This is my first time reading Camille Paglia - and it is an intensely emotional experience.

I don't know whether to take certain of her proclamations about the nature of the sexes at face value ... but if I am to take them that way,

then she strikes me as profoundly, tragically misogynistic.

She decries the possibility that women are capable of the sort of sadistic actions/ impulses detailed in Sade -- but reading her depiction

of female nature as fundamentally passive, solipsistic, vegetable roused some seriously violent inclinations in me ...

rouses, still.

It seems like the sum of her theorizing serves to point toward and oncoming appropriation of "male" abstractions by female brains ...

and ... a retaliative turning of the tides a la her ideas about how the western eye arose from male attempts to rival female generative

capability with creative intellect.

Still. Reading her is a shock to my liberal/ radically feminist sensibilities.

an oncoming*

Although.

Honestly?

I can understand how a woman like Paglia could come to such a bleak outlook toward women. And I also understand that she'd slant my

interpretation of her outlook upon women as 'bleak' as a product of my acceptance of 'masculine' modes of thought - moralizing, heirarchal.

hierarchal*

But yeah, understanding comes from the fact that it isn't really a stretch to call the western social paradigm (hell, all social par'masculi

paradigms) masculine*

Lol I shouldn't plurk on my phone - especially when angry! I type poorly and spell poorly and generally articulate things poorly when angry!

Um. Sometimes?

This reading is certainly good /practice/ for Near characterization - trying to remain objective despite srs emotional reactions to things!

No, I don't.

XD female Near! /swoon! Any excuse to devour feminist lit is good! But no, wasn't me xD.

I can understand how a woman as brilliant as Paglia might come to embrace the 'masculine' -- because females haven't produced a praiseworthy

canon of ... anything. Also OMG I WANT TO READ THIS FIC

anything aside from progeny, that is ...

I ... don't know how to think or feel about Paglia, because my entire mind rebels against her association of aggressive cognitive ordering

with the male brain/ 'masculine' experience -- and everything else in me rebels against her association of the intellectually creative with

the masculine, but ...

where are the female Mozarts? Sades? Rippers? What have women truly done, what have we contributed to history? Where have we been? In back

rooms sucking pricks, placating egos and popping out offspring?

Yea, that's where we've been.

I'm being melodramatic. But. Point is, I can understand a certain amount of misogyny, in a woman. I can understand the desire to identify

with those aspects of our society that have been typically produced by men. (Thanks bunches, btw!!!)

But I can't endorse the assertion that aggression and violent impulses - be they conceptual or physical - are male phenomena. A-and I

Sometimes get the feel that Paglia is making that assertion.

Frankly, though, it's ridiculous oversimplification of animal aggression of ANY kind -- to call it 'masculine'. That vulgarizes and

pigeonholes a survival impulse common to all creatures -- EVEN when the designation 'masculine' is ... utilitarian?

Words aren't serving me right now, lol.

I should say, though, that I think Paglia's scope and ambition Nd audacity are absolutely fab and brilliant and admirable!

and*

The aspects of her writing that reference gender personae as opposed to sex issues are stunning and insightful.

And her theories make sense, despite my visceral reaction to them.

And I know many will argue that we have has female Mozarts, etc -- but they've simply been repressed by male hierarchies blah di blah. This

had* female prodigies, virtuosos*

a possibility! But our extended histories of female subordination to male authority threaten to imply something unseemly about female

nature, too.

So ... I understand Paglia's dismissal of the probability of cloistered female ability, sort of.

OF THE SIGNIFICANCE of that probability, that is.

I am tired. And depressed. Has anyone else read Paglia? Been incensed by her? Care to cheer me up with well reasoned refutations/ discussion

?

Also maybe the amalgamation of Mozart, Sade and Jaxk the Ripper sounds like a weird one, but the point is that Paglia theorizes thing-making

Jack*

(via actual craft or by conceptualization of what we see) is a violent, divisive, aggressive act.

SIGH the more I ramble the less coherent I sound. I need time to rest/ digest this material! So. I'll be on later, feel free to leave

commentary in the mean time if you want. <3

Before I go I should also say that if I wS any more inclined toward Paglia-style brazenness, I'd say she's an idiot who has internalized

sexist bullshit and is using it to glorify male dominance. She obvs identifies more with her androgynous personae than feminine -- but she

naively conflates feminine with female and confuses 'chthonian' aggressive impetus with masculinity.

But I am of a temperate mind, lololol, so I'll not officially say that! Instead, I'll say -- she's fun for contemplating!

(masculinity, which she aligns with the apollonian, not the chthonian/dionysian, which are feminine, for her)

anyway, sleeping now before this plurk turns into word soup!

ONE MORE comment, so I'll not forget.

Paglia is very heavily and obviously Freud-fluenced.

Her basic premise is that sex controls all! and that human cognition as we know it arose from male rebellion against the secret

procreative power of women, and the social power that entailed. Paternity wasn't ... Invented yet, pregnancy was mysterious and no one knew

dicks played a part. Anyway, Paglia claims human nature is derived from sexual nature in more ways than one.

Because women were self contained and inherently 'creative' and couldn't see out genitals, she posits, we are destined to a penchant for

our* were?*

solipsism and self-satisfaction. Men, however, were always driven outward, away from the self -- and, lol, because they could see their

penises, away from the body. They had no pregnancy to give purpose, thus sought purpose through other means ...

I am too sleepy for this point! Lol. Losing it in translation. Will continue later xD

Also that fic totally inspired me to write a sex/genderswap FIC in which Near has won ...