Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Camille Paglia

I've been reading some of her recently. I don't agree with a lot of her views, but I do believe in her brand of feminism. In that- toughness, no special treatment, being able to do as much as a man, as good, with no "handicap" treatment. There should be no allowances in the workplace for soccer games, sick kids, etc.- a feminist woman should want to be, and should be, held to the same standard as the most accomplished man. And Paglia celebrates and promotes anything that rebels against society, the "norm," with some type of existential protest against our biological destiny-to the extent it can be done. Of course, any of that is simply THAT person's biological (genetic) aberration, or environmental conditioning, etc. But still, to be different, and unabashed about it - she admires that. Keeping the "wild" wild- not white-washing it, not making gay couples into "Leave it to Beaver,"...like, what happened to celebrating your deviation, your differentness, your refusal to conform to society, and even to rebel against humanity's own biological fate? Simply not having children is a huge protest. As a general rule, people who are interested in ideas and have a certain level of intelligence and curiosity become non-conformist automatically. Because it wakes you up to the fact about how our social mores are mostly biological programming, much of which is vestigial, and not applicable today- so people can, to some extent, quit being slaves to their biology. Even though they cannot escape it altogether, they can figure it out, many times, and then develop technology, medicine, etc., to get AROUND that biological dictate. I guess this post has two different lines of thought- but I hadn't written in awhile so I kind of got off on a tangent. :)

2 comments:

  1. "what happened to celebrating your deviation?"
    great question...that's what I told Jeffrey Dahmer - he really needed a little more celebration of his deviation. that's what's so great about John Wayne Gacy- i mean, he was a clown...he GOT it.

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  2. So are you saying that only mass murderers are social deviants? How about Jesus? I mean, a 30-something Jewish man, unmarried, with a group of, dare I say, social deviants, like Matthew the tax collector, hanging around with him, or Mary the prostitute...or Samaritans...

    So easy to boil things down to black and white- John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer = social deviance and everyone knows that they were horrible killers, so therefore everyone who is a social deviant is a horrible person. Something wrong with that premise...

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