Camille Paglia's online adviceA S K C A M I L L E
for the culturally disgruntled
Camille Paglia's online adviceA S K C A M I L L E
Illustration by Zach Trenholm
POLITICALLY INCORRECT DESIRES
My friend James and I have slept with about 50 different women each over 10 years, and after a particularly in-depth heart-to-heart, we realized that no matter how successful, strong, rich, poor, extro/introverted, religious/not our generally white, college-educated 20- to 30-something girlfriends were, after a couple of romps, the truth always comes out: "Will you hold-me-down/tie-me-up, dominate me and call me a whore, etc." whisper they. What is it about our culture that has given these young women such homogenous fantasy lives? James and I are always pleased to oblige — it's only polite, and fun, too. But it's starting to worry us. Could it be our taste in women, or are their darker cultural forces at work? A case of "X-Files" or just file under X? Enlighten us, oh wise and all-knowing high priestess of modern culture, seer of the mystery that is female. Signed,
Dear tuned in but freaked out, You have zeroed in on one of the principal sexual conundrums facing the modern liberated woman. My brand of equal-opportunity feminism demands equality of the sexes before the law. But what works in the public arena of office and marketplace may not apply to the archaic cave of the bedroom. Mother Nature, our pitiless bitch goddess, has paved the evolutionary road with a few bumps and potholes. Men's sexual and professional energies flow in the same direction: Point that phallus, and pass GO! But women have a problem. The hard-driving career woman has to switch personae when she gets home. She's got to throttle back, or she'll castrate everything in the domestic niche. Many white, middle-class women have dodged this dilemma by finding themselves a nice, malleable boy-man who becomes another son in the subliminally matriarchal household. Others, like me, have gone gay to avoid all this psychosexual schizophrenia, which cramps one's style. Still others are out there roping in obliging fellows like you to secretly service their genuinely biological but politically incorrect urges for surrender. Feminist ideology has totally failed to deal with humanity's instinctual drives. No matter what garbage you hear from Foucault's minions, sex is ultimately about procreation. It's in the best interests of the species for fertile women to mate with the strongest, most vital and resourceful males. You've had some luscious close encounters with the pure receptivity at woman's sexual core — without which conception cannot occur. Please note how Madonna couldn't get pregnant until she artistically "surrendered" (her word) for the first time in her career to the director of "Evita" — giving tension headaches to the costume designers, who had to redo all her waistlines. So many of the great female stars — from Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn to Barbra Streisand and Sharon Stone — have had terrible or transient sex lives because of the disconnect between their steely wills and their physical needs. Steinem/Faludi paleofeminism thinks we've got to turn men into women for us all to get along. Meanwhile, under cover of night, women on the sexual prowl are goading men into the dominant mode to maximize female pleasure. Health-giving hormonal levels in both males and females are enhanced and supercharged by this consensual playing with traditional roles — whose ultimate origins aren't evil patriarchal conspiracy but elemental biological realities. So the real question is: Will you men, silent and brave, continue your heroic backstage efforts to keep our women pleased and purring as the feminist extravaganza rolls into the next millennium? Isis, Demeter and Darwin sure thank you! Dear Camille:
I think ebonics is the most flagrant example of p.c. madness and victim scamming that I've ever heard of. As a critic of politically correct absurdities, what do you make of it all?
Signed,
Dear Disgusted,
You may be surprised to hear that I favor making ebonics, or black English, a
formal part of the American curriculum.
I am on the record as opposing most bilingual education, which I think
short-sighted. English is a very difficult language, with a huge vocabulary
and many subtleties of diction,
which is learned only through total immersion.
Standard English remains the door of opportunity, just as in the great era
of European immigration, when public schools were far stricter about grammar
and spelling — a rigor that benefited my own immigrant family immensely.
Black English is not a language (as some allege) but a dialect that emerged
from a rich oral tradition as worthy of study as the one that produced the
bard whom we call Homer, around 700 B.C.
That there are some vestigial African elements in black English is obvious,
and they deserve the respect of Americans of all races. But we must learn
about these matters from reputable scholarly linguists and not political
pressure groups.
In a taxi in Washington, D.C., two years ago, I was electrified to realize
that the animated conversation I was half-listening to between the foreign
driver and his dispatcher was actually in Swahili. In those hurtling
syllables and beautiful, sinuous rhythms I could clearly hear the African
ancestry of black English. The blunt rural metaphors and flamboyant street slang of black English have
passed into standard English in wave after wave since the 1920s, when jazz
swept the nation. For the blues and rock fans of my 1960s generation, black
English is an art language whose sexy, angry or tormented phrases have
shaped our sensibilities. Sports fans know it as the rowdy code of locker
room and playing field.
Because of my teaching experience with working-class students in different
cities, I agree with the position that black English should not be denigrated
as substandard or deficient English. It is a demotic or vernacular form that
has its own eloquent, internal logic. In my 1991 academic exposé, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders" (reprinted in
"Sex, Art, and American Culture"), I offered Oprah Winfrey as a model of
"creative duality," my term for the necessary negotiation between our ethnic
roots and the careerist demands of the present.
With mesmerizing virtuosity, Oprah constantly shifts back and forth between
her two voices — down home and crisply professional — paying homage to both
and uniting her vast, multiracial audience in the process.
Black students should similarly be taught not to renounce or reject their
native idiom, but to learn standard English in addition as the international
lingua franca of economic and political success. If ebonics can be stripped
of its dubious claims, it will be a valuable tool of educational transition
for students whom public schools have so far failed to reach. |
ISSUES: 49 | 47A R C H I V E S
