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Wombaticus Rex » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:07 pm wrote:Fellow Vermonter Dave Littendorf's recent rant about Naomi Wolf being an NSA agent got me thinking, thinking about some thinkings I've thunk before.
See, back when Naomi Klein was getting mixed up with Naomi Wolf, I was lamenting the fact that Wolf's book on "Disaster Capitalism," while flawed, strident and one-sided, was still an extremely important argument ... and one that looked even better compared with the tome that Naomi Wolf was touring in support of, The End of America. In fact, having been subjected to Wolf's documentary effort of the same name, I was struck by the fact she was doing a very partisan paint-by-numbers pastiche of pretty much everyone else who was already on the scene, saying the same shit, only better. (And for a long time prior to 2007. Naomi Klein among them.)
Anyways, I casually brought this up to an academic friend, and to my surprise, she jumped onboard and provided me with another datapoint: her own conspiracy theory that Naomi Wolf was a CIA "cultural asset" who was put into play to counteract Camille Paglia. She discussed this at some length, brought up a lot of fishy stuff I've long since forgotten, and impressed me with how fleshed out and considered her presentation was.So, being reminded of both this week, I perused her biography and found my first data point: [b]Naomi Wolf published "acclaimed" and heavily promoted books in two fields: 1) Feminism, where her 1991 book "The Beauty Myth" presented a toned-down and photogenic counterpoint to Camille Paglia's ambitious and political 1991 book, "Sexual Personnae"
Camille Paglia was, herself, very photogenic (as well as very telegenic) and got about ten times the MSM play that Wolf got, as well as at least that much more intellectual respect, which even I'd say she deserves in a straight-up comparison. (Can't stand either of them, never could.) So there's that.
But besides....Well. It might just be me. But I can't actually remember any of Naomi Wolf's books even having a cultural impact, to speak of. (The Beauty Myth made a big splash, but the ideas in it didn't, particularly. I mean, they weren't new ideas.) Whereas Paglia's work very definitely did. And still does. She's like a conversion experience, practically.
Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jun 18, 2013 9:59 am wrote:
Appreciate the stroll down memory lane. This Naomi Wolf is clearly a more subtle & sophisticated operator than we feared!
Camille Paglia wrote:You know what gets me sick and tired? The battered-woman motif. It’s so misrepresented, the way we have to constantly look at it in terms of male oppression and tyranny, and female victimization. When, in fact, everyone knows throughout the history of the world that many of these working-class relationships where women get beat up have hot sex. They ask why won’t she leave him? Maybe she won’t leave him because the sex is very hot.
Camille Paglia wrote:Woman's flirtatious arts of self-concealment mean man's approach must take the form of rape.
Camille Paglia wrote:Male tumescence is an assertion of the separateness of objects. An erection is architectural, sky-pointing. Female tumescence, through blood or water, is slow, gravitational, amorphous. In the war for human identity, male tumescence is an instrument, female tumescence an obstruction. The fatty female body is a sponge. At peak menstrual and natal moments, it is locked passively in place, suffering wave after wave of Dionysian power.
compared2what? » 18 Jun 2013 09:43 wrote:Camille Paglia wrote:Male tumescence is an assertion of the separateness of objects. An erection is architectural, sky-pointing. Female tumescence, through blood or water, is slow, gravitational, amorphous. In the war for human identity, male tumescence is an instrument, female tumescence an obstruction. The fatty female body is a sponge. At peak menstrual and natal moments, it is locked passively in place, suffering wave after wave of Dionysian power.
...I generally either authentically disagree with her or authentically have no idea wtf she's saying.
Seriously. How does that last sentence of the last quote make sense as thought? Or as anything but a very fancily worded "Ew, gross" with a shout-out to Dionysian power tacked onto the end of it?
Project Willow » Tue Jun 18, 2013 1:54 pm wrote:
A reiteration of the female as victim/vehicle of man's and nature's furry. That's how I read it anyway, out of context. Dis-empoweringly Despicable. Paglia strikes me as another intellectual who's escaped into a world of disembodied thought in defense against the more unruly aspects of being human, selectively of course. The head-heart balance is off, as is a measure of self-consciousness. Perhaps what all those quotes boil down to is that she likes rough sex, or suspects most women do. (Oh, shame on me.)
compared2what? » 18 Jun 2013 11:38 wrote:
ON EDIT: It was also a real question, fwiw. Because I actually don't know wtf she's saying there. I mean, is she talking about cramps? Makes no sense.
Project Willow » Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:09 pm wrote:compared2what? » 18 Jun 2013 11:38 wrote:
ON EDIT: It was also a real question, fwiw. Because I actually don't know wtf she's saying there. I mean, is she talking about cramps? Makes no sense.
Maybe she's referring to the fact that women don't have conscious control of the contractions of the uterus and cervix, but it's not like men don't ever feel or express a sense of helplessness in regards to their own urges, whatever the physical differences.
compared2what? » Tue Jun 18, 2013 1:14 pm wrote:Never occurred to me before, for some reason. But both Wolf and Paglia were mentored by Harold Bloom at Yale. And each, in her own way, seems never to have gotten over it. FWIW.
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