"But are men, and the age-old power structures associated with 'maleness,' permanently in decline?"

"Or do men still retain significant control over the workplace, the family and society at large, including women?" A very lively debate on the proposition: "Be it resolved, men are obsolete…"

Pro: Hanna Rosin, Maureen Dowd. Con: Caitlin Moran, Camille Paglia.

Rosin and Dowd pretty much retreat from the strong version of the proposition, and Moran and Paglia kick ass. Rosin and Dowd end up winning because they "persuaded" more people, after beginning with only 16% on their side (and ending with 44%).

Very amusing, or enraging (if you're the type to get steamed over the obvious fact that it would be considered outrageous for a bunch of men to get all hyper and cheeky over a comparable topic about the value of women).

ADDED: You might need to subscribe to watch at that link, but you can listen (which is what I did) here. 

"When have I ever criticized anyone’s fetish? I am a libertarian."

"Go right ahead — set up plastic figurines of 1950s-era moppets to bow down to in the privacy of your boudoir. No one will scold! Then whip down to the kitchen to heat up those foil-wrapped TV dinners. I still gaze back fondly at Swanson’s fried-chicken entree. The twinkly green peas! The moist apple fritter! Meg Ryan — the spitting image of all those perky counselors at my Girl Scout camp in the Adirondacks. Gwyneth Paltrow — a simpering sorority queen with field-hockey-stick legs. I will leave you to your retro pursuits while I dash off to moon over multiracial Brazilian divas."

Says Camille Paglia, reacting to the Salon interviewer's question "Why do you come down so hard on skinny white girls? Your views on sexuality leave so much room for individuality, so why is it so bad if I am attracted to Meg Ryan or Gwyneth Paltrow?"

My first thought was: Who can talk like that — spontaneously spluttering alliteration like "simpering sorority" and "moon over multiracial" and sumptuously sprinkling images like field-hockey-stick legs and foil-wrapped peas and fried chicken? But then I saw that this was all done in writing: "I spoke with Paglia by email." Spoke, yeah. I get it.

All these words are well-chosen. So: "moppet." Was Paglia professing acceptance of sexualizing children? What "1950s-era moppets" could she be referring to? Just the girls she happens to remember from Girl Scout camp and college? The (unlinkable) OED defines moppet as "A baby; a young child, esp. a girl; a darling, a favourite (freq. as a term of endearment). Also (depreciative): a frivolous or gaudily dressed woman." Here are some historical examples:

?1608   S. Lennard tr. P. Charron Of Wisdome iii. xiv. 482   A simple instinct..according to which parents loue..their children, though deformed..and vse them like moppets, or little apes....
1746   P. Francis & W. Dunkin tr. Horace Satires i. iii. 64   Is he of dwarfish and abortive size? ‘Sweet little moppet’, the fond father cries....
1801   C. Smith Lett. Solitary Wanderer II. 10   While the most insipid moppet that ever looked in a glass is preferred to one of those reasoning damsels.

I'll assume she's referring to women — not children — but disparaging women who are thought cute because of their girl-like gestures and get-ups. Feel free to fetishize them, she says, claiming not to be criticizing and flattering herself for dashing and mooning and fetishizing the racial other, which she implies is not retro.

"No one will scold!" Oh, no? But she does scold, doesn't she? She claims superiority. Finding Gwyneth Paltrow sexy is like finding an old TV dinner tasty. But she's not criticizing! Far be it from her, a libertarian, to knock anybody's sexuality.

***

This topic of the difference between speaking and writing happened to come up twice on this blog yesterday. First, in "Like I said...," I quoted Janet Malcolm about the difference between the written word and the transcribed spoken word, which she calls "tape-recorderese." She says novelists and journalists continue to write dialogue in a form that we might receive as the equivalent of speech, but that has been changed and adapted into something more like the written word.

Second, I noted what some linguists had said about Elmore Leonard, that he used the "tough guy" writing style of telling the story through the dialogue of the characters. The criticism was that it forced him to restrict his characters to the kind of people who talk a lot and to miss out on more thoughtful, quiet types. If you look at what Janet Malcolm said, you can see a problem with this criticism, which assumes that the novelist renders speech the way it would occur in real life. In fact, there are all sorts of approaches you could use, within the "tough guy" style, to include non-chatterbox characters. The reader doesn't expect to read what a tape recorder would have picked up in real life. The reader will reject fakeness at some point, but written dialogue routinely departs from reality. It's expected, and — when it's done well — desirable.

And now we encounter Camille Paglia, writing her side of a spoken-word like dialogue, but veering way into the realm of the obviously written. She wants — I believe — to present herself as fast-talking, free-wheeling, sexy, wise and witty. But she went too far this time. It's just too neat. Too tidy. It had to be planned. It was the peas. The peas that gave her away. The twinkly green peas. Green wasn't enough. No! Had to be twinkly. Just couldn't resist. See, that's what I'm thinking. Twinkly green peas? Who says twinkly green peas? Who says simpering sorority queen with field-hockey-stick legs? She'd like you to think she says simpering "sorority queen with field-hockey-stick legs." Once you start to notice that kind of thing, it's nothing but.

Hillary Clinton on Twitter "jokingly styles herself as a 'pantsuit aficionado,' 'hair icon' and 'grass ceiling cracker.'"

Reports the BBC.

I don't know if it was the BBC or Hillary who is to blame for the typo "grass ceiling cracker," but it made me think of the famous old Camille Paglia quote: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.''

Which could be rewritten: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts, and crowing about breaking grass ceilings, and I do mean crowing, not tweeting, because there wouldn't be any Twitter either."

"What is to be done about the low scholarly standards in the analysis of sex?"

"For all their putative leftism, gender theorists routinely mimic and flatter academic power with the unctuous obsequiousness of flunk­ies in the Vatican Curia," says Camille Paglia, reviewing 3 recent books about sadomasochism. As you might expect from Paglia, there's a lot in this piece about the limitations of post-structuralism, and how gender-studies folks need to learn more about biology, ancient cultures, and religion, but what got my attention was the detail about the sort of people that go in for these BDSM activities. Summon up a picture of the men and women who would be into this sort of thing. Then read this:

[Staci] Newmahr ["Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy"] captures how her subjects, even before they entered SM, viewed themselves as "outsiders" who lived "on the fringe of social acceptance." Most are overweight, but it's never remarked on. Several women are over six feet tall, generally a social disadvantage elsewhere.... Some men are small-statured or have vivid, angry memories of being bullied at school. Newmahr notes the "pervasive social awkwardness" in the scene, the "ill-fitting, outdated clothing" and the women's lack of makeup and jewelry. The men often have little interest in sports and own cars of middling quality.

... Newmahr [notes the] "affinity for complicated techniques and well-made toys." ... Newmahr recognizes an operative aesthetic of "geekiness as cool."

Is that what you pictured?

"There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female..."

"... were being systematically removed from the category American novelists and assigned to the category American women novelists."

I remember going to bookstores, circa 1990, where "Fiction by Women" was a separate section from "Fiction." These were places that were pro-woman, I'm quite sure, because I remember seeing Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" displayed with a warning label that it might not be what you were expecting and that you should bring it back for a refund if you bought it under the mistaken impression that it was good feminism and then found yourself offended.

ADDED: The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists." (Is the parallelism jarring? It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.")

Breitbart wants to go after news outlets "that hide behind this patina of entertainment in order to promote a left-wing agenda."

Says Ben Shapiro, who's especially eager to "smack Politico across the face." Of course, exposing the bias in reporting that might be mistaken for neutral is what the internet is for. One must pick apart the rhetoric of others.

It can get tedious, however, to just be saying over and over that Politico or Buzzfeed leans left. Or, as they say at the right-leaning Breitbart promotes a left-wing agenda. Please. They are not that exciting. They are much more lame and flabby than that. Don't accidentally compliment them. Agenda! It sounds so officious.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "agenda" as "A campaign, programme, or plan of action arising from a set of underlying principles or motives. Hence: the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group."

1976   Newsweek 19 Apr. 23/1   Their hope is that the party..would opt for youth and freshness. ‘Those folks who have their own agenda for Hubert underestimate Jerry Brown’, says one California politician....
1991   C. Paglia Sex, Art, & Amer. Culture (1992) 73   That girl had her own agenda..trying to glom onto the Kennedy glamour!

That's not a reference to Marilyn Monroe, by the way. After making an appearance in post #1 of the day, Marilyn would seem magical is she popped up here too, but Camille Paglia was talking about the William Kennedy Smith rape trial.

And can you hide behind a "patina"? The OED defines "patina" as "A thin coating or layer; spec. an incrustation on the surface of metal or stone, usually as a result of an extended period of weathering or burial; a green or bluish-green film produced naturally or artificially by oxidation on the surface of bronze and copper, consisting mainly of basic copper sulphate."

1748 H. Walpole Let. 6 Oct. in Corr. (1974) XXXVII. 297, I wish you could see him making squibs.., and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder.

One must pick apart the rhetoric of others.

And speaking of neutrality and smacking in the face... the Althouse blog agenda is cruel neutrality.

"Despite the passage of time since second-wave feminism erupted in the late 1960s, we’ve somehow been thrown back to the demure girly-girl days of the white-bread 1950s."

"It feels positively nightmarish to survivors like me of that rigidly conformist and man-pleasing era, when girls had to be simple, peppy, cheerful and modest. Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee formed the national template -- that trinity of blond oppressors!"

Camille Paglia is displeased with Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.