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The Provocations of Camille Paglia

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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#111

Post by Bantros »

pjc50 wrote: post #41
peignoir wrote: post #35

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...

What, this Roger Scruton, tobacco industry shill? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122192/ I'm not sure he's in a position to lecture anyone on science, let alone fraud. Or this Roger Scruton? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/apr/10/roger-scruto...

And how do those links you posted detract from the book that was being recommended?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#112

Post by jimbokun »

cdavid wrote: post #75
vixen99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And anyone who wants to know a bit more about some of these theorists might want to read 'Intellectual Impostures' by the Left-leaning physicist Alan Sokal.

Putting all the "French philosophers" in one bucket is not fair. Lacan is clearly a charlatan, Foucault, while controversial, is absolutely a deep thinker. There is some truth about their writing being too obtuse, but this is (was ?) unfortunately a requirement in some circles in Paris. Also, culturally, being pedant in French has been for a long time a sign of sophistication culturally speaking ( http://www.opencult…

> There is some truth about their writing being too obtuse, but this is (was ?) unfortunately a requirement in some circles in Paris.

In the article, that is one of the criticisms Paglia raised. That it doesn't make sense to apply the techniques of these French thinkers to non-French culture and art, when their work is so specific to French academic traditions.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#113

Post by simonh »

stronglikedan wrote: post #91
sprafa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not guilt by association. He didn’t happen to be around when they took the photo, he’s clearly enjoying having the Pepe flag in it. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vkSEmNoqhZY/maxresdefault.jpg I wasn’t going to mention it because sometimes I think it’s just 4chan trying to have a laugh by making everything appear controversial, but the guy on the left is doing a pseudo white nationalist symbol (even though again, I’v…

> 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".

It even has it's own emoji and wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#114

Post by devtul »

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…

Blockers have a negative effect on bone density and it is unknown if they affect brain development. I guess we will only really see the negative effects(if any) in a couple of decades.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#115

Post by xkapastel »

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…

> This was an early factor in third-wave feminism accepting gender identity, which is why almost all millenial and gen-Z feminists accept trans and intersex people and why TERFs tend to be older

I don't see why this story would lead anyone to accept gender identity.

I also think there are many millenials and gen-Z's who would be classified as "TERFs", and in fact would view the term as derogatory.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#116

Post by devtul »

Glide wrote: post #68
_iyig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The main thing for me was I rarely if ever see Peterson smile. Where do you usually look for his smile? In footage of high-pressure media interviews and public debates? In the photos carefully selected by the editors of whichever news sites you browse? Could be he just likes meeting fans, and is amused by a goofy cartoon frog. See also: Hong Kong protestors’ use of Pepe, and prevalence of the meme among less politic…

It’s sad to see people fall for guilt by association. In most interviews that Jordan Peterson has when he talks about meeting his fans is when he sounds the happiest. This really is what Scott Adams talks about with two movies and one screen. The interpretation of events speaks more about the interpreters rather than the actual events now.

It is funny how this can be clearly observed about the OK gesture deal. I would say most people see that as your regular OK gestures, while some see it as final proof of subscription to a particular ethnic related ideology.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#117

Post by grey-area »

FabHK wrote: post #58
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…

FWIW, I find Paglia's passage you quoted much more intelligible than Lacan or Derrida's notoriously impenetrable prose, and find it surprising and actually disingenuous that you'd accuse her of "bombast and pseudo-academic jargon" when that's a charge that can very much be laid at the feet of the postmodernists. I mean, there are literally books about it, such as Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostors (or Fashio…

I haven't read Intellectual Impostors, but suspect it is more about people like Paglia who find elaborate ways of saying nothing (or is it everything?), than about Foucault or Derrida. Indeed the authors said this themselves as someone linked lower down:

Des penseurs célèbres tels qu'Althusser, Barthes, Derrida et Foucault sont essentiellement absents de notre livre. [1]

Barthes is another quite obtuse but really wonderful writer (IMO) - who crucially has something to say. Paglia I suspect of having nothing to say I'm afraid.

Lacan I haven't read anything significant, but he does have a reputation for being obtuse and a bit of a fraud yes, so maybe the charge by her against him is accurate, though frankly Paglia should not be calling anyone else difficult or bombastic given her style. Note the person grouping these three very disparate thinkers is Paglia.

I didn't cherry-pick that quote, it's just the first para of her book. I honestly am not sure what she means by that first page of Sexual Personae (for example she doesn't define nature), and one paragraph is not enough to do her awful writing justice because it bludgeons the reader with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing, as if to bully them into submission; she flits about from pithy assertion to clever sounding reference, giving other authors an adjective and not much more, then moving on to her next thought, without any sort of research or backup for her bald gnomic assertions. Indeed her confident nonsense about the authors quoted above sums up for me her depth very well.

[1] https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmo...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#118

Post by jolux »

devtul wrote: post #114
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…

Blockers have a negative effect on bone density and it is unknown if they affect brain development. I guess we will only really see the negative effects(if any) in a couple of decades. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-...

The bone density risk is the only one that has been shown reliably, and even then it’s not enough to warrant not using them. A review of the current literature shows the evidence on brain development impact to be spotty. And here’s the Endocrine Society, saying they’re safe and effective: https://www.endocrine.org/news-room/press-release-archives/2....

The doctors treating trans children keep up to date on this literature and should definitely review risks with parents and children. I personally had to sign an informed consent form stating that I had to assume I’d become immediately and irrevocably sterile upon starting treatment, but this is widely known among trans women to not be the case. Medical science is absolutely still catching up on transgender care, but all the concern trolling about risks in popular media is unwarranted. I had several unsuccessful suicide attempts in my adolescence, and I’ve been a loyal HNer since around the age of 14. That’s the huge risk that doctors and parents understand, and doctors, being for the most part hardcore utilitarians (particularly at the research level) will gladly take the small risk of blockers over that one.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#119

Post by blackpowder12 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #91
sprafa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not guilt by association. He didn’t happen to be around when they took the photo, he’s clearly enjoying having the Pepe flag in it. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vkSEmNoqhZY/maxresdefault.jpg I wasn’t going to mention it because sometimes I think it’s just 4chan trying to have a laugh by making everything appear controversial, but the guy on the left is doing a pseudo white nationalist symbol (even though again, I’v…

> 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...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#120

Post by upvotinglurker »

philipps wrote: post #46
thinkingemote wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I had not seen this interpretation of the perceived value of education before and find it intriguing (and tentatively agree). I am surprised there aren’t more dissenting comments because it flies in the face of the free-market libertarian interpretation of value, which would argue that people do not value things that are free.

A clearer way of stating it might be not "the euro students value their education more because it's free," but "the euro students value their education more because college attendance is determined by academic status rather than ability to pay. So, they had to work hard at their studies to get into college, and must continue to perform well academically or risk being kicked out."

Whereas in the US, college attendance generally* is determined by ability to pay, and a student who can pay will almost certainly be able to find some college that will let them attend, whether they take their studies seriously ("value their education") or not.

*Of course achievement still matters if you want to get into the most selective institutions ... but I gather you can do that with (a lot) of money, too.

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