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The Provocations of Camille Paglia

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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#31

Post by jplayer01 »

cygx wrote: post #28
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes you can: men have testosterone, so they're more aggressive, which turns out to translate to asking for more pay raises more often and changing jobs more quickly if unhappy with their pay. Hey presto, a biological basis for unequal pay. Now obviously this doesn't explain everything about unequal pay -- but it would be foolish to ignore entirely, no?

Nurture can trump nature, though: There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. As is often the case, it's not simply either/or.

Okay, what does this have to do with what she said?

> We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.

She's not saying that biology is the sole factor that determines how we behave. She's saying that we need to understand it and integrate it into our understanding of cultural, psychological, sociological artifacts. Or more importantly, we can't understand them without taking into account biology. I don't see anything wrong here.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#32

Post by cygx »

jplayer01 wrote: post #31
cygx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nurture can trump nature, though: There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. As is often the case, it's not simply either/or.

Okay, what does this have to do with what she said? > We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man. She's not saying that biology is the sole factor that determines how we behave. She's saying that we need to understand it and integrate it into our understanding of cultural, psychological, sociological artifacts. Or more…

Nothing wrong with it as long as you avoid the traps of naive essentialism or fallacious appeals to nature.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#33

Post by jplayer01 »

cygx wrote: post #32
jplayer01 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, what does this have to do with what she said? > We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man. She's not saying that biology is the sole factor that determines how we behave. She's saying that we need to understand it and integrate it into our understanding of cultural, psychological, sociological artifacts. Or more…

Nothing wrong with it as long as you avoid the traps of naive essentialism or fallacious appeals to nature.

None of which she does.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#34

Post by wtdata »

grey-area wrote: post #14

Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…

> What does this really mean? Does it mean anything?

She means that human consciousness is born from our actions towards nature since before we were conscious and that we cannot detach morality from that. Furthermore, we can't hope to define sex and gender, before understanding the roots of morality since they are defined by our primeval nature, not by society rules born out of conscious thought.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#35

Post by peignoir »

I recommend reading fools fraud and firebands on the matter by Roger Scruton as long as Taleb on the dictatorship of the minority https://link.medium.com/P6JRZtgtuZ

I’m deeply worried about the evolution of the universities it looks more and more like a cult is taking over instead of science debate and rationalism over emotions...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#36

Post by sprafa »

Peterson lost a lot of credibility for me when he took a group selfie with some guys with a big Pepe The Frog flag. I mean it’s kind of funny but 90% of the Pepe memes are actually racist and horrible (from what I’ve seen). After that I couldn’t take his alt-right denialism very seriously.

It’s a shame because I actually think some of his talks are quite good.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#37

Post by thinkingemote »

erokar wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #5

“These minor French theorists have had a disastrous effect on American education. Lacan encourages pompous bombast and Foucault teaches cheap cynicism, while Derrida’s aggressive method, called deconstruction, systematically trashes high culture by reducing everything to language and then making language destroy itself.” She's right, but it really upsets many academics for someone to say that. Good.

I think her analysis is wrong in that regard. American puritanism is more to blame. French universities do not suffer from the current campus hysteria.

I think having free education (e.g. in some EU) makes students appreciate their education. Education is a privilege and something to be earned for many. The universities have more power over the student life as they know best.

Having students pay for everything (e.g in US) makes their education into a product and they are the consumer. Students can then demand to have certain conditions met. The consumer knows best, is king.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#38

Post by Hitton »

pjc50 wrote: post #23
grey-area wrote: post #14

Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…

Camille Paglia is also a global warming denier, which is the sort of error that should give you cause to not only doubt everything she says but to use her as a contrarian indicator.

Many great minds are in some way flawed, the thing that makes them great thinkers able to come up with revolutionary ideas probably makes them more susceptible to crackpottery.

Examples: Linus Pauling, Peter Duesberg, William Herschel, Isaac Newton, Fred Hoyle, Lynn Margulis

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#40

Post by macspoofing »

pjc50 wrote: post #24

But that's assuming the conclusion! The whole point of gender studies is the idea that biology is not destiny, especially in social interaction. The roles we play and the relationships we have with each other aren't a mere clockwork expression of our chromosomes. They are far more memetic instead. You can't point to a spot on the Y chromosome that is responsible for unequal pay. Edit: I know it's frowned on to compla…

>The whole point of gender studies is the idea that biology is not destiny

That's the whole point? Because I think this is the sentiment of pretty much every rational person, and heck, every non-rational person. Nobody argues biology is destiny. Even the most stringent materialists won't argue that physics or chemistry or biology is the best way to understand interactions between people. This is why biologists don't necessarily make good therapists. That doesn't mean humans are complete free agents that can violate laws of physics and chemistry and whose biology plays no part in their development and behaviour.

>You can't point to a spot on the Y chromosome that is responsible for unequal pay.

No. But we can do in depth economic analysis. And in fact, we can explain unequal pay quite well, and it has very little to do with discrimination. On the other hand, can gender studies explain unequal pay, or can it only provide an unsupported, a priori, ideological-based conclusion? I suspect the latter is closer to the truth.

Gender studies doesn't strike me as an area of scholarship that is self-critical, self-reflective, and scientifically rigorous. And yet, it is perfectly fine with making overarching conclusions about complex, chaotic systems.

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