Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia

"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts."
- Camille Paglia

     Remember that friend of yours from the Eighties? The one with the $500-a-day cocaine habit? Remember how he'd call you at 3 am and - without pausing to take a breath - would talk non-stop for two hours about an idea that popped into his head three-quarters of the way through his first line? The idea would appear in the first few seconds of your friend's rant, but then the engineer of his train-of-thought would suffer a mysterious heart attack. "We could start our own radio station - yeah, we could get the parts from one of those weird electronics catalogs - the kind that my cousin, Jimmy, gets in the mail - have I ever told you about Jimmy? - he used to collect stuffed fish - no shit - stuffed fish - used to have a whole room full of 'em - of course that was before the fire - have I ever told you about the fire - freaky shit, dude - the fire started in one of the fish …"

     Well, a few years back, when I first read Sexual Personae I immediately thought of that friend. Re-reading it, I now realize that I was a little of the mark. Instead of one person on coke, Sexual Personae reads more like a group of six or seven highly intelligent people all trying to talk at once…on coke…at 3 am. Believe it or not, this is actually a good thing.

    Most intellectuals speak (and write) in a horribly slow and deliberate manner. Where's the fun in that? This is why most little kids want to grow up to be fireman and not Sociologists. Thinking should be fun, (I'd like that carved on my tombstone, by the way.) and Paglia turns the question about who we are and how we got to be that way into a fireworks display…on coke…at 3 am.

"There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper."
- Camille Paglia

     OK, now you how she says it - but what does she say? Well, for 700 pages Paglia mixes Freud, Darwin, Catholicism, Homer, the Mummers, and a cast of thousand to produce the following theory (most of which I happen to agree with, so pay attention):

Men fear women because women represent nature (women's lives are dominated by natural cycles) that's why men (who, because of the way they piss, extend themselves into other territory) invented "sky" or "head" magic (Greek Gods, Christianity) to combat female "Earth" or "body" magic (early "Mother" cults). This has resulted in a battle between the Apollonian (logical, male thinking) and the Dionysian ("chthonian", pagan, female thinking). The only society were these two ideologies coincided peacefully was Ancient Egypt ("Head" magic represented by the Egyptians' use of geometry to build the pyramids. "Earth" magic represented by Egypt's dependency on the annual flooding of the Nile.) That's why Egyptian Gods are a mixture of human and animal. Except for Bastet (Real life example - worshipped by my wife) who looks like a cat. Egyptians elevated the cat to God status because they appreciated its chthonian nature. The cat was too illogical a creature for the Ancient Greeks to venerate (They liked horses. A good, logical, useful animal). The Ancient Greeks early fascination with the logical, sober God, Apollo battled with their latter fascination with the wild, drunken God, Dionysus (Real life example - worshipped by us). Christianity originally attempted to wipe out female "Earth" magic (The Bible contains a prohibition against Homosexuality but not Lesbianism presumably because "mother" cults often had transvestite priest - The Mummers are a throwback to drunken, cross-dressing, Asian "mother" cult celebrations) ended up incorporating many pagan elements (take a look at St. Lucy with her eyes on a plate) and they've been a hidden (but major) part of Western culture ever since.

     Got that?

     Of course I leaving some stuff out (like how almost all cultural achievements have been driven by Gay men and how Lesbians are just no fun at all [she must not subscribe to Cinemax. By the way, Camille is a "former lesbian".]), but that's pretty much Paglia in a nutshell - logical men struggling against instinctive women. Straight guys, you can test Dr. Paglia's theory by frightening your illogical girlfriend (Tell her there's a ghost in the basement). Straight ladies, you can test this theory by making some guy's life a living Hell.

     Marxists claim that in an equalitarian society there would be no conflicts between men and women. Paglia, correctly, calls Bullshit on that play and says that as long as there are two sexes, the conflict between male and female will always be with us. We just need to learn to make that conflict work for us. In the meantime, women will continue to complain about a male-dominated society that gave them the very logic and language they use to decry it, and men will continue to struggle against nature - a losing battle if ever there was one.
"Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself."
- Camille Paglia

"There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, 'Poor dear, it's probably PMS.' Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, 'What an asshole.' Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole."
- Molly Ivin