and compared them, gay men, and
straight people of both sexes.

	The impression I get of the typical lesbian relationship is
that it is more like sister-sister than mother-daughter; the typical
gay male relationship in our society is brother-brother rather than
father-son (man-boy love is not too common in present-day gay
communities). [I'm just using family terms here for convenience]

:            Male  lust,  I  have written elsewhere,  is  the  energizing
:       factor  in culture. Men are the reality principle.  They  created
:       the  world we live in and the luxuries we enjoy. When  women  cut
:       themselves  off      from men, they sink into  psychological  and
:       spiritual  stagnancy.

	If she thinks that being male is so great, then why doesn't
she get a sex change?

	And I can see that she has not been very involved in the
cultural-feminist subculture. Some of it has had some curious artistic
creativity, including depictions of women without very much clothing,
if any at all. On another front, I have yet to see a feminist
Minoiphile complain about how Minoan women were often bare-breasted --
just the opposite.

:            When  I  was  young, I thought teenage boys  were  the  most
:       awkward,  miserable, antsy, bratty, scuzzy, snickering  creatures
:       on      God's green earth. Now at midlife and, as it were,  _hors
:       de  combat_, I see them quite differently. Watching them  rampage
:       on  the  street      or  at  the  shopping  mall,  I  find   them
:       extraordinarily  moving,  for     they  represent  the  masculine
:       principle  struggling  to  free itself      from  woman's  cosmic
:       dominance. Teenage boys, goaded by their     surging hormones (at
:       maximum strength at this time), run in     packs like the  primal
:       horde.  They  have only a brief season  of  exhilarating  liberty
:       between control by their mothers and control by     their  wives.
:       The agon of male identity springs from men's humiliating sense of
:       dependence upon women. It is women who control the emotional  and
:       sexual realms, and men know it.

	Just jill off, Camille, jill off ;-)

	Married men being "dominated" by their wives? Somehow, I don't
think Camille Paglia has ever had real experience of marriage.

	That men must free themselves from "woman's cosmic dominance"?
I can't believe that the author of these words is a woman.

:            One of the problems that has most vexed me in my  meditation
:       on  sex  is the promiscuity of gay men. Again and  again,  I  was
:       astonished  to learn from gay friends of hot spots  in  notorious
:       toilets at the diner, the bus terminal, or, Minerva help us,  the
:       Yale     library. What gives? Women, straight or gay, do not make
:       a      lifestyle  of offering themselves without cost  to  random
:       strangers     in sleazy public settings.

	"Offering themselves without cost?" Camille Paglia has never
heard of the idea of sex as cooperation, it seems.

	True, there are gay men who seek out lots of partners, at
least they did before AIDS became common, but (1) they are only acting
out a cultural stereotype that states that men are supposed to seek
out lots of partners and (2) would they be "allowed" to have steady
relationships by the rest of society. Gay marriages are a relatively
recent phenomenon, and a result of the success of creating homosexual
communities. 

	Conclusion: I fail to see what's so great about Camille
Paglia's "scholarship".