Paglia é uma dessas pessoas que eu conheço e admiro cada vez mais, à medida que conheço mais e passo a admirar. E também uma dessas coisas que norteiam vários dos pensamentos da minha vida, o que de algum modo explica o meu olhar banal pra tanta coisa.

E daí que isso é notícia velha, olha só, é de 1º de Junho que está aqui arquivado e só agora eu resolvo escrever. Foi mal galera, mas vale a pena. O Pedro Doria fez essa entrevista com ela onde fala sobre a corrida presidencial americana e dá pra conhecer a maneira como ela pensa, além é claro de ter uma visão bem interessante sobre os candidatos.

O debate político não tem mais nenhuma profundidade e segue embalado por uma mentalidade raivosa de nós contra eles. Como o nosso é um sistema bipartidário, já há uma tendência à polarização. Mas essa divisão foi reforçada, no início dos anos 90, pela ascensão da TV a cabo, com seus canais de noticiário contínuo. Nos programas de debates, os convidados são pré-selecionados para apresentar os argumentos da direita e da esquerda. Filtrados pelo pouco tempo de fala, fica a impressão de que aquelas mesmas idéias manifestadas daquela mesma forma representam toda a miríade de opiniões possíveis a respeito de assuntos complexos. Há raiva no ar. Aqueles que começam a se aposentar, no Senado, costumam dizer que houve o tempo em que havia mais colegialidade, maior disposição de chegar a um acordo com a oposição. Era possível governar buscando algum tipo de consenso. Se considerarmos o poder dos Estados Unidos no mundo, é muito grave o fato de que nada é decidido em Washington porque os políticos estão paralisados por uma rixa adolescente e tediosa que constantemente transforma em estereótipo o ponto de vista oposto.

[...]

Um pouco. Os jovens não estão assistindo à televisão e há uma miríade de pontos de vista diferentes na web. Mas a desvantagem da web e dos blogs é que tudo vem muito fragmentado, são só pedaços pequenos de informação. A antiga habilidade do argumento elegante de editorialistas e colunistas é uma arte em extinção, e lamento isso. As pessoas que sabiam construir um argumento e colocá-lo num texto conciso e bem estruturado estão envelhecendo. Hoje, estamos cercados por mídia. A geração atual está em constante contato entre si, mas eles não têm um espírito de rebeldia, de vontade de mudança, que minha geração teve. É claro que éramos ingênuos e talvez até arrogantes ao exigir do mundo que mudasse. Mas os jovens, hoje, não têm essa ousadia. Não encontro a moça com 20 e poucos que tenha esse projeto de escrever um longo livro que será a grande obra definidora de algum assunto. Os jovens querem publicidade, querem aparecer. Mas a verdade é que basta um artigo publicado em uma revista de grande circulação que já é suficiente para render um contrato lucrativo com uma editora. O livro baseado no artigo é escrito em oito meses e o que temos são livros superficiais saindo um após o outro. Jamais esqueço que não podemos julgar o futuro pelos paradigmas do passado. Estamos vivendo um momento de grande mudança na comunicação e, com toda grande mudança tecnológica do tipo, há ganhos e perdas. Estou chegando a uma idade em que começo a me sentir velha e talvez esteja olhando para os jovens como a geração de meus pais olhou para as pessoas com minha idade.

[...]

No exato momento em que a campanha de Hillary começou a descarrilar, uma moça publicou no YouTube um vídeo satírico em que representa Hillary como Norma Desmond, do filme Crepúsculo dos Deuses. É brilhante e foi muito barato. O preço faz diferença. Antigamente, em Nova York, um grupo amador podia montar uma peça com quase nada em um teatro fora da Broadway. Hoje não dá mais para fazer nada sem muito dinheiro. Teatro, cinema, dança. Na web é possível. Onde veremos outro Crepúsculo dos Deuses? Não existe mais. Na história é assim. Gêneros passam por períodos de grandes obras e aí entram em declínio. No fim, os jovens não recebem boa educação, consomem lixo da indústria cultural e nem sequer percebem que é lixo.

Acho que citei demais, mas enfim, Camille Paglia é bacana pra caramba e vale ler a entrevista e os livros dela. Qualquer dia eu cito mais alguma coisa, porque, enfim, essa mulher além de tudo é um desfile de cultura pop.

I looked in the hallway closet and saw, on a shelf, a red felt hat with a leopard band, and asked my wife, "How did we end up with a red pimp hat in our closet?"

My wife, who has always been very quick on her mental feet, replied, "Maybe we didn't want a blue one."

Numa palestra que proferiu em Harvard há poucos meses, Camille Paglia percorre 150 anos de história do feminismo. Demora um bocadinho. Mas é mesmo obrigatório ler.

Whatever his tactical assertions in the primary trenches, Obama seems to have an open and flexible mind. He is a conciliator and synthesizer, ready to give due respect to opposing views -- a grace desperately needed in paralyzed Washington. When the camera comes close -- as it did last week when CNN's terrific Candy Crowley tenaciously grilled him about Hillary Clinton's prospects for the vice-presidency -- his deliberative thought process is plainly visible. What a deft performance under high-stakes pressure: Obama was firm, authoritative and methodical without ever losing his warmth and geniality. The guy is smart as a whip. And his administration will be as good as its appointments. As for Michelle Obama, she is formidable, representing a bold, stylish feminism more authentically contemporary than the old, bellyaching, blame-the-males style of Hillary's omnipresent cheerleader, Gloria Steinem.

Full article here.

Stressed-out, wired, over-conceptualized Anglo-American womanhood, currently on display in the hit film of "Sex and the City," is causing cultural dyspepsia. Is it any wonder that so many interesting, talented young men are reluctant to marry or have turned gay in droves? Exactly what do young professional women have to offer these days, aside from hyper office talk over a business lunch?

Apparently this has something to do with Obama's veep pick, but I'm not sure what.

For disaffected Republicans as well as many Democrats like me, McCain is an irascible grandstander of slippery ideology who has made a career out of flattering and courting the media. It remains debatable whether McCain's traumatic experiences as a prisoner of war have enhanced or distorted his admittedly wide-ranging knowledge of military and security matters. Crystal clear, however, is McCain's startling awkwardness as a public speaker. With stilted, stodgy intonations that seem to descend from the late-19th century era of one-room schoolhouses, McCain laboriously reading a speech is a painful spectacle. After the mumbling, disjointed George W. Bush, doesn't the U.S. deserve a more sophisticated leader on the international stage?

If you are interested in reading more of Paglia and the rest of this article click here. She writes for Salon.com and can be found there on the second Wednesday of every month.

So, for example, now you can read up on topics featuring Muslim women with all of the related articles grouped together nicely for your enjoyment. Another kick-ass category I'd like to highlight is Arab and Muslim themed humor. We're looking for more topical submissions in that genre, so if you think you're up to it, do write me: natalia [at] arabcomment [dot] com.

Now, as I already mentioned, GlobalComment will soon have a similar makeover. Humorous writing is the lifeblood of the site, it's what makes my job as both writer and editor that much more divine (not in the John Waters sense of the word, har har), and I encourage anyone reading this to submit your work.

Since I'm on the subject of good reads, a cursory look at the news today had me gagging. Holy Batman. Severed right feet? Now, I tip my hat and snap my garter at the writer of this story, he kept the sensationalism in check, but you can't help but conjure up images of all sorts of evil when you read.

If you're not sufficiently nauseous, check out more on deranged purity balls. Freud and Sophocles are turning over in their graves.

Oh, but I promised fun online reading, didn't I? Well, for a trip down the memory lane of Camille Paglia's greatest misses, why not check out this old (yet gleaming) chestnut from belledame? Back in the day, Paglia used to blame women for getting raped (and, I'm sure, still does). She recently blamed a flamboyantly dressed teenager for being shot. Of course, she couched it in the rhetoric of "oh, that poor, confused child, why didn't anyone save him from himself before it was too late," but I could see right through that. She worships traditional masculinity in this creepy way that suggests that men are gods who can do no wrong (unless they have floppy haircuts and/or support Senator Clinton), and says a lot more about her than it does about men. Or else she just does it because it gets her attention (hey, I'm writing about her right now, aren't I?).

I can appreciate the fact that Camille and I agree on the brilliance of Verka Serdyuchka:

But I also kinda want to shout "keep your hands off my Verka!"

Anyway, that was fun. Fun is also to be had over at Susie Bright's. I can't believe I haven't read her until today.

Hoje é dia de seksu... Pelo menos na minha cabeçinha... kikiki...

Preciso me concentrar mais no Personas sexuais da Camille Paglia, pra pensar mais na teoria que no tal ato...Uiuiui...

Ainda não assisti ao tal do Semi-Pro com o Will Ferrell e nem pretendo... koeekokoekoeoke... Mas a música é uma delícia... ,DDD

Jackie Moon - Love me sexy (Dj Weekend's Humpin Sexy remix)

E a Paglia iria ficar chocada com esse post...kikiki

This was the sort of insight I shared with my class of women last Saturday. They got it straight from the stallion’s mouth. It was a great day with plenty of frank views exchanged, stories shared, and a wicked humour revealed… often at my expense. We looked at the place of gender in self-help literature, the latest research on the science of brain difference, and how this plays out in communication and conflict between the sexes.

I was busy this week with radio interviews to promote the workshop. As a topic, it certainly tickled the fancy of a lot of punters in the province. I think we’re starting to get to a situation now where we can talk about the differences between the sexes as well as the equalities. This is healthy, exciting and useful.

Women have led the way in this new openness. Only last week the Daily Mail ran an interesting article about a new book, The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker. The review was written by a feminist and challenged the traditional view that women don’t get the top jobs because of male prejudice; rather, they simply don’t want them due to a preference for a decent quality-of-life. Click here to read it: Why Women Don’t Want the Top Jobs, by a feminist.

My favourite writer on this topic is a Cambridge Prof called Simon Baron-Cohen (the cousin of Ali G and Borat, believe it or not!). He has conducted major work on the typical psychological sex differences in terms of ‘empathy’ (for women) and ‘systemizing’ (in men). He is also known for the theory that autism is an extreme form of the ‘male brain’ behaviour. Check out his articles in The Guardian They Just Can’t Help It and the New York Times The Male Condition. You can also take his brain test.

What I’m especially interested in is how all this applies to the workplace. Thoughts, anyone?

too bad his wife doesn't:

just more hypocritical crap from camp clinton.

camille paglia has a laundry list of reasons why women should not vote for hillary.

Paglia makes known her intention to vote for Obama; she summarizes well the shortcomings of Hillary Clinton's campaign and political career. Personally, I'm still waiting to see who will run as a Libertarian (Bob Barr launched a study committee) before making my final choice.

Bearing in mind Clinton's lack of executive experience, the coattail riding of her husband, and the perception by some that women are expected to vote for her because she's a woman, the feminists should grow up and evaluate candidates not based on bathroom selection but an objective criteria which analyzes both personal character and public experience and trackrecord.

Clinton's track record with the truth (Bosnia snipers, medical insurance story) and her omissions of information (anyone recall those "missing" Rose Law firm billing records) do not bode well for this evaluation, if one is to be objective. Unfortunately, the old line feminists lead younger female voters down a primrose path. Simply because Clinton uses the women's restroom does not mean that she reflects my ideas, goals and hopes for this country. I would hazard a guess that if women stopped and looked at Clinton that they too would find she has fewer aspects in common with them than Clinton would like for us to believe.

I don't like Paglia but I loathe Hilary Clinton even more.

But fuck, how scary; I ACTUALLY agree with her?!!

HELP!

Anyhow . . . At lunch yesterday I began reading Break, Blow, Burn and was immediately reminded of why I had fallen in love with reading Paglia's writing way back in my freshman year of college.  That year I read Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson which is still to date one of the best books I've ever read (it was also probably the most difficult book I read freshman year, and one of the most difficult throughout my whole college career).  Thinking about Sexual Personae got me to thinking about all the other books that I read in college (which was a damn lot) and how they had changed my way of thinking.  So sitting at lunch I wrote down what I think are my 10 most influential books I read during my years of undergraduate education.  Note that not all these books were required readings for classes, some I had just chosen to read for my own pleasure or interest.  I will list them here in as best order as I can remember reading them (from first to last).

1. The Night Abraham Called the Stars: Poems by Robert Bly (Freshman): Plymouth State University had a really good poets series and every year had a number of noteworthy poets come and read on campus.  The first Poet I saw read at school was the amazing Robert Bly.  The venerable poet had a charisma and passion to his reading and writing of which I don't think I have yet encountered an equal.  He read the title poem of this book and I was captivated, I think it was then and there that I knew I wanted to be a poet more than anything.  After the reading I bought this book of poems (his most recent collection at the time) and got his signature.  I can't say how many times I've read this book since it's purchase but the current state of its cover suggests that the number is many many times.  Utterly amazing and beautiful.  Not only did it change my perspective on reading poetry but it has also greatly influenced my own poetry writing.  I so love the title poem of this book that I think it would be nice if somebody would read it at my funeral or memorial service after I die (sorry for the grimness but its just the way I feel).
2. Zoo Story and American Dream by Edward Albee (Freshman and again as a Senior): This is actually two plays by Albee and so some may not consider it a book but I will anyways.  I read these two plays in my Contemporary American Literature Class and absolutely loved them.  I think I read them both in about three hours one afternoon after getting out of class, I hadn't intended on reading them that fast, in fact I hadn't even been all that interested in reading them in the first place, but once I started the reading I couldn't put it down.  Albee is well know for his absurdest style and satirical humor (often being quite critical and biting of society).  Both plays fit this description well.  Something about both the dry humor and the dark sarcasm of the plays really appealed to me at the time and I would say they have somewhat helped formulate my perspective of the world especially concerning American culture.  I picked up Zoo Story and American Dream again my senior year and used the two plays to help write a paper on Existential Theatre (along with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit).
3. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia (Freshman):  If I remember correctly Sexual Personae was the first book I read in Literary Criticism with Professor Robert Garlitz (a professor who is involved in a way with two of the other books on this list and who has likely read everything I am writing about).  Sexual Personae is a big book.  No, that is an understatement, it is fucking huge (no pun intended for those who know what the book is about).  Not only are there a lot of pages but there is just a lot going on in it in general.  For a freshman it was a very intimidating book to suddenly find oneself reading.  But I did read it (albeit slowly so as not to miss anything) and I found it changing the way that I looked at everything in art and sex and culture and, hell, just about anything I could imagine.  The biggest challenge of Sexual Personae for me, as a freshman, was that, at the time, I was severely lacking in my literary and cultural knowledge.  Thus I have picked the book up many times since my initial reading as I feel that it is an incredibly valuable piece of writing to help think about the world as a whole. 
4. Dark Back of Time by Javier Marias (Sophomore): This is the second book the Bob Garlitz played a role in.  Sophomore year I took Contemporary World Literature with Garlitz and at one point in the semester he gave every student a different book to read and do a quick presentation on.  I got Dark Back of Time.  To date Marias may be one of the strangest and most enigmatic authors I have read.  I find it hard to even explain what Dark Back of Time is about.  It comes across as partially auto-biographical, part fiction, part roman-a-clef, and then a whole bunch of other things.  The novel (if it can even really be classified as a novel) is still to date possibly the most challenging book I've read because of the chaos that it seems to present and yet the comforting order and simplicity that slips in between all the apparent discord.  I list Dark back of Time as one of my most influential books of my college years because it, like The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, had a profound impact on my writing and also my perspective of narrative and novels.  I have since read two other novels by Javier Marias (both given to me by Garlitz right before graduation) and found them to follow suit with Dark Back of Time.
5. The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevsky (Sophomore and again in an independent study as a Senior): I didn't realize the three Bob Garlitz involved books would appear on this list one after another but they have.  I did not originally read The Brothers Karamazov for any class, in fact I had never really intended on reading it at all, but during my winter break happened to come upon it in a box of books in my Grandmother's basement.  I didn't have anything to read at the time and seeing as my winter breaks were really long I thought to myself, "Why the hell not?"  I am glad that I did choose to read The Brothers Karamazov as I now think that it is probably my favorite book of all time.  I realize this is a big bold statement but to be perfectly honest I cannot think of a better book that I have read (Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Stranger in a Strange Land have all come close but something about The Brothers Karamazovmakes it stand out more than these three).  I love this book, even though it is huge and difficult and not necessarily the most accessible piece of literature (I don't think of it as a book that one would want to pick up for just a casual read).  Senior year I set up an independent study with Bob Garlitz that was meant to be focused on the novel.  The class ended up being more focused on discussion and contemplation of literature as a whole but I still used it as an opportunity to reread The Brothers Karamazov and further affirm my love of Dostoevsky's writing.  Besides being a poet I think another occupation that would be high up on my list of ideals would be to become a Dostoevsky Scholar.  Perhaps what surprises me most about The Brothers Karamazov is that even after 120 plus years it still seems to convey a relevance and understanding of human ideology and action; it reads as almost timeless.  No other book has ever quite struck me to the degree in which The Brothers Karamazov has.
6. Theory of Religion by Georges Bataille (Junior): Junior year I took a class called Comparing World Religions which was taught by Phil Hart.  As students we had two big text books assigned for the class (I can't recall what they were titled) and then this thin little book.  Though I had not read any Bataille prior to Comparing World Religions I was familiar with his name because my roommate at the time had taken another class with Hart and read a Bataille book entitled Erotism: Death and Sensuality.  Of all the philosophical texts I've read (quite a few as a philosophy minor) I think that Theory of Religionhas had the most lasting effect on many of my own ideas.  The basic idea in the book is that of humankind's lost intimacy with being; that we have fractured our existences through the process of "thingness."  Bataille says that we as people desire a return of that lost intimacy and immanence of "the animal" which passes through the world "like water through water" and as such we create ritual and violence to release that inner part of us that yearns for the unbroken being.  This book is heavy cerebral stuff and Bataille's writing style is, at best, damn hard to read and yet sticking with it I found myself thinking about a lot of things I had never considered before.  In many ways this book did for my philosophical thinking what Sexual Personaedid for my artistic and cultural thinking.  I would later read another Bataille book (in another Hart class no less) titled The Accursed Share, Vols. 2 and 3: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty which was also very good but not quite to the same level as Theory of Religion.
7. The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things by J.T. Leroy (Junior and again in class Senior):  Nearing the end of the semester in Comparing World Religion, Phil Hart handed me this paperback book and said I would probably like it.  I think I looked at it and kind of shrugged and told him I'd take a loot at it if I got a chance.  I believe Hart laughed and said I'd probably have it read within a week.  He was right about that.  If I remember correctly I had been kind of sick (actually the sickness eventually led to my having pneumonia and getting to spend a good part of a Saturday in the hospital) and so one afternoon I sat on my bed by my big window and picked The Heard is Deceitful Above all Things up.  It only took me about a day to read the whole thing.  The story is fascinating in a certain cathartic, voyeuristic, and vicarious way.  In its simplest it is about child abuse but when one really sits down and considers it, the book becomes a real examination of masochism, religion, poverty, and many other societal topics.   All this made for a great read but alone it isn't enough for this book to make my top ten list.  What elevated it to this level was the revelations on the nature of the author.  A lot of people had had questions about the author J. T. Leroy(whose life the book was suppose to be loosely based upon) because he was a shadowy character himself, rarely making any public appearances and reluctant to hold interviews.  First semester of my senior year I took another Hart class called Sexual Ethics and The Heart is Deceitful above all Thingswas one of the required readings (as was Bataille's The Accursed Share, Vols. 2 and 3: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty).  During that semester the Paris Review interviewed Laura Albert who turned out to be the creator of the identity of J. T. Leroy (some other publications had made claims that Albert was really Leroy prior to the Paris Review but the prominent literary publication pretty much settled the matter once and for all).  A lot of people (literary critics, reviewers, the general public) considered the revelation of the reality of Leroy a hoax in the least and a downright scandal at worst.  I found it fascinating because suddenly there was a whole new degree of fiction and narrative that we were looking at beyond what Leroy had written in The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things and his other novel Sarah.  Leroy himself was a work of fiction!  The whole matter with Leroy and Albert and the novels brings up so many questions about authenticity and authorship and reality that I just love.  If it had not been for the Leroy revelation, The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things probably would have just gone on my list of enjoyable reads, but because of how things turned out and all the wonderful thinking it provokes this book cannot be ignored as far as its influences on me during my college years.
8. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (Junior): Durning the long break between Fall and Spring semester of junior year (the whole month of January 2006) I lived on campus and worked some twenty plus hours a week at the Lamson Library.  Because there was not a lot to do at the library during the long break I ended up just reading a ton (just counting in my head I think I read about eight books in one month).  One thing I decided to pick up and read was Stephen Hawking's well known A Brief History of Time which I had skimmed through a couple times in the past but never really sat down and read.  What a wonderful and educational book!  I really think that anybody who has even the slightest of interest in science in general should pick up this book.  Sure Hawking is a big famous theoretical physicist but his book is amazingly accessible and written in with an intended audience of common everyday people.  Some of it is still a bit confusing and beyond my grasp, but all around I learned more about space and time and physics from this book than from any other source.  I actually read the illustrated version which was wonderful because it had great pictures to demonstrate a lot of the ideas being discussed.  I have always loved science but A Brief History of Time further developed my fascination and I would say it is a pivotal work that lead to my creation of I Wish I Was a Scientist (twice in one post!  This is absurd.  Mr. Lordisimo have you no dignity? -- Answer: No).
9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (junior in high school and junior in college):  What?!  How can you put this on your list if you originally read it in high school?  Here's how.  I had to read The Sun Also Rises in my junior English class of high school and I hated it.  Honestly I think I may have loathed it more than any other book I read in my four years of high school.  I thought it was the biggest most boring load of crap I had ever read (Ethan Frome was right up there as well).  I am pretty certain that I swore upon finishing The Sun Also Rises, in high school, never to pick up Hemingway again.  Now jump forward almost four years to that same long winter break when I read A Brief History of Time. Lamson Library had a display of the Time Magazine list of 100 best English-Language Novels from 1923 to Present (many of which I read during the long break.  Special favorites from that list that don't quite make this list but are awesome nevertheless are Catch-22 and Watchmen).  One day one of my professors, a fellow named Joseph Monninger, came into the library and was looking at the display, then he walked over to me holding one of the books.  "Have you ever read this?" He asked.  I took a look at it and cringed.  It was, as you have probably guessed, The Sun Also Rises.  I looked at Monninger and responded, "Yeah, I've read it and I hated it."  He looked shocked.  "Really?  When did you read it?" "Junior year of high school, " I said.  Monninger laughed at this and handed me the book.  "Read it again, I dare you."  I think at the time I was fully intending on putting The Sun Also Rises back up on the display as soon as Monninger left but for some reason or another I opened it up and read the first page.  Then I read the second.  And Third. And then the whole damn thing.  And when I was finished it a couple of days later I put it down and sat there thinking to myself, "My God how could I have ever hated this book?"  This is why The Sun Also Rises is on this list.  I talked to Monninger about it after I had finished it and he told me that he knew I would like it now but he also could understand why I hadn't liked it that much in high school.  For me, in many ways, The Sun Also Rises represents how much I came to appreciate good literature and writing during my college years.  I loved reading and writing in high school, but it was in college that I really got down to studying the arts and loving them for their uniqueness and skilled creation.  It had taken me nearly four years to get to the point where I could pick up a book I had thought I hated, reread it, and then see why it was a classic of literature.  For that The Sun Also Rises will probably always hold a special place in my heart.
10. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Senior):  In some ways Simulacra and Simulation is a book of regret for me 1). because the class it was taught in, The Real World (not the reality TV show though we did talk quite a bit about reality TV) was the second of only two classes I had with the awesome professor Robin DeRosa and 2). the same semester I read this book in The Real World I had had an opportunity to take another DeRosa class on Critical Theory but I had chosen not to which, in hindsight, I now believe was a big mistake.  Still even though regrets arise when I think of Simulacra and Simulation I cannot regret the actual fact that I did read it, as it, like all these books on this list, is absolutely amazing.  Baurdillard's book is about post-modernism and hyperreality and more or less says that the real world is gone and has been replaced by layers of simulacra or mirrored representations of that lost real.  In a lot of ways I can compare the ideas found in this book to the concepts of lost intimacy in Theory of Religion.  Not only did this book further expand upon my already diverse knowledge of philosophy and theory but it has remained a big part of how I still look at the world to this day.  I think a lot of my critical (not necessarily bad critical, just critical thinking critical) views of the world today are in direct correlation to what I read in Simulacra and Simulation.  Like all these books on this list this one was very difficult, I remember in class a lot of my classmates struggled with the work (as did I) but once we got down to discussing it and applying it to other ideas in the class it ended up being hugely significant and beneficial.

 Holy crap, the list is done!  This is a really big blog post!  I started this post yesterday afternoon (I've done some editing since then) and now I am wrapping it up.  It has felt wonderful to recollect and write it down.  Very autobiographical really.  Also makes me miss all the awesomeness that was college.  Boy I had some damn good times.  Not to mention some awesome professors and friends. Oh yeah, and the books, so so many great wondrous amazing spectacular genius books! 

An interesting article.  Paglia thinks aloud:

...Is feminism intrinsically a movement of the left, or can there be a feminism based on conservative or religious principles?

Susan B. Anthony (wikipedia) was Christian, mind you, and extremely chaste:

"...feminist history has insufficiently acknowledged the degree to which the founders of the woman suffrage movement—that is, the drive to win votes for women—were formed or influenced by religion."

Agreed...especially when so many feminists have embraced Marxism, pseudo-Marxism and continental philosophy as driving ideas.

..feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much the emergence of modern feminism owes to capitalism and the industrial revolution"

In reading Paglia, one can see how difficult it is for thoughtful, independent-minded people (men or women) to confront collective anger, ideology, unclear reasoning and groupthink...though I'm not sure her own reasoning is sound.

Speaking for myself, it's difficult to be sympathetic to a movement that attempts to exclude me by definition and through its actions can threaten many of my freedoms.

Addition: An interesting article from Britain (where socialism is a more powerful force) against feminism's shortcomings: anti-men bias, the belief that the personal is polical, the consequent state intervention...

I just finished a submission for an anthology about bisexuality. Bisexual Wives is a project being put together by Jolie DuPre, who ever seems to be juggling her own writing, editing, promoting, and readings. I believe she’s a Gemini. You know, the multi-tasking communicators of the zodiac -- perpetual motion machines who get bored plodding along one activity at a time like the rest of us. :-)

On the other hand, I’m a typically self-absorbed Libra, but prone to sensuality and workaholic obsessions. For example, I’ve been writing and illustrating an erotic adventure novel that just won’t end, now at 120,000 words (Darklaw). I don’t want it to end, really. I love writing about these complex characters. I also have two shorter works in process with Drollerie Press, and was informed I’m a semifinalist for the Best Lesbian Erotica 2009 edition, due out around Thanksgiving (the final cut won’t be announced for a month…wish me luck!).

So, as I’m wrapping up these projects, I found I had some more thoughts about bisexuality. My post on “Bisexuals and Bad Science” still gets quite a few hits. Never sure if people are browsing for images or are interested in a little theory. Okay a lot of theory, but, then, I’m a Libra, remember? (If your interest is the former, there’s plenty of porn out there, but you may prefer to check out Facebook's Lesbian Erotica group, or You Tube, which doesn’t allow nudity but has some enticingly suggestive videos.)

Anyway, Jolie’s project hasn’t yet found a home, but we’ll see what the market will bear. I wonder if readers are interested in real bisexual lives and not just girl-on-girl fantasy material. In other words, the essay I wrote is autobiographical but not erotic. I wonder if there are enough bisexual wives out there who can write honestly on their experiences. If you're one, visit Jolie's website and submit by July 31st.

Monosexism

Truly, I am a little tired of the monosexism around. The last straw for me was the movie Brokeback Mountain (2005), which was actually about bisexual -- not gay -- men. Even the progressive community can't see us. Monosexuality may be a lifestyle, but monosexism is an ideology that claims one lifestyle is “normal,” often backed up by biased research (much like Adrienne Rich's Heterosexism). Sex is not a science, even when scientists are telling us about it, and ideologies like monosexism regulate broad activities with assumptions that rely on simplistic dualisms.  

As I mentioned in that other post, the LGBT community is just as bi-blind as the straight world, thinking anyone who once crosses the fence must be in denial about their gayness or enthralled to conventionality. I have to admit, many of the women I used to see hooking up, who were not already in the life, were there for their male partner. But that was back in college. I never believed any woman under thirty really knew her sexuality anyway.

And, like the feminist community, bisexuals can't even agree. Beyond the "curious," there are sequential bisexuals, the ones who say things like "gender doesn't matter" and "I love a person for who they are not what's between their legs", and concurrent bisexuals, who like relationships with both genders at the same time and say things like "I sleep with anything that moves." (Come on now, that's a joke.) Now, if you all sleep together in various arrangements, that would be polyamory, not bisexuality. Get your definitions right, or people won't know how to talk about you.

What seems to confuse the monosexuals is that bisexuals aren't against gender. At least I'm not. I love the differences. Androgyny has no appeal to me.

The social critic Camille Paglia describes sex as “metaphysical” for men, whereas women are “serenely self-contained.” Men are out of balance and must “quest, pursue, court, or seize.” (Sexual Personae, 1990) But other theorists say inequality arises, not from anything essential to gender, but from a personal inability to reach across that gender divide. They may be right. It seems to me, as a concurrent bisexual, I honor gender difference more fully by declaring it unbreachable. In other words, blurring the lines may be what bisexuals actually do least of all.

We’ve been trying to have it both ways for too long. And I don’t mean bisexuals. I mean a culture that encodes and enforces gender differences in everything from cereal to cars, from who speaks for children to who speaks for God. Identity is created in what we are and what we are not, and yet we’re expected to seek out one ultimate intimacy whose success, we’re told, depends on “being ourselves.” My body doesn’t fit into even one dress size, but my love is supposed to fit into one category given a name by the genitals shared?

The latest example of the anti-Hillary vitriol is Camille Paglia's article, "Obama's Best Veep Choice," published on Salon.com.  The article is offensive to a heretofore unprecedented level.  I think it's worth dissecting:

After getting in a few shots at John McCain -- "an irascible grandstander of slippery ideology who has made a career out of flattering and courting the media" -- Paglia digs into conservative talk radio:

Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He's a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He's "not that bright"; he can't talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It's gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

Please make careful note of where Paglia states that "overt character assassination is ethically indefensible." If you're guessing that I'm foreshadowing some potential hypocrisy, you're on the right track.  For after she briefly describes how Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius would be an excellent choice for Obama's VP, a pairing that would "be visually vibrant and radiant, like a new day dawning" (I know what you're thinking: who can write drivel like that without gagging?), Paglia begins her Hillary diatribe:

Hillary for veep? Are you mad? What party nominee worth his salt would chain himself to a traveling circus like the Bill and Hillary Show? If the sulky bearded lady wasn't biting the new president’s leg, the oafish carnival barker would be sending in the clowns to lure all the young ladies into back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing. It would be a seamy orgy of scheming and screwing.

Sulky bearded lady? Oafish carnival barker? Back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing? A seamy orgy of scheming and screwing? Uh, care to remind me again, Camille, how "overt character assassination is ethically indefensible?" It gets better:

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the ecstatic media lockstep praising Hillary's so-called concession speech last weekend. This is the same herd of sheep who bleated to Bush's beat and brought us the Iraq fiasco. I first heard the speech on the radio as I was driving back to Philadelphia from a family event in upstate New York. I was shocked and appalled at Hillary's inflammatory demagoguery, which was obviously intended to keep her candidacy alive through the August convention and beyond. The echo in the museum's marble entry hall gave the event an eerily retro quality, as if it were a 1930s fascist rally. Hillary's turgid, preachy rhythms were condescending and manipulative, and her climaxes were ear-splittingly strident. It was pure Evita, a cult of personality masquerading as populism. When I later saw the speech on TV, I was disgusted by how Hillary undercut her insultingly brief endorsement of Obama with a flat expression and cold, dead eyes. The only thing that got her blood racing was the blatantly stoked hysteria of her screeching worshipers.

Really?  You're going to use an "echo" in the marble hall to compare Hillary's speech to a Fascist rally? You're going to describe her as having "cold, dead eyes," only growing excited by "the blatantly stoked hysteria of her screeching worshipers"?  Why stop there, Camille?  How about: "I saw Clinton step briskly on stage in fervent goosestep, raise her hand 45 degrees from horizontal in salute as the crowd vigorously shouted "Seig heil!"

You might imagine this disgusting paragraph was the high-water mark for madness and hysteria in her article, but you would be sorely mistaken.  Paglia goes on an incredible rampage of misplaced projections and ill-conceived thoughts regarding how Hillary has done feminism a great disservice:

Hillary's desperate end-game gambit to turn the whole election into a referendum on gender does feminism a serious disservice. It wasn't sexism that cost Hillary the nomination: It was her own misjudgments and mismanagement of a campaign that had the massive support of the nationwide party establishment, constructed by her husband -- to whom she owes her entire career, which has thus far been dismayingly free of any significant, concrete achievement. What kind of feminism is this -- all smiley show and no substance? 

Wait, is she writing about Hillary or Obama now? 

In point of fact, Hillary's sex helped her more than hurt her. What the media repeatedly claimed was her success in debate was predicated on her silencing of her male competitors, who were bullied into excess caution in dealing with a woman. Not one Democratic male dared attack or rebut her with the zest shown by all the Republican candidates jousting with each other. Hillary had to be coddled with elaborate deference -- or the delicate little woman would squawk bloody murder (as she did when she petulantly complained about always being given the first debate question). All of this rubbish was resurrected last week in the thousand mawkish excuses found by the media and her crooning acolytes for "giving her time" to withdraw from the race. No man would have been treated in that overconcerned way -- as a frail vessel of quivering emotion. Yet another blot on feminism, courtesy of Clinton, Inc.

I mean, seriously Lady, this is crazy talk.  So let me work this out: we're to impute Hillary for how other candidates reacted to her during debates?  It's now also Hillary's fault for what the media says and writes about her?  Why not just blame Hillary for global warming, earthquakes, and tornadoes while you're at it.

But here's the pièce de résistance of the article:

And here’s another whopping female advantage: Hillary could jet around the country with an elaborate, color-keyed wardrobe and a professional hair and makeup crew, who plastered and insta-lifted her with dewy salon uber-ointments and cutting-edge technology before every appearance. No male candidate has ever had that theatrical privilege. (John Edwards, in contrast, was heaped with scorn for his simple yet pricey haircuts.) When the mega-prep for some reason failed -- as on a frigid morning in Iowa -- the resultant photo of Hillary in realistically wrinkled 60-year-old mode caused repercussions around the world. Golda Meir, with her robustly lived-in face and matriarchal jowls, would have given ever-primping Hollywood Hillary a derisive Bronx cheer.

I've completely lost her at this point.  Is Paglia somehow trying to insinuate that Hillary's use of make-up is another blow against feminism?  Or is Paglia just angry that Hillary permitted the photo of her in "wrinkled 60-year-old mode" to be taken, thus somehow letting the cat of the bag that 60-year-old women actually have wrinkles which might mean that Paglia herself will never get laid again?  I don't know.  I just don't know.  But what I do know is that Paglia has gone mad, there's no other way to describe it.

The way I look at things, only you can give someone permission to make you feel powerless. Your power comes from within and has to do with you being YOU and no one can take that away from you because it is a mental, not physical thing. People who live in POW camps, being tortured etc. and live through it do learn how to keep that inner core alive to survive. Once you know that inside, it brings you incredible strength and power and it actually helps to protect you, no matter what happens. Do not let the bastards win by getting inside your head!

You in fact do have the power to embarass and to make these type of men feel how pathetic their egos are to want to feel they have to harass a woman to feel like they are a ‘big man’, and all you need to do is tell them that, loudly and to their faces especially in front of other people, and watch them crumple. They are trying to use you to boost their egos and their own sense of power — so simply don’t let them do it! Don’t act scared or shocked - act MAD that they have dared to invade your space like that, and tell them to get out of it and mean what you say.

I have the opposite reaction to most people when I get attacked or harassed, so maybe I am lucky or just plain crazy, I don’t know. But - when things happen to me like someone trying to harass me or mug me or rob me, I quickly become enraged, and aggressive and I fight back instantly - this has happened several times while I lived in the cities.

In one of the most extreme cases, I was in a group of 4 girls who got attacked by 2 giant guys who apparently started to follow us when we came out of a lesbian club in Chicago in the early 90s. The first time they came up to us was just outside the bar, and the bouncer did scare them off using nunchuks - he rollerbladed from across the street to scare them off a bit like a bizarre super hero. But as we continued down the street further, apparently they kept tracking us, unbeknownst to us or the bouncer, whom we had thanked and who had returned to the club.

Mind you , we were on a crowded city street (Belmont & Halsted el station area for those of you who know Chicago) on a Saturday night full of people and by the way NO ONE else (after the bouncer came and left I mean) around us stopped to help so NEVER count on other people to assist you …

The second time they came at us it was several blocks down the street, very close in fact to the train station. One guy picked one of the girls and shoved her up against the wall and were saying all kinds of sh*t to us about being dykes, and who did we think we were to be able to walk down the street like that etc. and how they would beat us up — I had NO intention of being gay-bashed.

I instantly flew into a furious rage, pulled off my belt and got ready to rumble (I am 170cm and weigh about 62kg while these guys were both very tall and wide). I started to yell at the guys, swearing in a rage and strangely enough - loudly psycho analyzing them, calling them weak, pathetic limp dicks for having to boost their egos by attacking a group of girls and that type of thing, asking them if they would do this to their mothers or sisters etc..

I walked towards them as I was shouting my string of obscenity laced psycho-analysis, swinging my belt, which was a punk rock style bondage belt full of metal. One man dropped my friend from the wall, and left immediately but the other didn’t. His friend told me he was much bigger than me and would take me out for being a dyke. I told him I was a total femme, and I was wearing black lace tights, so how stupid could he be — I basically shouted out any insult or psycho babble that came into my head that was against what he was all about, always denying whatever he was trying to say or prove about us, causing him apparently to become really confused and probably to figure I was nuts (which I was so angry that I was in fact nuts).

I told him I didn’t give a flying fuck if he was bigger than me, and that I was sure he could take me out — but that I could guarantee him that he would definitely get hurt in the process of doing so and that I didn’t care if I got hurt or not - I did not show one ounce of fear or weakness, and continued to approach him, and he continued to back away from me.

I am sure I gave off the aura of someone enraged and barely under self-control - I was aggressive, mean and full of swear words — which actually is the opposite of what women’s self defense courses teach you in fact (they say this type of language will escalate the situation and make the attacker angry -- I did not care at this stage because I was so angry). Now I had some self-defense training in the past when I'd briefly joined the Chicago Guardian Angels and ridden the subways on patrol, but not a lot -mainly this was just pure ballsy-ness on my part and this guy was at least 180cm tall, and probably 120kg or more.

I was in fact exactly this - entirely enraged, and ready to make this guy feel some pain, even if it meant I was stomped to death - I really truly didn’t care what he did to me at that point in time; I was NOT going to let him scare or control me into running from him or his friend - I would stand and fight. This is how strong my rage reaction is when I am attacked. I kept on approaching him and because he kept backing up I knew I was winning. He ended up turning around, calling me a pussy as he went away and running off to join his friend further down the street. During this alteraction, probably 30 or 40 people passed by and NO ONE called the police (thank you Chicago gay party crowd for your support).

My 3 girlfriends had all frozen like deer in headlights and may as well have melted into the sidewalk for all the help they offered me. They just stood there, stunned and saying nothing and also not calling police.

After the man left, they told me I should not have done that, that I could have been killed. I said yeah, but I was RIGHT, every step of the way I had judged these guys correctly and in the end I WON and I was right in my instincts (no thanks to my girlfriends). Maybe if he’d been aggressive back, and swung to hit me first, I would have changed my tact - but I have no idea because that is not what happened.

I do not regret that incident at all and would act similarly faced with another similar situation - it made me feel SO strong to have fought back and won. I would have happily been beat up in the process of defending myself and my friends instead of letting some freak make me scared and control our day, and even that would have made me feel prouder and more confident than letting my friends or me get beat up or raped or worse without any fight at all.

Other times when I’ve been followed by jerks saying more simple ‘hey baby, wanna fuck’ type of BS to me etc. I have screamed and yelled for the man to stop following me and harassing me that has worked except for one man who was mentally ill and I went into a store and asked them to call the police. The police had to come and get him (turns out he’d tried to rape a little girl next door to me as well, so thank goodness) — but others did leave quickly when faced with an angry bitch in their face instead of a terrified meek little girl they’d hoped for.

BTW - I will just point out that I don’t seek out harassment. I always am prudent - I am aware of my surroundings, walking on well lit and well-travelled streets etc. (above attack was smack dab in the center of the party central of gay Chicago) so in the first place I try to avoid these situations. But as a punk type girl in the 80s and 90s, and as one who sometimes dated other girls, I was definitely a target for deranged jerks to *think* they’d found someone they could try to abuse. Mild to dangerous harassment did happen a few times when I was in Chicago and once when I was in NYC but it was not a daily occurence. But when it happened, I always responded aggressively and loudly, and I never got hurt.

Train masturbators seem to be pretty common on the Holla Back sites from what I read recently. I can tell you my reaction would quite likely be to yell ‘What the fuck are you doing masturbating on public transit you freak - are you into kiddie porn as wel! I am calling the police!’ — people like him thrive on hoping they can shock you into silence, and will absolutely melt if attention is focused on them like that and if you name what they are doing out loud, and loudly. I realize I am odd that I have this type of instant anger reaction rather than instant freezing one - but I think if any woman takes the time to go to self-defense classes etc. and practices being more confident they can become better at protecting boundaries, and setting STRONG limits on what one does and does not allow people to do in their own space. I am not saying every woman should be as nuts as me, because you have to be willing entirely to back up your talk or it won't work on the perp. However, anyone who develops more confidence to denounce that man in public out loud would make you feel STRONG and would have definitely make a masturbator or flasher in public stop what he was doing. Flashers and train masturbators are the lowest of the low, and will not put up a fight when the whole world is told what they are doing on a train.

From experience, I would say fight back LOUDLY - always always always fight back - 99% of the time it works, believe me - and the cowards will turn tail and run. The likelihood of police catching them is small (and as I have found most people are unwilling to get involved so unless you can quickly find police yourself, best to take care of YOU first, and report him and hope they catch him later but don’t bet on it). Sexual predators don’t expect women to get in their faces when they harass you on the street - these kinds of guys are specious cretins - they WANT you to be intimidated by their pathetic floppy penises - don’t give them the satisfaction. They get OFF on controlling you and on your scared reaction. Show them that women are unpredictable and that some will definitely fight back - it will make them think twice before doing it again.

The only way the world will get the idealistic scenario of women being able to walk where we want when we want is by being willing to stand up and FIGHT for that right - it is an unfortunate truth - look at the way women are treated in so many countries around the world - it has not done them any good to sit around taking it and hoping things get better. I would rather live boldly and freely and have a potential fight now and again to ensure I can continue to live that way, than to live a mouse too scared to leave my own house. The more women who stand up for themselves, the more other women will join them and eventually things will change.

Of course the responsibility for being out of line in the first place is 100% on the offender as no one has the right to harass someone else because of their sex, way of dress etc. - but wishing them away will not make them go away. You cannot control the fact that their ARE jerks out there with twisted minds and screwed up sexual problems who want to abuse women (or gays) to make themselves feel stronger. They are out there and you have to be prepared to deal with them if you want to free yourself of the feeling of ‘powerless’. You can always control your reaction to them, and can control what you do about them.

Join a women’s group, take some action, join some protests if they have any ‘take back the night’ or ‘take back the subway’ style marches (or get a group together and organize them yourselves!), and take some self-defense courses too. Doing this type of positive action and being with other strong women will help you to have more inner confidence should you face a bad situation in future (which I hope no one does, but statistically most women living in a city will face something like this). You are not alone and should not feel singled out and powerless. Take action and take back your space.

Or write something cool like my Gag 'zine article written around the time of the above incident, basically taking Camille Paglia to task for her twisted views on rape, and calling for women to join together in the merry killing and eating of men like these train masturbators ... all in good fun of course.

End of May, 2008 

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A refining moment for Post-Feminism

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A victory for common sense

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I’m a guy enjoying Stanley Cup hockey; enjoying beer commercials along with my beer,  cajun wings, and subsequent indigestion.  I am comfortable as a man should be with the rituals of, well, being a guy.  

Beyond that I am enthused to see a significant end-game playing out in the arena of gender politics.   Too big to tune out.  There is no escaping the intense cultural dialogue triggered by:

• The common sense backlash toward Hillary Clinton
• The expected box office triumph of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte.

Those two cultural events in such close proximity should have impact. 

Backlash Toward Clinton

“Firestorm” was the CNN packaging after her bone-headed analogy to the RFK assassination.   

The NY Post dumbed it down as: “EXCUSE FOR NOT QUITTING: HEY, RFK GOT SHOT IN JUNE!” 

Michael Goodwin of the NY Daily News:

“We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way.”

Lets just be clear about this.  The dark soul thing is way over the top.  She is not an embodiment of shocking evil here, people, come on! 

Her actual meaning is being reported, but that part gets buried in a small paragraph well inside the coverage.  As the cooler talking heads prevailed, eventually, you could almost hear the punditry-at-large heave a collective sigh of relief.   No, she didn't mean it that way.  Yes, its finally over folks.  More than a newsy gaffe, the talking heads could finally hold up an event incendiary enough to invoke real closure.

Even CNNs Candy Crowly came in on her day off to add commentary (I’m referring to friendly banter on AC-360, it’s a stretch).

What first opened my eyes, however, was Camille Paglia.

• NY Times front page: Hillary's RFK assassination remark sparks uproar. Discusses it further in the Caucus. NY Times's editorial slams her, particularly her "tedious non-apology apology" (recall that NYT endorsed her).
  • WaPo also puts RFK assassination remark on front page (although with a headline that implies she said "sorry" when she said no such thing), here in this essay, and in Cillizza's The Fix.
  • Here's the Dallas Morning News's reaction.
  • The Houston Chronicle weighs in with perceptive analysis of the primary time line that Hillary claims was the basis of her bizarre "historical reference."
  • CQ Politics thinks she just ruined her VP chances.
  • Time, which had interviewed her earlier when she made a prior reference to RFK's assassination, is very critical (headline refers to it as her "bizarre" comment) and points out she's factually incorrect about her larger argument about the time line of this primary compared to her husband's 1992 race.
  • Here's Newsweek's Romano accepting Hillary's explanation and speculating Obama's team will be less than gracious and forgiving. Newsday checks in with Democratic insiders, who share that this was very harmful to whatever chances Hillary had.
  • For some, this is the last straw. Here's a "scream" for Hillary to get out now.
  • Similarly, NY Daily News's Michael Goodwin calls it a "sick", "disgusting" and a "colossal blunder" and indeed, "the last straw." His money quote: "We have seen the X-Ray of a very dark soul."
• McCain campaign's so-called release of Cindy McCain's tax return was a "symbolic but hollow gesture." It only included a 2 page summary of her 2006 return. That's it - no explanation of how she earned her money.
• AP's Nedra Pickler profiles Team O.
• Camille Paglia says Hillary is doing feminism no favors.
• All three of Virginia's statewide Democrats are hot commodities as potential Veep: former governor and current senate candidate, Mark Warner, current Governor Tim Kaine, and Senator Jim Webb. Positives include fact that the state has become increasingly "purple" and could go blue this year with the right ticket, which would help Obama's electoral math enormously, and the fact that all three politicians are refreshingly "transformative" Democrats with compelling life stories who could complement Obama's message of change and his rejection of old style politics.
• Howard Kurtz reviews HBO's Recount.
• Bush plans to continue to fund raise for McCain.
• McCain campaign denied access to his medical records not just to NY Times political reporters, but also to the NY Times's well regarded medical reporter, and he's not happy about it.

"It's what Hillary's campaigning has come to: a monotonous exercise in showboating solipsism..."

Also mentioned: Simone de Beauvoir, Shirley Maclaine, Vince Foster, many past Clinton sins, David Koresh, Gloria Steinem's goddaughter, "Robocop," Tracy Lord...

by Ann Althouse

See Also: Should You Bother To Get A Liberal Arts Education? Allan Bloom, Camille Paglia and Anthony Kronman

She has written for most English newspapers in some way, shape or form over the last 30 years.

And in 2003, Burchill was ranked number 85 in Channel 4's poll of the 100 Worst Britons, and not without justification.

Once a trenchant atheist punk, she is now into theology; and her journalism is just as fickle and capricious, but always delivered with the trenchant fervour of a religious fanatic.

Variously claiming to be a leftist or anarchist, and a proud member of the working class and "chav" elite, she has often revelled in confounding the left-wing, middle class press by being apparently reactionary and belligerent, especially during her stint at the Mail on Sunday during the 1980s.

But it is hard to tell whether Burchill is primarily an iconoclast or just a journeyman reporter, willing to write any old guff. I suspsect the latter, and when she left the Guardian in 2007, she left similar feelings of irritation and wonderment in her wake.

Stephen Brook wrote on June 1, 2007:

"No one could agree with everything she said. But there was a delight in encountering her thoughtful opinions, strongly held. And vitriolically delivered, of course, which only added to the sense of weekly occasion when reading one of her columns."

However I also agreed with the sentiments of American feminist Camille Paglia about Burchill's childishness, hypocrisy and lack of verve, which she made in 1993:

"[Your writing]  contains a shadowy, tragic - or should I say pathetic - history of your life, your grim obsessiveness about your body image and what were pretty clearly some early sexual encounters with men, where your credulity or failures of judgement got you into situations that left permanent marks on you...

"Your flip, cliched locutions, braying rhetoric, and meandering incoherences are those of a college or even high school student...You think yourself madly clever, but I'm afraid you enfant terrible personality is a bit tattered...

"A friend of mine calls a style like yours -which we have seen a thousand examples of- 'alcoholic prose'. There is a heavy, grinding ponderousness pull on the sinking syntax, a noisy blathering sound, a bitter, maudlin self pity breaking through the false bravado and cynical posturing... It is palpably 30 years out of date."

Chief among Burchill's Crimes were her formless, meandering discourses in the Guardian Magazine before 2007.

In her farewell column that year, her longest paragraph filled 17 lines on a web page, and God knows how many in print. And I cannot even begin to tell you what it was about.

And in a 2004 comment for The Times, she even wrote a fawning retrospective of the Thatcher years, dripping with power-envy and her disgust for men.

But all-in-all, her columns make compelling, unputdownable reading, largely because of her unpredictability and unreasonable turns of argument.

I read her columns with the kind of grim fascination that accompanies traffic accidents and always felt less clean for doing so.

Her contradictions, she would inevitably claim, are all in sync with her punkish, confrontational zeal. 

I reckon she is just a crap and sanctimonious hack who has found a shtick that works.

Männer sind sowohl dümmer als auch schlauer als Frauen. Frauen dagegen „bewegen sich eher um den Durchschnitt“, wie es die britische Psychologin Helena Cronin von der London School of Economics formuliert – und das, meint die Expertin, könnte auch Licht auf die Frage werfen, weshalb Frauen bis heute so selten in den Spitzenpositionen der Gesellschaft anzutreffen sind. Denn natürlich sind auch Spitzenpositionen Extreme.

Lange Zeit hat man diesen Erklärungsansatz totgeschwiegen, nicht zuletzt aus politischer Korrektheit. Doch gibt es inzwischen so viele Hinweise, die für die „Extremhypothese“ sprechen, dass mehr und mehr Psychologen – oft Psychologinnen – sich hervorwagen.

Wie zum Beispiel die kanadische Entwicklungspsychologin Susan Pinker mit ihrem soeben erschienenen Buch „The Sexual Paradox“ (Scribner 2008). Schon im Kindesalter, führt Pinker in ihrem Buch aus, lasse sich das Phänomen der Extreme beobachten. ... Jungs sind in so gut wie jeder Hinsicht anfälliger ... So leiden sie mit großem Abstand häufiger unter Lernproblemen, Hyperaktivität, Sprachstörungen, Autismus, bis hin zu verschiedenen Formen von geistiger Behinderung. ...

Und die Mädchen? Sie sind die besseren Schülerinnen, im Schnitt auch die besseren Studentinnen. Sogar im Berufsleben haben sie, entgegen dem Vorurteil, nicht selten eine steilere Karriere vor sich: In etwa der Hälfte der weltweiten Top-Unternehmen („Fortune 500“), so eine Studie aus dem Jahr 2006, waren es nicht die Männer, sondern die Frauen, die schneller und häufiger in eine leitende Position befördert wurden. Nur ganz oben, in der Chefetage, kann man die Frauen immer noch an einer Hand abzählen. So haben lediglich acht der 500 umsatzstärksten Firmen eine Frau an der Spitze.

Man spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von einer „gläsernen Decke“, die Frauen davon abhält, bis nach ganz oben vorzudringen. Und die herkömmliche Erklärung für die gläserne Decke lautet: Männer versperren den Frauen bewusst und gezielt den Zugang zu diesen Positionen. Obwohl kaum jemand bestreitet, dass darin ein Kern von Wahrheit liegt, bleibt eines an dieser Erklärung rätselhaft: In der Schule halten die Jungs die Mädchen keineswegs davon ab, die besseren Schülerinnen zu sein. An der Uni halten die Studenten die Studentinnen nicht davon ab, besser abzuschneiden. Die Männer scheinen die Frauen zumindest in der Hälfte der globalen Spitzenunternehmen nicht davon abzuhalten, schneller in leitende Funktionen zu gelangen. Und dies alles soll sich plötzlich komplett ändern, sobald es um die Chefpositionen geht?

„Ich habe in dieser Hinsicht meine Meinung geändert“, sagt die Psychologin Cronin. Auch sie glaubt, dass hier das Phänomen der Extreme zum Vorschein kommt: „Unter Männern kann die Variation, also der Unterschied zwischen den besten und den schwächsten, enorm ausfallen. Das heißt, die Männer sind fast zwangsläufig sowohl am unteren Ende als auch an der Spitze überrepräsentiert.“ Kurz gesagt: mehr Dummköpfe – aber auch mehr Genies.

... Die US-Kulturhistorikerin Camille Paglia hat das Prinzip einmal so auf den Punkt gebracht: „Es gibt keinen weiblichen Mozart, weil es keinen weiblichen Jack the Ripper gibt.“

Dass Männer extremer sind, dafür liefern nicht nur Natur und die Geschichte etliche Belege, das hat sich auch in zahlreichen Studien offenbart, bei Intelligenzmessungen etwa. Im Schnitt schneiden Männer und Frauen in IQ-Tests ähnlich ab, was allerdings nicht weiter verwundert, da die Tests eigens so entwickelt wurden, dass sie geschlechterneutral ausfallen. Selbst bei diesen auf politische Korrektheit getrimmten Tests jedoch zeigt sich: Männer sind sowohl dümmer als auch klüger.

Die umfangreichste Messung in dieser Hinsicht stammt aus den 1930er Jahren. Damals warf ein Psychologe aus Edinburgh einen Blick auf den Intelligenzquotienten von über 80 000 schottischen Kindern. Wie sich zeigte, gab es weitaus mehr Männer als Frauen mit einem unterbelichteten IQ zwischen 60 und 90. Die Mädchen kreisten stärker um den Durchschnitt von 95 bis 115 Punkten. Erst ab einem IQ von 120 (ab 130 spricht man von „Hochbegabung“) übertrafen die Jungs die Mädchen wieder. Im Schnitt allerdings kamen die Mädchen und Jungs auf den exakt gleichen IQ von 103.

Der Schnitt aber ist nicht unbedingt das, was in unserer Gesellschaft den Ausschlag gibt, schon gar nicht in den Extrembereichen. „Wir fokussieren in der Diskussion oft auf den Durchschnitt und ignorieren die Extreme, und so erscheinen uns die Unterschiede zwischen Mann und Frau klein“, sagt Cronin. Jeder Unterschied an der Spitze muss uns somit zutiefst ungerecht vorkommen. Dabei spiegelt die gläserne Decke, wie Cronin meint, letztlich vielleicht kein politisches Phänomen wider, sondern ein statistisches.