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The Provocations of Camille Paglia

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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#121

Post by jtbayly »

danharaj wrote: post #97
not_a_terf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the Reimer story support a naive version of biological sex moreso than an acceptance of gender identity?

It supports believing people about what their gender identity is instead of imposing it on them. The rate of attempted suicide in transgender people is over 40% if they are not socially supported. That rate drops to general population levels in trans people who have familial and community support when transitioning.

There is almost no scientific evidence for the idea that complete support will prevent adverse outcomes for this group.

Long-term the evidence is the opposite. Claiming that the difference between long and short-term outcomes is explained by the difference between support levels is not science. It is guessing.

"One hypothesis, the social stress model—which posits that stigma, prejudice, and discrimination are the primary causes of higher rates of poor mental health outcomes for these subpopulations—is frequently cited as a way to explain this disparity. While non-heterosexual and transgender individu- als are often subject to social stressors and discrimination, science has not shown that these factors alone account for the entirety, or even a major- ity, of the health disparity between non-heterosexual and transgender subpopulations and the general population. There is a need for extensive research in this area to test the social stress hypothesis and other poten- tial explanations for the health disparities, and to help identify ways of addressing the health concerns present in these subpopulations." https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20160819_TNA50Sexualit...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#122

Post by tryitnow »

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.

No she's not. She's not a serious academic and nobody who studies Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault would take her seriously. She's a propagandist and entertainer. She's not even a popularizer of complex ideas because I honestly think she either doesn't understand the thinkers she critiques or she does understand them but decides to score cheap points by attacking straw man arguments.

If you want an easy way to engage with the ideas these French thinkers put forward I highly suggest listening to Stephen West's "Philosophize This" podcast. He not only covers "French Philosophers" but much of Western philosophy and does so in a pretty accessible and relatively unbiased manner.

The "Introducing" series of books can also be a good resource for understanding complex thinkers: https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Foucault-Graphic-Chris-Ho...

Although honestly, it's just as important to understand other thinkers in the Western philosophy tradition to grasp where thinkers are coming from.

Having said all that, yes, there are many people in American academia whose understanding of these thinkers is just as bad if not worse than Paglia's and these folks give academic study of French philosophy a bad name. Paglia has built a career of attacking people like these, not by holding them to higher standards but by merely sinking to their level and engaging in simple-minded, yet entertaining, polemics.

But it's always going to the be the case that poor thinkers abound. There's also a lot of very poor thinkers in CS, physics and other so-called "hard science" fields. It's just that they're a lot easier to ignore because they're so boring.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#123

Post by homonculus1 »

jolux wrote: post #105

Paglia is one of those conservatives who is incredibly transphobic and hides it behind the facade of being a “provocateur.” She has defended the completely absurd belief (in this case, proposed by Sheila Jeffries) that cross-gender hormone therapy is a conspiracy by big pharma to get trans people taking hormones for life, among other things: “In it she [Jeffries] argues among other things, that the pharmaceutical ind…

Paglia is also trans...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#124

Post by pnw_hazor »

blackpowder12 wrote: post #119
stronglikedan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the guy on the left is doing a pseudo white nationalist symbol (even though again, I’ve heard it’s not, but sometimes yes? No, it's not now, and never was. It's always been the "OK" symbol, and always will be (as in, "Everything's okay over here!"). That was just some pathetic campaign from the left to get someone in trouble that merely disagreed with the "agenda".

Relevant article. The plausible deniability of the gesture seems to be part of its appeal to 4chan and Proud Boy trolls. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/18/ok-sign-white...

Pretty sure the appeal is the outrage it triggers.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#125

Post by faissaloo »

jolux wrote: post #105

Paglia is one of those conservatives who is incredibly transphobic and hides it behind the facade of being a “provocateur.” She has defended the completely absurd belief (in this case, proposed by Sheila Jeffries) that cross-gender hormone therapy is a conspiracy by big pharma to get trans people taking hormones for life, among other things: “In it she [Jeffries] argues among other things, that the pharmaceutical ind…

Oh I don't think she hides it, it's readily apparent. I don't really think there's anything wrong with it.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#126

Post by stallmanite »

blackpowder12 wrote: post #119
stronglikedan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the guy on the left is doing a pseudo white nationalist symbol (even though again, I’ve heard it’s not, but sometimes yes? No, it's not now, and never was. It's always been the "OK" symbol, and always will be (as in, "Everything's okay over here!"). That was just some pathetic campaign from the left to get someone in trouble that merely disagreed with the "agenda".

Relevant article. The plausible deniability of the gesture seems to be part of its appeal to 4chan and Proud Boy trolls. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/18/ok-sign-white...

Ok so us normies out here who use the ok gesture and have no idea about the stupid 4 chan meme are going to be considered white nationalists now? Seems like a good way to make a problem where there isn't one.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#127

Post by whowhatwhy »

wickedsickeune wrote: post #48
macspoofing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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. Because I'm really interested in this and have been unable to find something convincing, could you point me towards any such studies?

Check out the book "Economic Facts and Fallacies" by Thomas Sowell, it has about 30 pages of references, and he provides books and studies.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#128

Post by soudiere »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #107
jboynyc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem... Do you know about Anne Fasto-Sterling or Donna Haraway? They are both highly credentialed biologists and pivotal figures in the development of women's/gender studies.

In what sense is Donna Haraway a "highly credentialed biologist"?

Haraway has a PhD in Biology from Yale.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#129

Post by not_a_terf »

sterlind wrote: post #56
rvn1045 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not that familiar with her work. But my understanding is that when disciplines like gender studies were being formed they completely ignored biology and nature.in fact there were no biologists in the gender studies departments. And she was one of the first people to suggest that we must study gender with a basis in biology. This is what she may be referencing in the passage you quoted.

Gender studies did indeed start out this way, dismissive of notions of "biological sex," until the case of David Reimer threw a bucket of cold water on those second-wave feminist theories. David was the victim of a botched circumcision as an infant. His doctors decided to turn an outie into an innie, constructed a vagina, and told his parents to raise him as a woman. He was given "vitamin" pills (actually estrogen) a…

> or deceased, good riddance Janice Raymond

Did Janice Raymond pass away? Did you mean Mary Daly?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#130

Post by camelNotation »

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…

It seems fairly self-explanatory. Sex didn't evolve independently of the rest of humanity and evolution occurs at the level of the organism as well as at the level of the social group (religion, culture, hierarchies, etc). You can't break sex away from the rest of evolution and assume it has no impact on the rest of what and who we are or that what and who we are had no direct impact on the evolution of sex differences. It's not obscure or vague, it's obvious.

Now it may not be USEFUL to make that observation, but it certainly contradicts the manner in which many activist social scientists construe notions of sex and gender with unfalsifiable claims.

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