"I don't read books by men anymore, I don't watch their movies, I don't listen to their music', she writes.

I'M guessing she definitely doesn't listen to "Under My Thumb"
or "It's Raining Men."

I will say that, to her credit, she does a halfway decent Owen Wilson impersonation.

I assume she means socially in which case who cares.

This lady is getting way more press than necessary.

I kinda wish (a few particular) women were more independent in one way in particular— That they wouldn't think of themselves as heroic figures who're really sticking it to the Peenis Peeple by running to HR (often men themselves), or others, when they get their feathers ruffled by (genuinely) inappropriate sexual conversation and contact. I used to live in the Ozarks, and on more than one occasion I saw spirited women bring clumsy guys back to reality with a few sharp words.

This isn't a enormous issue for me, though. In general, sure, it's the responsibility of the entire society to keep violent and intrusive male sexuality under control. But there's nothing especially admirable about demanding support from those around you… Nonetheless, a culture with a little too much of that (perhaps like our own) is better than one with not enough.

But in the big picture, if women wanna make their way through life without men around, let 'em.

Or let 'em try. Paglia made the point thirty years ago: Go here and search for "I think it’s absolutely necessary," about twenty percent down from the top of the page.

One advantage of being old, besides the ear trumpet and the endless supply of Werther's Originals, is some institutional knowledge -- and that means I remember when lesbian separatism was originally discussed in the 1970s. There's nothing new about this.

It is ironic that halfway through the story there's a screenshot of her book's reviews on Amazon ...

... which, of course, was founded by a man.

In the 1970s, lesbian separatists took pride in the fact their books, records, etc. were sold in women-owned stores.

I remember when lesbian separatism was originally discussed in the 1970s.

I don't like lesbian separatism. I mean, it's not exactly hot when the lesbians you're watching are on opposite sides of the bed, not even touching each other.

Has that author always been a woman??

I think that part of the reason we've been seeing such blatant man-hating over the past several years is that Feminism has basically collapsed as a coherent, much less rational, movement and set of ideas. So previously marginal elements are filling the vacuum and they tend to represent the extremes.

You've got the Millennial princess wictims on one side, who blame men for every little thing yet still want to be taken care of - by men. So they shit test men obsessively. On the other are the Andrea Dworkin types who'd gravitated to Feminism because otherwise they'd just be angry paranoid lunatics without a cause. This group is actually less annoying than the wictims.

Unfortunately the Democrats have decided to pander to these elements in hopes of building a new coalition. Otherwise they'd just annoy the shit out of each other.

You have to wonder about all these people who have never in their lives had a positive encounter with the opposite sex and, thus, want to rid themselves of any and all contact. Perhaps the problem is not to be found in the opposite sex, but in the person themselves. Perhaps they're approaching the opposite sex with animosity, antipathy, and outright hostility.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
~ William Shakespeare

Not looking any deeper than what is posted here, her suggestions make sense. Quite frankly there aren't that many lesbians out there. So if she wants to widen her dating pool she needs to convince a lot of straight women to switch sides.

Forgot to offer them a shovel to dig the latrine themselves.

Crid's Paglia link:

Warren Farrell, in The Myth of Male Power, points out how much propaganda has infiltrated the culture. For example, he says that the assertion that women earn so much less than men is bullshit. The reason women earn less than men is that women don’t want the dirty jobs. They aren’t picking up the garbage, taking the janitorial jobs and so on. They aren’t taking the sales commission jobs that require you to work all night and on weekends. Most women like clean, safe offices, which is why they are still secretaries. They don’t want to get too dirty. Also, women want offices to be nice, happy places. What bullshit.

...women want offices to be nice, happy places. What bullshit. ~ from the Paglia link and quoted by IRA Darth Aggie at October 29, 2020 7:31 AM

Notice how few television shows make female characters non-professional blue collar workers - beyond waitresses. And even when they do, the job is rarely dirty except as a one-off gag.

Is that indicative of women's preferences about how their representation in popular media portray them? Or is it indicative that men don't want to watch programs featuring a woman garbage collector or sewer worker?

Or is it indicative that Hollywood is out of touch with blue collar America, as is Washington?

More from Paglia:

I also learned something from the men at the garage. At Bennington, I would go to a faculty meeting and be aware that everyone hated me. The men were appalled by a strong, loud woman. But I went to this auto shop and the men there thought I was cute. “Oh, there’s that Professor Paglia from the college.” The real men, men who work on cars, find me cute. They are not frightened by me, no matter how loud I am. But the men at the college were terrified because they are eunuchs, and I threatened every goddamned one of them.

I especially like-

But then something would go wrong with my car and I’d have to go to the men. Men would stop, men would lift up the hood, more men would come with a truck and take the car to a place where there were other men who would call other men who would arrive with parts.

It's easy to see how throughout history, within the social weave of everyone who's ever lived including the commentariat of this very blog, there are more sophisticated women who've answered their own resentments with something more meaningful than a sign on the clubhouse with no boyz allouwd.

> the endless supply of Werther's

You know a guy? Can you hook a fella up?

It might be easy for Alice Coffin to swear off men. Might just be a case of sour grapes. Nothing to take seriously. If you read down past the linked article, the Daily Mail has provided some sizzling snaps of Rhian Sugden. When Ms. Coffin can convince an underwear model to give up men, then we can have a conversation.

Nevahoida. So I Binged:

Rhian Marie Rhian Sugden is English underwear, Page 3 young lady and fabulousness model. She is the English model marked with Girl Management. She moved to prevalence just like a Page Three Girl. She additionally played on the tenth period of Celebrity Big Brother.

How does a "fabulousness model" generate income?

All of us men who are eliminated from this harridan's life are very grateful, indeed!

Real men and real women complete each other and create a family that is a bulwark against chaos and trouble. Lesbians may not want to play this game but leave the rest of us alone.
Also, it is not real men who do terrible things, it is losers and fatherless men. Real men protect everyone. They (in a group) lift cars off people who are trapped, step in between a dog and their sister (boy was 11) and get pretty chewed up, stab a terrorist with a narwal tusk, scale an apartment building to rescue an old man. You can find all these stories with video online. It is naive to think we live in such a safe world that no one needs to be rescued.

Meh.

I find it interesting that few men want to live in a world without women. Some resent that they are alone but are not GLAD to be alone. Women complain to each other about their boyfriends/husbands, but I almost never hear a guy complain like this. Men understand that women are different and a little difficult. It is ok.

CC, so true.

When one has the ability to complain without fear of consequence, who has "privilege"?

Paglia: "...women don’t want the dirty jobs. They aren’t picking up the garbage, taking the janitorial jobs and so on. They aren’t taking the sales commission jobs that require you to work all night and on weekends. Most women like clean, safe offices, which is why they are still secretaries. They don’t want to get too dirty."

First, let me say that the upper classes, male and female, should be giving the working classes far more gratitude and respect than they do give.

On the subject of how, supposedly, ALL women don't want to work at high-paying, dangerous jobs:

Somehow, blue-collar men are not known for behaving with common decency - or gratitude - when women DO apply for dirty or dangerous jobs - that is, the male-dominated ones. Nor do any men demand a greater share of the minimum-wage jobs that women traditionally did for centuries, even though some of those were safer. (I would bet that most of the MRAs who echo Paglia's words and complain about the "glass cellar" don't work at dangerous jobs either - and don't want to.) As the conservative columnist Alex Beam once said, sarcastically, about MRAs' complaints: "No fair! We want to type and fetch coffee - and be paid slave wages - too."

(Not to mention that more and more young men are learning to resist social pressure to marry and have children they never wanted, so it may be only a matter of a few decades before the only men who work at high-paying, dangerous jobs are the ones who truly enjoy them.)

Therefore, many women (such as single mothers) who can't afford to take minimum-wage jobs are asking themselves: "do I want to demand a job where I not only have to risk life and limb every day, plus daily harassment, or do I want to demand a job that pays a little less, but where at least my life won't be in danger, even though I'll still get harassed?" The choice is clear - if you're qualified.

Also, most women become mothers, so of course most don't want to work for pay for 60 hours a week; they're already working 20 unpaid hours or so at home.

If college-educated men don't expect to work at jobs that mean risking life and limb (or for 60 hours), why should college-educated women feel any moral obligation to do that? I.e., maybe it's more about class than gender.

And, when it comes to blue-collar women, they, like minorities, HAVE done dangerous jobs for ages, whether we're talking about farm work, factory work, or working the late shifts at liquor stores. They just didn't get paid a lot, if at all, so naturally they're now demanding to get jobs that match their degrees, when they make the exhausting effort to GET degrees under adverse circumstances.

Finally, from Katha Pollitt:

"Believe it or not, there are still stereotypically male jobs that pay well and don't require college degrees--plumbing, cabinetry, electrical work, computer repair, refrigeration, trucking, mining, restaurant cuisine. My daughter had two male school friends, good students from academically oriented families, who chose cooking school over college. Moreover, as I'll discuss in my next column, sex discrimination in employment is alive and well: Maybe boys focus less on school because they think they'll come out ahead anyway. What solid, stable jobs with a future are there for women without at least some higher ed? Heather Boushey, an economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research, noted that women students take out more loans than their male classmates, even though a BA does less to increase their income. The sacrifice would make sense, though, if the BA made the crucial difference between respectable security and a lifetime as a waitress or a file clerk."

Lenona, that's silly… "common decency - or gratitude" isn't the standard for anything at all.

Specifically, whatever their collar, "men are not known for behaving with common decency - or gratitude - when [men] apply for dirty or dangerous jobs."

The rest of the planet wasn't put here to pat us on the head with congratulations for the colorful variety of crayons we've used on a grade-school project. A capitalist economy is tough that way: It's competitive… No cryin' in baseball, there isn't time. If you'd rather be flattered and catered to than put in extra effort bringing value to your boss or to your boss's customer, both the price of your time and the scope of your achievement are going to fall.

Paglia's ALL about getting in there and mixing it up like a fully adult woman. I can't think of a public figure in my lifetime who's been more adroitly attuned to the needs of blue-collar women AND men than Cammy… And she's been perfectly blunt about having her youthful presumptions about such things corrected.

Additionally… There are a LOT of links to post about this. Education favors the sisters, indisputably.

And—

Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill

The single-biggest cause of the gender wage gap? Motherhood. (US)

https://nber.org/papers/w27980

What are you saying? That whenever YOU started a new job, your male co-workers were automatically hostile and tried to sabotage your work or break your spirit, partly out of fear that you'd steal their positions? Why would their bosses tolerate such behavior when those co-workers would clearly be wasting their own work time - and hurting company morale as a whole?

Or, are you suggesting that common courtesy and a mandatory cooperative attitude/behavior - such as not telling lies about one's colleagues - is the same as sentimental coddling, as if there were no middle ground?

I seem to remember that Anthony Bourdain had trouble with one or two male co-workers - one of whom kept trying to grope him - but they were very much in the minority, so it wasn't systematic. Also, everyone else was howling with laughter when he struck back. So they were clearly sympathetic.

From one of my favorites:

"...Of course you don't want to be overheard around the office making tasteless remarks. Of course you should keep your personal problems to yourself during work hours. Of course you should keep your hands to yourself. Of course you shouldn't air opinions anyone at the office might find offensive. And right again--you shouldn't be writing on the men's room walls.

"This is known as professionalism. Even when there were all-male workplaces, anyone who went about spouting unpopular opinions, blabbing about his personal life, grabbing people, and writing on the walls was in trouble. Gentlemen were expected to observe professional etiquette..."

Btw, you KNOW I said nothing about "flattering" or "catering to." The word "respect" has multiple meanings, after all. Of course we should all be expected to do our best. Also, sensible people are happy to do without praise when they can get well-earned promotions instead.

It's simply that, when there's too much work to do and the boss manages to find good extra people to hire, it only makes sense for the staff to be grateful that the new people WERE hired - and to help them learn the ropes instead of trying to sabotage their work. Especially if they used to complain that "those people," in general society, don't do their "share" of such-and-such.

> What are you saying? That whenever
> YOU started a new job, your male
> co-workers were automatically hostile
> and tried to sabotage your work or
> break your spirit, partly out of
> fear that you'd steal their
> positions?

IT'S CHATTER LIKE YOURS THAT MAKES MEN THINK THAT IN SOME FUNDAMENTAL WAY, WOMEN ARE CONSTITUTIONALLY UNSUITED TO THE WORKPLACE.

YES, HONEY. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I'M SAYING. And you seem terribly, collapsingly naive for imagining that this only happens to women… And worse, for not noticing that it's happened to the men in your life since the dawn of the species.

"Break your spirit…" Golly, that's so tenderly dramatic… So poignantly unprecedented… Who could imagine they could be sooo meeeeen? Makes me wanna pull on a big fluffy sweatshirt, eat Haagen-Daz on the couch with a tablespoon, cry my eyes out and write in my journal.

You seem to have taken no notice of the immutable patterns of behavior that were being expressed in the children around you as you were growing up— the outright fisticuffs of the boys at recess, which more often than not dissolved into gruff mutual respect and even friendship over time; the bickering cattiness and minutely betrayed alliances of the girls in the cafeteria, similarly repaired or left to fester over the years.

Lenona, you were being TRAINED for something. Or were being offered training. It's not like adulthood was ever going to be an endless perfectly affectionate birthday party for everyone in the classroom.

If you think you could have avoided that contention, or should have been allowed to, you quite certainly wanted your career 'catered', brought to you on a platter, and you'd have been flattered indeed.

"mandatory"

Says who? Enforced by whom, exactly? This is precisely what I meant @ October 28, 2020 11:17 PM

It's simply that, when there's too much work to do and the boss manages to find good extra people to hire, it only makes sense for the staff to be grateful that the new people WERE hired - and to help them learn the ropes instead of trying to sabotage their work. Especially if they used to complain that "those people," in general society, don't do their "share" of such-and-such. ~ Lenona at October 31, 2020 7:41 AM

It’s not so much sabotaging another’s work as it is jockeying for position and status, making sure the new guy doesn’t usurp your seniority and rapport with the powers that be.

"You seem to have taken no notice of the immutable patterns of behavior that were being expressed in the children around you as you were growing up— the outright fisticuffs of the boys at recess, which more often than not dissolved into gruff mutual respect and even friendship over time; the bickering cattiness and minutely betrayed alliances of the girls in the cafeteria, similarly repaired or left to fester over the years."
__________________________________

I don't know what you're talking about. Even though I went to six schools before high school (we moved around a lot), fisticuffs were NOT allowed by the teachers; we even had strict male monitors on buses who would bark at you if your foot was in the aisle, and even non-violent meanness was kept more or less under control by the kids themselves. Maybe that's because even the better public schools (and private schools) weren't as uncivilized as popular fiction would have us believe?

Example: When, as a preteen, I just happened to pick up a certain book and I read C.S. Lewis' opening line: "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it," I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Why? Because my classmates and I KNEW, no matter what our ages were at the time, that we had better things to do than to make fun of anybody's name. I have NO memory of anyone making fun of anyone's name - and my long-term memory is as good as ever. (The same was true for racism. If it was there, kids had the sense to keep their mouths shut. Even gay jokes weren't that common, despite gay people having to stay in the closet.)

Besides, to my American ears, Edmund Pevensie was just as weird a name as Eustace, and Eustace didn't seem to mind his own name anyway. I was also too introverted to care about superficialities, which is a pretty common attitude, after all. My late mother - who was obsessed with appearances - somehow never read the books as a preteen in the 1950s, so when I quoted her that line, maybe 15 years ago, she understood immediately and thought it was hilarious. However, when I quoted it to my aunt, her younger sister, SHE was just as baffled as I had been as a child and asked "you mean he deserved to be scrubbed?"

In other words, even though the two sisters went to the same private schools, Lewis' shallow attitude was simply not common enough for most of the students to be familiar with it, whether or not they tended in that direction. (Lewis was even shallow enough to emphasize it AGAIN, in the sequel, when he wrote: "his name unfortunately was Eustace Scrubb, but he wasn't a bad sort.")

As someone said decades ago, in Newsweek, "why should we let it all hang out? It took centuries for us to learn to tuck it all in."

And no, I was not coddled at any job. Not everyone was nice, but almost all of the co-workers I knew believed in polite COOPERATION, for everyone's sake - and the company's.

... Lewis' shallow attitude was simply not common enough for most of the students to be familiar with it.... ~ Lenona at November 1, 2020 1:23 PM

I believe Lewis' snark a Eustace's name was intended more for his parents than for Eustace himself.

> fisticuffs were NOT allowed
> by the teachers

Right! Bosses "tolerate" things or not, just as teachers mediate fisticuffs. I hate to go all woke on you, but I get the sense you grew up in a fairly prissy, and perhaps upscale neighborhood...

> "Because my classmates and I
> KNEW, no matter what our ages were
> at the time, that we had better
> things to do than to make fun of
> anybody's name.

And presumably a largely monochromatic one, at that. If you didn't see the undercurrents of aggression (if not violence) that were around you, you were dreaming of something else…

Authoritarianism, apparently. As if good cops can be anywhere, so that all anyone need do to be safe is cry out for help… To someone who may or may not give a rat's ass about you. You think comity is a paperwork problem.

It is not. Decent and courageous spirits are required throughout the culture… People who can handle problems themselves, in the moment. The rest of planet was not put here to adjudicate your grievances. You can't whine your way into Heaven.

Yonder

Also, props to Amy for naming Hedy

Also, props to Amy for naming Hedy ~ Crid at November 1, 2020 5:30 PM

That's HEDLEY. Oh, wait, it's not.

> I have NO memory of anyone making
> fun of anyone's name

Well, you were always a precocious and elegant and well-meaning little darling.
But it's not possible that this would apply to your peer group… unless none of them were born with genitalia, or with lungs eager for laughter.

Louis CK comes to mind.

> Oh, wait

I gave thirty seconds to trying to work that into a comment.

Man, I have LOVED the shared & sluggish mass media of yesteryear. For all their corruptions and horrors, there was a joke available at every water cooler.

Most of the schools I went to were public schools.

And, now that I think about it, the rarity of fisticuffs likely had less to do with the teachers and more to do with

1. The attitude, among the kids themselves, that physical fights were just plain vulgar and infantile, like bad language.

2. The knowledge that if you DID pick a fight or bullied a smaller kid and got into trouble with your teachers, your parents would very likely take side with...the teachers. (Unlike today, sadly - so it's no wonder that so many teachers quit.) So the teachers had a relatively easy job compared to today. Today's young bullies grow to become adult bullies.

Which is not to say there wasn't a certain amount of cruel taunting regarding a person's looks or between any two students who just didn't like each other.

Not to mention that homophobia I mentioned - the gay kids wouldn't have had to stay in the closet in the first place if homophobia weren't unofficially acceptable in the 1980s. But again, mean gay jokes were kept more or less under restraint by the students themselves, because they were just considered vulgar. Sort of like the 1950s rule among white people that said that racism (and racist laws) wasn't really wrong, but discussing it or expressing it in words was "uncivilized."

> 1. The attitude, among the kids
> themselves, that physical fights
> were just plain vulgar and
> infantile, like bad language.

If you tell me you were raised to be an effete, tepid, spiritless priss, I'll take you at your word.

But it's probably more flattering to be thought of as coddled.

> Most

Yeah?

"unofficially acceptable"

Well, there IS one other thing I didn't mention - I've always been very physically strong and willing to fight bigger kids, and everyone knew it. So I didn't get picked on. Sort of like Teddy Roosevelt, who was weak before his parents got him a gymnasium.

And, again, the boys didn't even fight each OTHER, as a rule. At least, not on school grounds, since they didn't want to get into trouble. So I didn't get to witness fights.

And everyone had plenty of spirit, believe me.

What exactly is wrong with teaching kids that there's a time and place for everything? In other words, raising them to be civilized adults with an actual sense of fair play, so that everyone gets to have fun - and at least a chance to succeed?