Worst Lyrics Ever in a Pop Song

I don't remember the title, nor all the lyrics, but the song went something like this:

Mary goes 'round like a merry-go-round
with each and every guy in town.
She don't know what she's doing
when she does what she's doing,
'cause Mary's not that kind of gal.

Eh? She don't know what she's doing? Just how stupid is this Mary? Now,  I don't usually go for a feminist analysis, but I think that one can correctly call these lyrics profoundly misogynistic. This gal is simultaneously virgin and whore.

Daddy-Long-Legs?

Daddy-Long-Legs?

At one time not so long ago, I intended to write as a journal article an academic paper setting forth a critique of Jean Webster's epistolary novel, Daddy Long Legs.

I'm still thinking about this, but I've discovered that eight months is not a long time.

But I'm also still thinking about it . . .

Overheard in the English Lounge

Buffed-Up
Gingerbread Man

Interlocutor 1: Next time, let's do gender roles, okay?

Interlocutor 2: Sounds great! Shall I bring the ginger rolls?

Interlocutor 1: Please do! Bring lots of examples!

Interlocutor 2: Lots of samples, right!

Interlocutor 1: Looking forward to it!

Interlocutor 2: Me, too! See you!

Already Educated a Bit

Religion

Once upon a time, nearly two decades ago, I proofread and helped edit a book on "women and religion" for a friend who was working hard to make her mark in religious studies. There were a number of minor corrections that I made, as well as some matters of style that I adjusted, all of which she accepted. She had long realized that I was a better writer, and she didn't try to argue against my alterations.

But I then startled her by pointing to an important passage in her book and saying that she could strengthen her argument considerably by reworking the passage in a certain way.

She looked at me in surprise, dumbfounded for a moment, then said, "Well . . . I guess you learned something from my book."

My turn for surprise. I looked at her in silence, though I could have said, and maybe should have said, "Well, if I learned something from your book, then why did your book have to learn it from me?"

But we were still friends at that time, and I didn't want to embarrass her, though I now realize that I shouldn't have let her get away with that thought-theft.

She needed to know that I was already a fairly well-educated fellow before I met her, for she seemed remarkably oblivious to that fact.

Matt Ridley on Feminism's New Puritanism and Common Cause with Islam

Linda Sarsour

Wikipedia

The British journalist Matt Ridley, in "A New Puritanism Explains Why Some Feminists are Making Common Cause with Islam" (The Spectator, February 4, 2017), offers his view as to what's gone wrong with contemporary feminism:

The bicoastal elite [in the US] might be more effective in opposing Mr Trump if it weren't obsessed with the persecution of anybody who says the wrong thing. "While you self-involved fools were policing the language at the Kids' Choice Awards," raged the broadcaster Bill Maher last week, "a madman talked his way into the White House." This new puritanism must explain why some feminists make common cause with Islam. One of the Women's March organisers was Linda Sarsour, a defender of sharia law, which is misogynism incarnate. She said on Twitter of Brigitte Gabriel, a feminist critic of Islam, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation and of death threats for apostasy, "I wish I could take their vaginas away - they don't deserve to be women." So she's a pussy-grabber too. She has since deleted the tweet.

This passage is borrowed from Ridley's Diary in this week's Spectator, and he makes an interesting suggestion about a new 'puritanism,' but he provides no clear evidence that a puritanical mindset is the problem. What I see in this passage is the same old political correctness that has characterized the Left since the 1990s, at least. The Left perceives minority groups as oppressed, and because Islam is a minority in the West, it is considered oppressed and is therefore protected from criticism, any criticism being merely an expression of 'Islamophobia.' Meanwhile, Islamism continues to exert an influence on Islam, which is hardly a minority in the world!

The Left likes to think that it thinks globally, but Leftists have missed the big picture . . .

The Two Spheres: Male and Female - A Simple Two-Body Problem?

Wikipedia

Speaking of these male-female differences . . . about a year ago, one of my Korean students visited the Writing Clinic and asked me what was meant by the expression "the female sphere."

"You mean as in its difference from the male sphere?" I asked.

"There's a male sphere, too?" she said, looking concerned.

I realized that she was stuck on the word "sphere." Maybe she's a math student, I thought, so I decided to meet her on that level.

"Well," I began, "you're raising a question on the geometry of relationships, which are usually just tangential to deep mathematics, but a man and a woman sometimes strike a deeper chord, so here's how that sphere stuff works. The woman's role is to get married and pregnant, and as the fetus grows and grows, the woman's belly swells up and up and up, so much so that it looks about the size of a beachball - and that's the female sphere."

I noticed that the two TAs assigned to proctoring duty in the room were listening, so I spoke a bit louder for their benefit.

"As for the male sphere, a man's role is to work outside the home with other men. These males toil together all day, day after day, and every evening after work, they go out to eat together in a restaurant, where they not only eat, they also drink a lot of beer, so much beer that they begin to grow a beer belly. As they drink more and more, their beer belly gets bigger and bigger, and rounder and rounder, so much so that it looks about the size of a beachball - and that's the male sphere."

The trusting student nodded, writing it all down, but as the two TAs burst into laughter, she paused and looked at me with suspicion in her eyes.

"But it's true," I insisted. "Why else would we speak of 'a man's roll' and 'a woman's roll'?" I used my hands to indicate the motion of rolling.

"But wouldn't their 'rolls' then be the same?" she retorted, apparently referring to their identical beachball shape.

Oh, a clever one, I thought, but replied, "Certainly not! When a woman is in an advanced state of pregnancy, the baby kicks a lot, so the woman doesn't roll in a straight line. A man, however, rolls straight. That's the difference between men and women. A man rolls from A to B by the shortest route, a straight line! But a woman? She rolls hither and yon from A in the general direction of B, yet too often ends up at C, instead, so to keep women from rolling into trouble, they are best kept at home. Men, however, can keep on rolling straight to work.

By this time, the TAs were bent double with laughter . . . but I didn't have as many students seeking my assistance afterwards. Maybe those two TAs figured they'd better assign students needing help to some professor more actually helpful.

Good News: It ain't patriarchy . . .

Roy F. Baumeister
Denis  Dutton Website

. . . it just seems that way because men are expendable!

Hat tip to Malcolm Pollack, a non-expendable gentleman, who pointed the way to an insightful piece by Roy F. Baumeister on gender differences, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" The answer is "Yes," but not in the same way as women are:

[T]here are two different ways of being social. In social psychology we tend to emphasize close, intimate relationships, and yes, perhaps women specialize in those and are better at them than men. But one can also look at being social in terms of having larger networks of shallower relationships, and on these, perhaps, men are more social than women . . . [so] the reason for the emergence of gender inequality may have little to do with men pushing women down in some dubious patriarchal conspiracy. Rather, it came from the fact that wealth, knowledge, and power were created in the men's sphere. This is what pushed the men's sphere ahead. Not oppression . . . . Men are social too - just in a different way . . . . [C]ulture relies on men to create the large social structures that comprise it. Our society is made up of institutions such as universities, governments, corporations. Most of these were founded and built up by men. Again, this probably had less to do with women being oppressed or whatever and more to do with men being motivated to form large networks of shallow relationships. Men are much more interested than women in forming large groups and working in them and rising to the top in them . . . . [M]en create the kind of social networks where individuals are replaceable and expendable. Women favor the kind of relationships in which each person is precious and cannot truly be replaced.

Why? Because the heart goes on even with the loss of men, i.e., a population can survive the loss of men but not the loss of women.

We might even live out that fact in our demographically uncertain future . . .

Gender: Finally Getting It Straight

Catholic Journal

From reading an article by the moral theologian Lisa Fullam (Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley) on "'Gender Theory,' Nuclear War, and the Nazis" in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal (February 23, 2015), I finally found out what people mean when they state that "gender" is a "social construct." Fullam in fact clarified several terms that have had me confused in many of the feminist articles I help edit for the journal of Feminist Studies in English Literature, among other journals, so here's your chance to get these terms clarified for yourself, if you're interested. According to Fullam:

1. Sex is a biological category like male and female. Of course, there are a substantial number of intersex people[,] . . . where external genitalia are inconsistent with genetic sex or the external genitalia are not identifiable as male or female . . . . [and the] common practice [has been] to assign a sex to babies at birth based on the easier surgical "fix" - usually to a female appearance[, often resulting some years later in a conflict between the sex assigned and the gender identity] . . . .

2. Gender Identity is one's inner sense of oneself as male, female or other [and is a biological trait]. If you want to know someone's gender identity, you need to ask. Gender identity emerges early in life, and usually lines up with one's biological sex. When it doesn't, . . . a large number of genetic[,] . . . epigenetic and other biological factors . . . have been implicated . . . . Gender identity is reflected in . . . the brain activity of people whose gender identity is different from their genital/chromosomal sex[,] . . . showing that gender identity, like sex, is a biological trait . . . .

3. Gender Expression is the way one expresses one's gender identity outwardly, in external and socially constructed signals like clothing, haircuts, voice, mannerisms, and such[, so gender expression is a social construct expressing a biological fact, i.e., gender identity] . . . .

4. Gender "refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women" . . . . Most children are socialized into the gender that matches their biological sex, though of course the particulars of that socialization vary with culture, personality and time . . . . To speak of gender as individually "chosen," it seems to me, merely reflects the historical fact that brave individuals stand up to challenge social norms before it is socially acceptable. (Lisa Fullam, "'Gender Theory,' Nuclear War, and the Nazis," Commonweal, February 23, 2015; emphases mine)

Now that that's all clear (though I wish it were still just a wee bit clearer), we can move on, and those readers interested in more details supplied by the article can click for more information here. These four categories give me something useful in my editing work for journals in areas outside my expertise, e.g., Trans-Humanities or the above-mentioned Feminist Studies in English Literature.

Genghis Khan: Bloodthirsty Tyrant or Progressive Leader? Answer: Yes.

Genghis Khan
"If I only had a heart . . ."
Photo in Spectator

Justin Marozzi informs us that John Man, author of The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China, offers the view that "Genghis Khan was tolerant, kind to women – and a record-breaking mass-murderer" (The Spectator, July 12 2014).

Well, as Stalin reputedly said, you've got to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelette:

If you had the misfortune to live in Central Asia during Genghis's rampages in the 1220s, you ran the very real risk of being cut in two, beheaded, disemboweled, perhaps even forced to swallow molten metal by his ferocious soldiers. Cities were razed and depopulated, prisoners slain or ordered to march as a shield before the army, in full battle formation. Mongol bloodlust was such that even cats and dogs were killed. (Marozzi, para. 2)

Big omelette . . . but the Khan was progressive:

Yet the same man who is said to be responsible for the deaths of a world record 40 million is also noted -- admittedly less widely -- for his religious tolerance, enlightened diplomacy and championing of women's rights. (Marozzi, para. 3)

Patriarchal warrior, politically correct on women's issues . . .

Genetics and Gender?

Eric Vilain
Human Genetics at UCLA

In looking for information to enrich discussion on issues of gender and feminism in one of the courses I teach, I stumbled onto a fascinating website titled Rediscovering Biology that featured a lengthly interview with an expert, a Parisian working at UCLA, Eric Vilain, on the "Biology of Sex and Gender," and the site is so interesting and informative about sexual characteristics, gender identity, and genetics that I've excerpted below, albeit heavily edited by me:

Sex determination is appealing to everyone because . . . . [o]ne of the first characteristics of a human being at birth is . . . boy or girl . . . . The field of sex determination[, however,] is very poorly understood . . . . We know a handful of genes that makes boys become boys and girls to become girls[,] but we know that we're missing a very, very large piece of this puzzle . . . . [such as] why . . . a number of babies would be born intersex . . . . What we know even less is how our brain becomes either more of the masculinized brain or more of the feminized brain . . . . [As for the body,] you can look at [it] with a different perspective[,] which is the makeup of the gonads, whether they're testes or ovaries . . . . We know[, however, that] there are individuals who have ovaries yet they can be XY and conversely . . . have testes and be XX . . . . [A]nother way of looking at [sexual determination] . . . is gender identity. It's one's own perception of one's sex[,] . . . how people feel . . . they are, either male or female . . . . You can have individuals who are fully masculinized, have a penis, have two testicles, they're XY, they have levels of testosterone of the majority of males, yet they feel . . . they belong to the [female] body and in their mind . . . are female . . . . When the sex chromosomes were discovered, it was immediately obvious that males and females were different at the chromosomal level. Females were XX; males were XY. Then the immediate question was: Well, what makes a male a male and a female a female? . . . . One [view] is it's the number of X chromosomes that makes you either male or female and females have two X chromosomes; males have only one. This mechanism is probably the most frequent in the animal kingdom . . . . [But there is the] Androgen Insensitivities Syndrome[,] . . . the inability for androgens -- that is essentially testosterone -- to bind to their receptor. In the Androgen Insensitivities Syndromes, the individuals are typically XY. They have a Y chromosome. They typically have two normally functioning testicles which do produce male hormones, in particular high levels of testosterone, but the testosterone cannot bind to its receptor[, which] . . . makes the external appearance of these individuals to be fully female. They do not have penis. They do have what appears to be a normal vagina and they look [like a] normal female at birth . . . . We [also] know that, there are a number of babies born who are male -- they have two testes and penis -- and yet they do not have a Y chromosome. We started to decipher the molecular mechanisms that lead to this situation and we now know that there [are] a few other genes that can sometimes mimic the action of the genes in the Y chromosome. So the Y chromosome is not this single force that pushes the whole male sex determination pathway . . . . The idea is in instead of having a simplistic mechanism by which you have pro-male genes going all the way to make a male, in fact there is a solid balance between pro-male genes and anti-male genes and if there is a little too much of anti-male genes, there may be a female born and if there is a little too much of pro-male genes then there will be a male born . . . . The pathway [to male or female] is made of a complex network of genes that interact with each other at the molecular level and these interactions depend highly on the dose of each of these genes. So the end result is a subtle balance between a number of genes, most of them still unknown unfortunately that lead to either the making of a male or the making of a female . . . . We know a number of things in sex determination. We know a handful of genes. We know a little bit how they work. We unfortunately don't know how to explain the majority of our patients, who are either intersex or with a complete sex reversal. We can understand what's happening in the molecular level in only about 30% of the cases and that's not very much . . . . Knowing that you're a boy or you're a girl is something that's unique to humans. This is what we call "gender identity" and we don't know how this happens. We don't know why suddenly at a certain age, and rather early actually, about 3, 4, 5 years of age, we just know that we're either boys or girls . . . . How do we know . . . ? I have no idea. I don't think anyone has any idea. I would love to know. We're trying to work on some biological determinance of gender, to try to understand what happens in our brain . . . . But that probably will not even tell us how we know at the time we knew it . . . . Studying gender is complicated: first because there is no animal model for it. You have to study humans. One way to study gender is by looking at individuals who don't feel right in their own gender. They have what we call "Gender Dysphoria." They're unhappy about their gender. Some of them may become transsexuals. They actually perform surgery because they're so intensely unhappy about the gender that was attributed to them that they feel the need to change using surgical tools . . . . Hormones have always been thought as the unique or major factor influencing the development of a male or female brain. We now know that hormones cannot explain everything in the making of a brain, whether it's masculine or a feminine brain. But we don't know really what the other factors are . . . . [S]ome of these factors may be genetic. Maybe pieces of the Y chromosome are important at some level in the brain['s] sexual differentiation. Maybe some environmental factors are also important: there are compounds in the environment that are hormone-like, they're estrogen-like for instance, that might play a role in this. These are purely speculative arguments, but those are the kind of things that we are trying to decipher . . . . Sexual orientation is an independent parameter from gender identity . . . . What we know about the mechanisms of gender identity is extremely poor. What we know about the mechanisms of sexual orientation is a little better but it's not clearly understood. It probably is a mixture of a number of factors -- social, environmental, genetic . . . . [We also have to understand intersex.] . . . . Intersex is an intermediate sexual phenotype. This means that this is a state of being in-between what's commonly accepted as male or female at all levels, that is an anatomical level, gonadal level, and brain level, and behavioral level . . . . Complete sex reversal corresponds to the extreme end of the intersex spectrum, where apparently there is no ambiguity of the genitalia at birth, but yet there is a intermediate state, at some level which is either the genetic level or the hormonal level or the brain level. But at birth sex reversal doesn't show. At birth phenotypically they look either male or female. It's only later on during their lives because they usually cannot go through normal puberty, that we find out that they had some intermediate state in terms of either their genetic makeup or their hormonal makeup . . . . The big dream for me and the big challenge in fact, is to understand the mechanisms of gender identity. This is really the big enigma and to me it's also the most important aspect of sex determination to understand because . . . out of all the definitions of sex, gender is the most important. In fact it's how people feel that is important, regardless of what they look like, of what their levels of hormones are, or what their face or genitalia look like. It's what they feel within themselves. That's what's important. And to understand what make[s] gender identity happen at some point in a human life is absolutely fascinating and extremely complicated to study but that's certainly the next challenge in the research in sex determination.

This might seem like a rather long excerpt, but the original piece is so much longer, and also in interview format, that I simply had to radically cut it and leave out most of the original text, but those readers interested in more can go to the link and read the entire fascinating interview.

Dr. Vilain's English is sometimes a bit awkward, but his explanations are usually very clear and tend to support Camille Paglia's advice, namely, that Feminists need to learn more biology . . .

Camille Paglia on Vanishing Manliness

Camille Paglia
Neil Davies
The Wall Street Journal

In seeking potential articles for next year's Academic English students to read, I happened upon a link over at my friend Bill Vallicella's site promising something interesting and controversial written by Bari Weiss about "Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues" (September 28, 2013, The Wall Street Journal):

What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide . . .

That's Paglia's indictment -- quoted by Weiss -- of how feminists in the West are emasculating men and leaving the West defenseless against its still masculine enemies . . . apparently. How is this supposedly happening? Weiss summarizes Paglia's view:

The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead.

Consider the military's status, in Paglia's view:

She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. "The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service -- hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster," she says. "These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too . . . [The elites] literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality."

No sense of evil. That clearly is the problem of the therapeutic left, the leftism that sees no malice, just oppressed victims in need of counseling and rehabilitation, unless the 'evil-doers' happen to belong to some oppressor group, of course, in which case they're beyond the pale, e.g., ghost-white masculine evil-doers. Or soon to be ghost white, unless manliness is rescued from its near-extinction, implies Paglia. What cure can prevent its ultimate death? Here's a beginning:

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a "revalorization" of traditional male trades -- the ones that allow women's studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing).

Paglia has been making this sort of argument rather a lot recently, or maybe I'm simply noticing it more. Anyway, the article is worth reading if you like Paglia -- and worth even more if you don't . . .

An Intellectual Who Can't Fix Things . . .

Mr. Un-Fixit
Fast and Loose with Facts
The Gang of Four

Like too many intellectuals, I don't know how to fix things. Unlike many intellectuals, though, I have done a lot of manual labor. Unfortunately, it was all the unskilled kind. The heavy lifting sort of work that builds muscles but doesn't exercise the brain. I'm glad I don't have to do that sort of work for a living, but I do wish I'd learned about things like plumbing, wiring, carpentry, and the like. I admire men who can do those things. I should add that I admire women who do those things, too. But building and repairing things seems to be mainly a man's world.

That brings me to a fact that I'd never really reflected on before -- and here, in reflecting, is where being an intellectual comes in handy -- but it seems to me that much feminist literature focuses almost entirely upon the dreadful ways in which women's choices have been limited by patriarchy, which apparently lurks everywhere, but says little on the ways in which women's lives have been made easier by the modern world constructed primarily by men. There ought therefore to be some balance in the feminist assessment of men. Yes, there has been patriarchy, but let's think outside of that box for a bit. I was brought to these thoughts by two bloggers I read every day: Malcolm Pollack and Bill Vallicella. Malcolm had noticed some thoughtless musings of Maureen Dowd in a debate:

So now that women don't need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, 'You know we need you in the way we need ice cream -- you'll be more ornamental.'

Malcolm didn't much like that coquettish condescension, so he linked to someone who didn't like it a whole lot more, Mr. Fred Reed, who really pushes men's accomplishments in Ms. Dowd's face:

Listen, Corn Flower. Let's think over this business of obsolete men. Reflect. You live in New York, in which every building was designed and built by men. You perhaps use the subway, designed, built, and maintained by men. You travel in a car, invented, designed, and built by men -- a vehicle that you don't understand (what is a cam lobe?) and couldn't maintain (have you ever changed a tire? Could you even find the tires?), and you do this on roads designed, built, and maintained by men. You fly in aircraft designed, built, and maintained by men, which you do not understand (what, Moon Pie, is a high-bypass turbofan?)

In short, as you run from convention to convention, peeing on hydrants, you depend utterly on men to keep you fed (via tractors designed by men, guided by GPS invented, designed, and launched by men, on farms run by men), and comfy (air conditioning invented . . . but need I repeat myself?)

And the list goes on and on and on, though I think he ought to have left out "peeing on hydrants" (and, anyway, isn't that sort of peeing done exclusively by male dogs). Interestingly, another feminist at the same debate where Ms. Dowd mused about the uselessness of men, Camille Paglia -- hat tip to Bill -- spoke her contrarian mind:

[M]en are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role -- but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

Damn, that almost makes me proud to be a man . . . except that I don't know how to fix things. But I do see that I have a responsibility to point out the role played by men in our modern world whenever men are denigrated solely as useless oppressors.

Not that I intend to be heavy-handed about it . . .

The Pertinent Impertinence of Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia in 2008
Syracuse.com

I found the link to this above photo of Camille Paglia through Google Images, and though it has nothing specifically to do with today's substantive issue, there are connections, for her manner of lesbian feminism precludes neither concern for aesthetic feminine beauty that men can also appreciate, as the photograph shows, nor concern for men's need of a masculine gender role that channels male aggressiveness in a proper direction. But let's see where all this vaguely leads by considering the pertinent impertinence in a couple of her remarks.

In the Janus Forum Debates sponsored by the American University Political Theory Institute on October 8, 2013, Camille Paglia faced off against Jane Flax on the question of "Gender Roles: Nature or Nurture"? Though I haven't read the entire debate, I found Paglia's Opening Statement interesting, especially her final remarks in that statement:

Like late Rome, America too is an empire distracted by games and leisure pursuits. Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force. I close with this question: is a nation whose elite education is increasingly predicated on the neutralization of gender prepared to defend itself against that growing challenge?

Paglia's pertinent question here, which some may consider impertinent, reminds me of her remarks in Tracy Clark-Flory's Salon interview of her, for as I noted in a recent blog entry, she had this to say about global threats faced now and in the future:

The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve -- and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win . . . . The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.

I remarked on this passage's two statements in a response:

These two statements come in response to different questions, but they deserve to be tied together, for Islamism -- though Paglia wasn't focusing solely on specifically this -- poses the greatest threat to the successful secularism of the West and to the rights of women around the world.

This growing threat of Islamism also lies behind Paglia's reference to the "fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force," and we see her concern that "a nation whose elite education is increasingly predicated on the neutralization of gender [might very well prove not] prepared to defend itself against that growing challenge" from Islamists.

I reckon we'll eventually find out whether Paglia's question is pertinent or impertinent . . .

Camille Paglia: Ever Bracing to Read!

Camille Paglia

Salon

In Tracy Clark-Flory's recent Salon interview of Camille Paglia, the ever-bracing Paglia -- who seems to be channeling Samuel Huntington, at least in part -- had this to say about global threats faced now and in the future:

The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve -- and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win . . . . The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.

These two statements come in response to different questions, but they deserve to be tied together, for Islamism -- though Paglia wasn't focusing solely on specifically this -- poses the greatest threat to the successful secularism of the West and to the rights of women around the world.

And to be frank, Islam itself hasn't done much in the world recently for either secularism or women's rights . . .

Feminists Finally Protest Against Islamism?

Amina Tyler

The Atlantic

A photojournalist report, "Femen Stages a 'Topless Jihad,'" in The Atlantic (April 4, 2013) focuses on women going topless in protests across Europe to declare a 'jihad' -- or "struggle" -- against Islamism in demonstrations over the disappearance of a Tunisian, Amina Tyler, who had posted nude photos of her torso online to express her opposition to the Islamist political party currently in power there in the aftermath of the so-called "Arab Spring":

Earlier today, members of Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged protests across Europe as they called for a "topless jihad." The demonstrations were in support of a young Tunisian activist named Amina Tyler. Last month, Tyler posted naked images of herself online, with the words "I own my body; it's not the source of anyone's honor" written on her bare chest. The head of Tunisia's "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," reportedly called for Tyler to be stoned to death for her putatively obscene actions, lest they lead to an epidemic. Tyler has since gone quiet, leading some to fear for her safety.

Stoning, of course, is a great virtue, certainly as opposed to the horrible vice of naked breasts! Speaking of which, there's a necessary warning to those who wish to see the report:

[One can click on the link to see] images from Femen's protests today in Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Belgium, and France. A warning, nearly every photo depicts nudity, and most contain offensive language.

Feminism in the West had long gone silent on Islamist oppression of women -- after being attacked for 'neocolonial' attitudes -- so I think that we should all be happy to see that changing, whatever we might think about nude protests.

The "Femen" -- by the way -- are a Ukrainian Feminist group, so if this is what it takes to wake Western Feminists up, then the Femen are welcome!

Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher!

Margaret Thatcher

Electoral Victory 1979

Peter Marlow / Magnum

Newsweek

I still recall that chant by her opponents, dating from 1971, I think, when Margaret Thatcher was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science in the Heath administration and attempted to cut spending for nonacademic things, including the free milk program for elementary students. Of course, I was too young to be aware of Thatcher at the time, being merely an eighth grader in the isolated Ozarks, and I learned of Thatcher's 'milk-snatching' intentions only later, around 1979, when she became Britain's Prime Minister and I was old enough to have developed some political views and to take an interest in international politics. Having benefitted from free milk as a poor young elementary student, I instinctively disliked Thatcher's conservative politics and found my attention grabbed by the chant.

Now, much older, perhaps slightly wiser, and confronted by the Korean Left's insistence on 'free' lunches for all elementary school students in Seoul, I mutter, "Free lunches? There is no free lunch! Where will the money for these 'free' lunches come from?" As a taxpayer, I know, of course. From me . . . and everybody else, more or less. But in the long run, as society ages in a country whose birthrate is below replacement level, I raise the same question: "Where will all that money come from?" So, I look at Thatcher with different eyes . . .

Newsweek has a fascinating article by Amanda Foreman on this woman whom the Soviets called The Iron Lady: "The New Thatcher Era" (December 26, 2011 - January 2, 2012). Readers can go to the link to read the entire article on how Thatcher predicted the European Union's current problems, so I'll just note an anecdote by Meryl Streep, who plays Thatcher in a new film, for Streep happened to see Thatcher give a speech in 2001, one of the many speeches that she gave after leaving public office:

After she left office, Thatcher's chief occupation became giving speeches, lots and lots of speeches, for lots and lots of money. Streep happened to stumble on one such event while visiting her daughter at Northwestern University: "She delivered the lecture, which was smooth and very controlled. And then she started to take questions. She continued for over an hour and a half, gaining in animation and zeal as she went on. I thought, oh my God, she's absolutely formidable."

In retrospect, I think so, too. She was formidable, great, towering over the men of her era. I didn't appreciate her enough at the time, and I'm saddened to hear of her decline due to the blight of Alzheimers.

I even went out and bought her biography for my daughter, hoping to provide motivation . . .

Friedrich Naumann Foundation's 2010 Freedom Prize: Necla Kelek

Freedom Prize for Necla Kelek

Awarded by Friedrich Naumann Foundation

Ms. Kelek flanked by Wolfgang Gerhardt und Jürgen Morlok

(Image from Friedrich Naumann Stiftung)

I've mentioned in a few blog posts that I met my wife partly through the auspices of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, for we accidentally sat next to each other on a train headed for that foundation's orientation seminar after we had been awarded doctoral research grants. We were sponsored by the Naumann for three years and attended numerous seminars on free enterprise, democracy, and human rights, among other topics of concern for the foundation. At the time, multiculturalism was a much debated concept, but what had not yet become clear, to me anyway, was the distinction between a moderate multiculturalism intrinsic to Europe and a radical multiculturalism extrinsic to it.

I'm scheduled to teach a course next semester at Ewha Womans University for the Division of International Studies on European unification and some of its difficulties, so I've been looking into these issues, which include radical multiculturalism and its denial of universal values. I was therefore interested to note that the Naumann Foundation has awarded its 2010 Freedom Prize (Freiheitspreis) to the Turkish-German feminist Necla Kelek.

In her acceptance speech, "Let's Speak about Freedom" ("Lassen Sie uns über Freiheit sprechen"), Ms. Kelek notes a problem posed for human rights by Islamism in Europe, which I translate somewhat loosely below:

Human dignity, equality between men and women, freedom of expression, conscience and religion, of assembly and freedom of association, the separation of church and state were thenceforth [i.e., after the liberal Revolution of 1848] principles of European society. Although delayed [in full acceptance], equality and freedom came to be reflected in [European] constitutions and laws, and they shaped the value orientation of civil society and constituted European identity, and constitute it even now. Political Islam -- and I mean, for example, the 45 states [actually 57] of the Organization of the Islamic Conference -- place human rights under the rule of sharia, Islam's divine law. The Islamic organizations in Germany emphasize their retention of sharia. Islam and Islamism are thus difficult to separate from each other, for a rejection of secularism and the culture of the West has not only a militant variant, but is at the core of the policy of almost all Islamic institutions.

(Die Würde des Menschen, die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau, Meinungsfreiheit, Gewissens- und Religionsfreiheit, Versammlungs- und Koalitionsfreiheit, die Trennung von Staat und Religion waren fortan Prinzipien der europäischen Gesellschaft und Gleichheit und Freiheit schlugen sich mit Verzögerung in den Verfassungen und Gesetzen nieder und prägten die Wertorientierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, machten und machen die Identität Europas bis heute aus. Der politische Islam -- und ich meine damit zum Beispiel die 45 Staaten der islamischen Konferenz -- stellen die Menschenrechte unter den Vorbehalt der Scharia, ihres göttlichen Rechts. Auch die Islamverbände in Deutschland betonen den Scharia-Vorbehalt. Es ist deshalb schwer, Islam und Islamismus voneinander zu trennen, denn die Ablehnung der Säkularität und der Kultur des Westens hat nicht nur eine militante Variante, sondern ist Kern der Politik fast aller islamischen Institutionen.)

In stating that "Islam and Islamism are . . . difficult to separate from each other, for a rejection of secularism and the culture of the West has not only a militant variant, but is at the core of the policy of almost all Islamic institutions," Ms Kelek touches on an issue that I've also broached, namely, my view that Islamism is radicalism at the core of Islam.

Unfortunately, I lack time today to go further into this speech and its issues, but for those who know German and wish to read more, there's a pdf of the original speech at the Naumann site (as noted above, and also videos). An edited German version titled "Aus Muslimen müssen freie Bürger werden" ("Muslims Must Become Free Citizens") appears in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (November 9, 2010), so if one knows no German, then one can easily copy and paste at Google Translate and get a fairly decent translation.

One can also read a complete English translation of the FAZ edited version at the blog Gates of Vienna, and there may be other sites, possibly translating the original version, but I've not yet found any.

Sandra M. Gilbert on Satan and the Serpentine Eve

Sandra M. Gilbert

Poet and Scholar

(Image from Sandra M. Gilbert Website)

I'm still looking into ways in which John Milton depicts the fallen Eve as 'serpentine' in Paradise Lost. I'm not the only one who's ever thought about this, as yesterday's blog entry demonstrated. Today, I want to excerpt a passage by the feminist scholar Sandra M. Gilbert, from her article of 1978, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," in which she argues that Milton assimilates Eve to Satan:

[E]ven the briefest reflection on Paradise Lost should remind us that, despite Eve's apparent passivity and domesticity, Milton himself seems deliberately to have sketched so many parallels between her and Satan that it is hard at times for the unwary reader to distinguish the sinfulness of one from that of the other. As Stanley Fish has pointed out, for instance, Eve's temptation speech to Adam in Book IX is "a tissue of Satanic echoes," with its central argument, "Look on me. / Do not believe," an exact duplicate of the antireligious empiricism embedded in Satan's earlier temptation speech to her. Moreover, where Adam falls out of uxorious "fondness," out of a self-sacrificing love for Eve, which, at least to the modern reader, seems quite noble, Milton's Eve falls for exactly the same reason that Satan does: because she wants to be "as Gods" and because, like him, she is secretly dissatisfied with her place, secretly preoccupied with questions of "equality." After his fall, Satan makes a pseudo-libertarian speech to his fellow angels in which he asks, "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right / His equals, if in power and splendor less, / In freedom equal?" (V.794-97). After her fall, Eve considers the possibility of keeping the fruit to herself "so to add what wants / In Female Sex, the more to draw [Adam's] Love, / And render me more equal" (IX.821-23).

Again, just as Milton's Satan -- despite his pretensions to equality with the divine -- dwindles from an angel into a dreadful (though subtle) serpent, so Eve is gradually reduced from an angelic being to a monstrous and serpentine creature, listening sadly as Adam thunders, "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best/ Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false / And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, / Like his, and colour Serpentine may show / Thy inward fraud" (X.867-71). (Sandra M. Gilbert, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 93, No. 3 (May, 1978), page 372B)

I excerpted this passage from Gilbert's article after skimming the entire text, but I don't have time to deal with it fully this morning, and I'd first like to read the entire article carefully before commenting -- other than to observe that this looks interesting. Gilbert has noted various parallels in Paradise Lost between the falling and fallen Eve and the falling and fallen Satan, particularly in their reason for rebellion and their manner of tempting others.

More tomorrow, perhaps, but don't forget meantime that Adam is also partly assimilated to the serpentine Satan, as we have already seen in the fact that both are depicted as eating their fill.

Nagla Al Imam: Ex-Muslim convert to Christianity . . . but what of her other views?

Nagla Al Imam

Jewcy.com

(Image from Al-Arabiya TV)

According to the ex-Muslim convert to Christianity Nonie Darwish, in an article "If You Convert You Die" (August 03, 2009) written for Front Page Magazine, the Egyptian feminist Nagla Al Imam has converted from Islam to Christianity:

[The] prominent Egyptian lawyer and women's rights activist, Nagla Al Imam, recently announced her conversion to Christianity in Cairo, Egypt. The announcement brought shock waves in and beyond Egypt. This is perhaps the first case ever of its kind, where a Muslim woman, who is also a Sharia expert, has openly challenged Islamic apostasy laws from within the Muslim world.

Ms. Al Imam's incredible courage was on display in an internet chat room, where she announced that she is not afraid, will stand up for the human rights of apostates and refuses to leave her homeland, Egypt. This was immediately followed by attacks and calls ('fatwas') for death of the 36 year-old graduate of Al Azhar Islamic University.

This is certainly surprising news, especially in light of Ms. Al-Imam's expertise in Sharia -- implying that she understands the deadly consequences -- but in certain respects somewhat less astonishing than the report about this same Al-Imam from last November 18 (2008), when Front Page Magazine posted the MEMRI translation of an interview on Al-Arabiya TV (October 31, 2008):

"Egyptian Lawyer Calls Out For Raping Jewish Girls."

Despite the article's title, Ms. Al-Imam was apparently ambiguous on what, precisely, she was calling for, whether harassment or rape. Asked to clarify the point, she seemed to rule out rape, for when the interviewer inquired, "Does this also include rape?" she replied:

"No. Sexual harassment."

Ms. Al-Imam also explained her reasoning:

"This is a form of resistance. In my opinion, they are fair game for all Arabs, and there is nothing wrong with [it]."

Pressed still further, she explained her justification in calling for this form of 'resistance':

"First of all, they violate our rights, and they 'rape' the land. Few things are as grave as the rape of land. In my view, this is a new form of resistance."

When the interviewer inquired, "As a lawyer, don't you think this might expose Arab youth to punishment for violating laws against sexual harassment?" Ms. Al-Imam replied:

"Most Arab countries . . . [w]ith the exception of three or four Arab countries, which I don't think allow Israeli women to enter anyway, most Arab countries do not have sexual harassment laws. Therefore, if [Arab women] are fair game for Arab men, there is nothing wrong with Israeli women being fair game as well."

Hmmm . . . was she speaking ironically here? She is, after all, a women's rights activist, so she surely does not believe that Arab women "are fair game for Arab men." Did she intend her remarks as criticism of Arab men's treatment of Arab women? If not meant in irony, Ms. Al-Imam's argument is odd, even bizarre. Even if ironic, the argument is overly convoluted.

Whatever she might have intended then, while still Muslim, I'd like to know her views now that she has converted to Christianity. I can't quite imagine that whatever Christian church she has attached herself to would officially affirm her statement on the right of Arab men to sexually harass Israeli women who are visiting Arab countries as tourists.

I respect her courage as an open apostate in a Muslim country (even if that seems rather foolhardy), and I support her free speech to say what she thinks (despite my visceral reaction to her words), but I'd definitely like to know if she genuinely approves of Arab men's right to sexually harassment Israeli women. I'd then better know what to think about her.

Unless her outrageous 'rape' statement and her very public 'conversion' are extreme publicity stunts . . . but to what end?