"The world provides infinite ways to modify the human body, he was saying, but all anyone wants are bigger breasts and bigger muscles. A debate requires a pose, a character, a strong narrative presence separate from the speaker’s well-armored sense of self. It’s a performance, not a reveal; theater, not therapy. What would Paglia say about this soft chthonic inability of four women to disagree with one another? Are we fated to meld into one sensible neoliberal? Faced with infinite choice, will we retreat to the safety of steroids and breast augmentation?"
Writes Kerry Howley, in
"Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution" (Intelligencer). Howley is reporting on a debate organized by Bari Weiss, "Has the Sexual Revolution Failed." Apparently, the debate was "banal," and the 4 participants ended up mostly agreeing with the proposition that mothers should be respected.
Camille Paglia was not one of the participants, but we're told the audience saw a video clip of her and cheered. Howley calls Paglia "a brilliant woman willing to say crazy shit." That's one way not to be banal.
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34 comments:
Nothing changed. The brain differences are the same. Except now men are no longer interested in what's a bad deal.
the 4 participants ended up mostly agreeing with the proposition that mothers should be respected.
Mostly. Four women could only “mostly” agree on that.
Now do fathers.
I laughed at "nymphcore bonnet".
The commenters are hard on Howley. Fair. She has some beautiful sentences, but what is the point of the article? She needs to be less brilliant and say more crazy shit.
Howley calls Paglia "a brilliant woman willing to say crazy shit." She ain't talking crazy - y'all just don't listen and/or don't want to accept what you've done -and I've got examples
LIKE: "The sixties’ global religious vision, inspired by fleeting contact with Hinduism and Buddhism, would broaden yet dissipate into the thousand cults of the present New Age movement,...It is a striking fact that few young African-Americans joined cults."
OR HOW ABOUT: "New Age is a marvel of Alexandrian syncretism. It is often impressionistic and soft-focus, seeking “spirituality” rather than the discipline of orthodox religion. Its followers run the gamut from harried office workers seeking stress relief through yoga and meditation to “neo-pagan” white witches rendezvousing on the moors to celebrate the summer sol- stice. Specialty shops and mail-order catalogs supply the rit- ual paraphernalia of New Age—amulets and talismans, healing crystals, angel icons, incense, candles, aromatherapy bath salts, massage rollers, table fountains, wind chimes, and recordings of trance music in Asian or Celtic moods."
AND: "New Age can clearly be seen in the Alternative Medicine movement"
OR: "Marianne Williamson, a bestselling author and inspirational speaker who first won a following in Los Angeles in the early eighties,...The three volumes of A Course in Miracles were allegedly dictated by Jesus over seven years"
THEN: "The Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, one of the main shapers of New Age thought."
FINALLY: "Too much cultural energy has been absorbed by New Age over the past twenty years to the detriment of the fine arts, which frittered away their authority in their dalliance with trendy political tag lines. Despite its appeals to the archaic, New Age is fuzzily ahistorical. It lacks an analytic edge: with its soothing promises and feel-good therapies, New Age induces a benevolent relaxation that may be disabling in the face of aggression. In a world of terrorism, New Agers can only take to the hills and leave their scriptures in jars at Esalen"
THE END: ".Science—its objectivity impugned by poststructuralism and postmodernism—is desperately needed to sort out the mystical muddle of New Age,...the result- ant New Age movement is choked with debris—with trivia, silliness, mumbo-jumbo, flimflam, and outright falsehoods."
Finger magnets? And he complains about the lack of creativity among his fellow body transformers? I could think of hundreds of more creative (and useful) transformations. How about swapping your nose with your penis? Not only do you get the Pinocchio effect, but for Trump supporters there are additional subtle pleasures that should not be understated.
"Nothing changed. The brain differences are the same. Except now men are no longer interested in what's a bad deal."
So, years ago, Russell Brand thought he had an excellent deal. He still remembers the feeling of having an excellent deal. Now though, that deal seems really awful, but he's not interested and assures us that we shouldn't be interested either.
"She has some beautiful sentences, but...She needs to be less brilliant..."
Yeah, I knew I wasn't dealing with a low-effort writer when I got to the end of the first sentence:
"The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution."
I had to look up "Dimes Square":
"The nickname originates from the restaurant Dimes located at the intersection of Canal Street and Division Street. The nickname has transitioned from a term used "jokingly" to one used "semi-seriously.""
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimes_Square
The term (for an area of Manhattan) seems to date back to August 2022.
a British ideologue
Translation: she made a lot of good points.
mostly agreeing with the proposition that mothers should be respected.
During the 2012 campaign, Democrats called Mitt Romney's wife a Nazi because she spoke out in favor of motherhood.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"So, years ago, Russell Brand thought he had an excellent deal. He still remembers the feeling of having an excellent deal. Now though, that deal seems really awful, but he's not interested and assures us that we shouldn't be interested either."
I didn't think about Russell Brand, until he became a Spiritual Guru-type, making these latest developments fit like a NewAge glove. I was wondering, when he was making some celebrity headway by schooling a Trump hater on Bill Maher's show, if his past was going to catch up with him.
He was cool until then.
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
Why magnets in the fingers? How could that question not be asked??
jim5301 with the first gratuitous Trump reference. Uggh.
Would have been a lot more interesting if Paglia had been there. And I would have paid to see it if rhhardin had been included in the debate. Somebody needs to clue them in that America today is indisputably a matriarchy constantly whining about the patriarchy.
The podcast Blocked and Reported did a bit on the Weiss debate. Both hosts attended.
Crazy shit is not a standard of debate content one should strive to achieve. One can get crazy shit on many urban streets from the schizo, drug addled gutter denizens, for free and with extra spittle at no added charge.
Crazy shit is not a standard of debate content one should strive to achieve. One can get crazy shit on many urban streets from the schizo, drug addled gutter denizens, for free and with extra spittle at no added charge.
“You’re going to give that guy a job?” he asked, and he began to shake, as if he were a mentally ill person with a tic. The Ace Theater boomed with laughter, a thousand bodies convulsing right back at him, blonde beach waves straight from the dry bar bouncing with mirth. That energy hit the stage. He kept shaking.
Sounds a lot like Tom Wolfe.
Howley calls Paglia "a brilliant woman willing to say crazy shit." That's one way not to be banal.
There was a time when Camile was frequently batshit, particularly in the pages of her seminal work (seminal is an enjoyable word here) Sexual Personae. That's a hard read, not because of complex syntax, an obscure vocabulary, or a hamfisted translation. It's because of the intermittent batshit. My copy sits on a shelf unfinished because of her occasionally outrageous commentary on historical figures whose biographies are generally uncontroversial or half-baked theorizing. It's one of those read, read, read, throw across room tomes, not unlike reading Rousseau or Nietzsche. Paglia established herself as a public intellectual when the Sexual Revolution™️ was at its zenith. Now than the nadir is in sight, growing larger in our windscreen second by second, she has revealed the batshit to be tactics rather than LSD flashbacks, as Althouse says, that's one way to not be banal.
Hippydom and the Sexual Revolution™️ (dibs on that title, btw, coming soon from Random House) are coupled like conjoined twins. One didn't spawn the other, rather both arise from a longing to be fictional -- to be trans-human if you can stomach that ludicrous conceit. The nadir is coming up fast, like the asphalt in a suicide's plunge. You can see it in a looted Nordstrom. You can hear it in the Resident's demented ramblings. You can smell it in the streets of San Fransico.
tommyesq said...
"jim5301 with the first gratuitous Trump reference. Uggh."
What did you expect?
Transpersonalism is an old thing, otherwise known as Hell.
@Quaestor, wow. Just wow.
Jeez... How did I manage to mangle "San Francisco" into whatever that typo is? For some reason, I can't see my errors in virtually anything I write until about an hour has elapsed.
Why magnets in the fingers
Tactile progression. Velcro would also be a consideration in some contexts.
I wonder if a magnet could be used to perform a late-term (six weeks) abortion through deprivation.
Paglia has evolved with a notably conservative... banal sexual personae, driving progressive feminists batshit crazy. She is still transgender/homosexual, but tolerance, not celebration, is the word.
Ms. Paglia's disappearance from the public square is a great loss. While I doubt I'd ever agreed with 50% of her opinions, I just loved reading her and listening to her speak. I don't pay attention to podcasts but, should should she be doing one I'd subscribe.
Classic first world problem. Most of the people on the planet are working their asses off just to survive, but these people don't have to worry about survival so they stress out about egotistical hedonism. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me......
"So, years ago, Russell Brand thought he had an excellent deal. He still remembers the feeling of having an excellent deal. Now though, that deal seems really awful, but he's not interested and assures us that we shouldn't be interested either."
Brand has admitted to being a massive sex addict and having sex with thousands of women. From a mathematical standpoint, it's not impossible to believe that he treated a handful of women really badly and violated them in illegal and unethical ways.
A state or process of divergence from human.
Magnets in your fingers? That's stupid, because you can't turn them on and off. Had he never seen one of those super-hero movies where the metal-man becomes trapped by giant magnets? How would you make any home repairs?
Crack Emcee
CS Lewis and Tolkien were very interested in the influence of the New Age movement which was going on in their times. Both tried to integrate it into A Christian framework because it was then as it is now so popular as an alternative religion. That Hideous Strength is the most direct attack on New Age thinking. But there are parts of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and part's of the Narnia cycle that use New Age themes. By integration I mean they aligned it with Christian morality. You weren't free to be amoral because you had magical powers. Same with Harry Potter.
I understand the part about wanting to change but not the part where clothes or tattoos or dressing as an animal is felt as real change. Anyhow, everybody gets older and that is real change. There comes a time when you have lived your life. You aren't getting ready for it or doing it through a career or raising a family or making art. You are old, meaning you've done most of anything you'll ever do. Most of it is past and unchangeable - that's real change. It's not so bad, it's life itself, but you can't explain it to the kids.
Paglia is over-rated. She should have shown better judgment than to pose in leather mounting naked black men on a magazine cover. She ruins her serious scholarship with such adolescent and tone-deaf behavior.
There are plenty of better scholars of literature and poetry. It's a shame: she's got a good mind.
wildswan makes an interesting point about Lewis and Tolkein. But there's a slippery-slope aspect to their work that Crack understands.
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