What qualifies a man to talk about an issue like feminism?

It's my fault PQ, I'm speaking Greek, and I'm only stating things twice, when I should be repeating them at least 3 times. I've been lazy. Nobody to blame but me.

T
K
O

Well TK--you have put some pics on here of you looking dead cool. Swanning about London with Queenie is pretty cool. And a long video. It seemed very long to me but I stuck it out.



As I have been trying to point out TK, despite your studious avoidance of the matter, there are some ladies in this world who would think that deflowering two pure and innocent young ladies is bad enough but having issues with them afterwards is beyond the limits of their exasperation. It shows a lack of respect in that you seem to have assumed that they had no authentic feminine reason for the behaviour which caused you to take the hump. Possibly a disappointment that your gentlemanly comportment before the action had not survived after it. I know because I have been there. But I have felt guilty about it and would never dream of mounting a defence for it. It is ungallant.

And women know this about us. Especially virgins. Or well brought up virgins I should say. A few are like Stendhal's Lamiel and not many of us can cope with that sort.



Here is the root of your chauvinism. It is exactly because of their gender that they behaved as they did. You can't separate them from their gender. The one is the other. You want their feminine qualities up to the action and then afterwards you want them to become all rational and logical like a bloke. Obviously they are going to lose the bloke argument. They are not equipt by nature for rationality and logic. It's evolution's division of labour principle at work. What use is rationality and logic to women when men have plenty for them to take advantage of. It would be a waste. You would get a double dose of logic and rationality otherwise like I suppose they must get in homosexual unions. Probably wouldn't have evolved beyond pond life.

Fair has nothing to do with it.



More or less. You should identify any faults beforehand and make your dispositions accordingly. Not afterwards.



But I said why TK. You compared women, who were Ms Greer's subject, to technological progress. Which, as I said, was ridiculous. If we could improve women like cars or aeroplanes who knows where we would be and even if we knew would it be what we wanted? Gala gave a feminine answer.

And I daresay Gala is fed up with growing up. I am.

That's as illogical and irrational as it gets as an answer to the point I raised. And notice how he failed to quote the definition.

spendius-- when did science condition you to think you were a lowly creature?



True enough, about some men being content in their boring marriages. However, I've encountered a number who need something more in order to stay in the marriage.

Helen Gurley Brown, of Cosmo magazine, advocated in the 60s, that umarried "girls" ought to have affairs with married men-- the only warning was not to fall for him or them, ever.

I think boredom is an equal opportunity striker. Although, I do think most people have unrealistic ideals of what marriage is supposed to be. I had a friend who went through a couple of marriages and one day he said to me quoting from a source I don't remember: "Marriage is the tomb where love goes to die."

Boredom is mostly reserved for people who have no inner lives or who can't find a modicum of happiness or gratitude in the simplest things.



Hillary Clinton has become almost invisible, which I suppose, is her station in the position she holds. As for Mrs. Obama, people have found comfort in her buff arms.


Touche.

I suppose it started with that "women and children" first saying. Then Rider Haggard. The wars. And finding out there were 200 million infusoria, twice a day, to every egg once every couple of years. It must have built up I suppose.

It was an attitude which melted the hearts of the cuddly ones I found so I guess that reinforced it. One never hears of ladies swimming across crocodile infested rivers to reach a chap. It's embedded in the folklore.



That's disgraceful. She was no feminist. I hope nobody took any notice.



That's pretty dire as well. It sounds like a rationalistion of failure. Most blokes would give their lives for their wife.



I think the opposite. I think hyper-activity is for those sort of people, larded with constant and insistent assertions of how happy and fulfilled they are. Such activity, it seems to me, is exactly what prevents them finding those things.

Camille Paglia said the same thing, although she lacks the humor and she used the example of pearl divers who risk their lives to adorn women in jewels.

No, it's not disgraceful what H. Gurley Brown said. I think a lot of women took her advice and were liberated. I have a self-help book from the 60s where a woman complains because her husband "pays more attention to his secretary" than he does to her. The narrator promptly scolds the wife; "Well, no wonder, look at you, you've gotten so fat!"



I guess that's a matter of perspective. As dire as it may sound domestic tranquilty is not for everyone.


Yeah, but hyperactive means you don't settle down enough to have an inner life. So you can add them to the list, too.

I'm sorry Gala but it's Trivia time just now. There's some MCP stuff on there.

But all that is oversimplified and lacks an appreciation of the Faustian dynamics of value. Camille is, I'm afraid, not really at the races. Possibly deliberately.

What if, for example, a principle of class distinction is at work. My example, and her's, can be seen with dogs. Suppose, having swum the river or dived for pearls, the chap discovers that the superior female requires further sacrifice. That the pearls, which she has cabinets full of, and the risky swim, are sufficient to entrance the ordinary woman. She is bored with material inducements. She seeks intellectual sacrifices. She seeks power over the male and exhibitions of it. She wishes to feel "deserved". The opera Turandot is an example. But Sabina Poppaea and Madame de Pompadour are real life examples. What did Eva Peron love if it wasn't Argentina?

Sabina was quite a handful. She toyed with various cultic mysteries to give expression to her whimsical fervours which changed as readily as the winds do. She had a porphyry bath which was surrounded by mirrors of polished silver in which she could contemplate the charms which bound her man. She bathed in asses milk. It took 400 asses to keep up with her demands. 400 beasts of that type take some managing. And these accompanied her whenever she fancied a trip. Along with the retinue required to guide them because asses without guidance are known to be promiscuous in their peregrinations. And they must be fed and housed in a manner which was deemed to produce milk with the necessary qualities in regard to skin toning.

In repose she wore a face mask to protect her from the air. To keep her hands soft and gentle crocodile mucus was employed which required a skilled team of crocodile mucus gatherers to be posted up the Nile beyond the frontiers of the Empire and transportation of this valuable substance and its presentation in her chambers, in onyx or gold containers encrusted with jewels, was in the hands of high officials who needed large salaries so that their own wives could imitate Sabina and by doing so validate her customary habits taking care, of course, not to attempt to outshine her.

After bathing, her attendants, who she stuck pins into if they displeased her, dried her off with towels woven with swansdown and they stroked her tongue with ivory sticks to render it soft and velvety. She was maintained by a whole range of specialists. No-one could touch her hair unless they had been trained in Cyprus. Her perfumiers were adepts in the arcana of arousing odours and were drawn from all corners of the known world. Her clothes were from Alexandria. All these items were stored in highly polished and perfumed boxes made of rare timber from the high passes of Asia and inlaid with anything which sparkled and was difficult and dangerous to obtain and bring back to Rome and were housed in a complex of rooms the dimensions and furnishing of which can easily be imagined.

One department of her body bureaucracy was solely concerned with the lacing of her shoes and sandals.

Nero's "squeeze", as she was known by the rank and file of the fighting men, wore her hair all aound her brow and as far as the rosy shells of her ears in three rings of small curls made with heated tubes of turquoise from Persia, alike and symmetrical, while the rest, drawn back and rolled over her slender nape, was held in position by little chains and rings of gold. The hairpins were fashioned by skilled craftsmen from pearls brought from the shores of the Indian Ocean in the shape of javelins. Agean pearls were for ladies of the lower stations.

She had white ribbons, embroidered with precious stones, to tie her chignon when it looked as if it might rain. Her ear-rings consisted of three diamonds which were so arranged that they tinkled when she moved her head. Whether other parts of her body were similarly accoutered the historians have not seen fit to relate

The soles of her kid slippers were of gold leaf and thus were quickly worn out on the marble floors but just as quickly replaced by the miners in Spain and the spoils of the looting of the provinces and lands beyond the frontiers and they were fastened to her ravishing instep with golden cords and the finest silk adventurers and entrepreneurs could find in China.

In between her head and her feet it got a bit ridiculous but Nero loved her madly and she knew the third Canto of Ovid's Ars Amatoria off by heart.

Looking at her scientifically, which is all we can do now, she was a one woman job creation scheme and it is a good thing Nero had plently of helpers because there is no way he could have kept up with her on his Jack Jones.

She was femininity in its most attenuated mode. She wrecked the state finances and when it all came on top Nero committed suicide in order to avoid the punishment the Senate voted him to suffer. Poppaea was allowed to retire to a villa on the shores of the Adriatic because nobody blamed her as she was thought to have acted perfectly naturally in all the circumstances.

The auctioneer's catalogue of the sale of Madame de Pompadour's effects after she died is still extant. I have read the first few pages of it.

It is important to realise Gala that the infiltration of media by those who have an interest in keeping men in a high state of sexual arousal and expectation is bound, by inexorable laws, to result in a mass hysteria of the sort I have roughly outlined and thus it is a simple matter to place the responsibility for the banking crisis firmly at Media's door. Which is why Media is running around like a flock of squawking chickens blaming everybody else.

And it is why Camille, a media woman, contents herself with such a trite example of the forces in play and thus make them sound trivial and easy to distance oneself from.

One cannot reasonably discuss feminism in relation to women who have few choices. It is the ones who had choices we should study. Only they display femininity in its true colours.

I definitely think Camille Paglia's approach is deliberate. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading her very topical book, the one with Nefertiti on the cover, because she had the media/exposure in mind; she went for maximum coverage, not depth.

In many ways, she's what Ann Coulter is to Liberals, a hyperactive pain in the ass. I went to see her give a talk, but it turned out to be more of battle, she enraged so many women in the audience. She swilled Coke the whole time. I remember thinking, doesn't this woman get exhausted from all her defensive spewing? Still, I liked her shallow defense of the pearl fishers risking their lives.

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation of the excesses of those women who could afford to live in style. In retrospect, we have them to thank for many museum exhibits, as well as the one's not told about here. I recall seeing a gorgeous Byzantine exhibit of the jewels worn by the priviledged and being stunned by the gorgeousness of the jewels. I suppose being in the company of those women could be nothing short of torture or the equivilent in modern times is the tyrant boss who you live in fear of.

Nonetheless, as you've pointed out, they kept people in jobs, although in many ways tending to the needs of these woman required highly skilled artisans, not the peasants.

You use the word media with a capital M, I am confused, at fist I thought this was a woman from mythology, but then I realized I confused it with Medusa...

I mean Medea.

Medusa was better. Seeing her turned men into stone which is not unlike what Media does. Medea was also a bit witchy. But I don't suppose they would have come down in the annals were they not--eh?

Media was a province in Asia south of the Caspian Sea, east of Armenia, north of Persia and west of Parthia. Thus a trade nexus.

So both are candidates as is the word mediate. The middle-man and thus not to be trusted.

The ladies I referred to were prostitutes. They could only afford to live in style on their professional skills which, by the nature of things, must have been extraordinary.

The jewels you saw were probably those of Theodora who was Justinian's wife and thus Empress. She was an ex-prostitute as well and a very nasty piece of work.

The Financial Times reported this morning that a peeress of the realm had said the women have the choice between "attaching" themselves to a man or joining the workforce.

Obviously, the expression "the workforce" means different things to the high-profile, well-paid, office-setting of the small minority of militants than it does to the vast majority of ordinary women who are the real salt of the earth.

What better than to let the swansong of this once promising thread be Bob Dylan's funny version of his famous song Just Like a Woman.

If you don't know the words it's probably just as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKbYJ6jKdo