I didn’t expect to get sucked into such a Gloria Steinem rabbit hole, but there’s just too much irresistible stuff here, and the best time to surface it is while the reverential tributes are still coming in hot and heavy.
Compare and contrast Gloria Steinem with Camille Paglia, a truly original thinker and trailblazing "feminist". Leaps and bounds ahead of Gloria Steinem intellectually, academically, and by any other metric you might come up with (beyond magazine covers...) Everything about Gloria Steinem reminds me of the fabulous Tom Wolfe book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. The ultimate virtue-signaling poseur, on countless covers of every fashion magazine you can think of. How subversive... LOL
She dumped on Cosby & Weinstein who were obviously FRAMED with FALSE charges. She also called for the castration of rapists at West point all-male military college who were foolish enough to even let her make a speech and actually applauded her like the bunch of pussies they are. Consider 60% of w0e-MEN in the military have LIED about rape according to an Airforce study back in the 1990s
This is from AI so it could be wrong, but is the best info on this specific topic I could find:
Did Camille Paglia say anything about castrating rapists?
No, Camille Paglia did not advocate for castrating rapists. In fact, her controversial stance on rape and male aggression is based on the exact opposite logic. Paglia is a biological determinist who views rape as an extension of a male "hunting reflex" and an expression of raw, chaotic nature. Because she believes these violent impulses are hardwired into male biology rather than socially constructed, her arguments focus on civilization's duty to restrain men and women's need for tactical vigilance, rather than attempting to alter men's bodies or minds through measures like castration.
The idea of castrating rapists is a viewpoint historically associated with different corners of the political spectrum or radical anti-pornography/anti-rape feminists of the 1970s and 1980s (such as Andrea Dworkin), whom Paglia famously detested and frequently publicly criticized.
You're really going to defend Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein while calling Camille Paglia a "douche bag"? "You're killing me, Smalls!"
I'm not intimately familiar with your West Point case here. Still, there have been many cases of female soldiers reporting abuse and the military circling the wagons to defend those accused of that abuse.
While some, or even many, of those accusations may be false, and we've seen plenty of that, it doesn't mean that they all are. It's a very dicey subject, and as much as I believe the accused have every right to due process, the accusers, likewise, have the right to present their case.
I’m proud to say I never bought a copy of Ms. magazine. Gloria Steinem always seemed to me to be an opportunist and, like every opportunist, have no core values that didn’t align with self-promotion. She supported Clinton (I’m guessing) as she and the Clintons are fellow travelers on the road to getting whatever they want no matter the damage to others.
In the few interviews I saw her questioned about abortion, I thought her attitude dismissive and contemptuous toward anyone who objected to abortion on demand. Anyone who dared to say not every abortion was about the life of the mother, incest or rape and should be regulated closely, she acted as if every unwanted pregnancy met those criteria.
Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant left-leaning intellectual (how often can you say that?)
wrote the ultimate Clinton Inc. takedown, Nobody Left to Lie To. He also torpedoed Mother Theresa in a book titled The Missionary Position. Hitch had the balls to take on all of the liberal pieties that were considered untouchable by the leftist media of his time. He was the original South Park, and God bless him for it.
Roe v. Wade was supposed to guarantee abortion would be "safe, legal, and rare." Safe and legal, it delivered, but like everything else about the left, give them an inch, and they'll take a mile. Rare... not so much. 1 million annually, and the overwhelming majority are black (if only to be an underrepresented segment of the population here...) The left generally considers ethnic cleansing on a far smaller scale genocide, but don't seem to give much of a rip about this one! Just look at where most of the Planned Parenthood "clinics/butcheries" are located. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and original eugenicist (limiting birth rates among "undesirable populations"), has got to be smiling up from Hell!
Steinem understood how to accrue the social power she craved above all else, knowing that influence and wealth reinforce and multiply each other.
Steinem served Steinem, faithfully and well.
That she did so by leveraging the credulity and fecklessness of others, is an unexceptional observation; her appeals to negative emotion are part of the standard playbook used by narcissistic mediocrities seeking personal gain.
I do enjoy reading your work, sir. I always appreciate (even if I don’t agree with) the support you provide for the positions you take. It’s very refreshing.
I know you want to believe I have split personalities or something depending on the topic, but unfortunately for you, it's all the same "me," operating with the same general epistemic principles.
Now it's OK to strangle 3 of your own children. Girl power! "You've come a long way, baby!" I know Michael Tracey has been somewhat defensive of Ms. Clancy in this case, or at least hostile to those who aren't, and I don't disagree with him. To me, strangling 3 of your own children is, just on the face of it, not the act of a rational, sane human being. Game, set, match for me. It really is that simple. She's obviously, at least to my mind, what I would hope would be considered legally insane. If she has any humanity at all, she will pay for her crime for the rest of her life, and that's, quite frankly, more than I would wish on anyone.
The point of most of this being, you gotta wonder how much of this feminist girl power, fuck the patriarchy bullshit is driving women on the edge of sanity, over it. No doubt, motherhood and postpartum depression are real issues that have to be dealt with, but it does feel like the radical feminists are greasing the skids to defend and excuse these most tragic outcomes.
That being said, I've told my adult son, because my wife has made it so clear to me, how much bullshit we put on our women without meaning to or even realizing that we're doing it. We work, they work. We may make more money, but they are still expected to take care of the home, the children, and so much more. I so wish that I understood this so much better 20 years ago but here we are...
i mean i’m open to having less historic figures to admire. I’m a woman and call myself feminist. I like her overall but sure, imperfect. What you’ve provided here in your efforts to highlight her unoriginal ways and substance free commentary is also a bunch of inconsequential fluff. I was looking for something meatier i think.
NO, I don't believe in shrinks. Psychology is a pseudo-science. READ THE BIBLE.
JEWISH mothers KILLED the MALE children for thousands of years as offerings to Moloch the Canaanite God. Jews are conspicuously sympathetic to fe-MALE child murderers because it's in their genes.
Gloria did not originate the "Fish and Bicycle" idiocy, but she promoted it until the end. Such a damaging philosophy/slogan. We've seen it morphed into "A girl without a father is like a fish without a bicycle" with single moms by (whose?) choice, lying to themselves and their kids that the hole in their lives is imaginary.
Gender is “probably the most restricting force in American life,” whether regarding domestic roles or the White House. The U.S. ranks low among democracies in electing women and polarizes gender roles more than average.
Historical pattern: Black men gained the vote roughly half a century before women of any race, and men of color have generally reached high positions (military, boardrooms, etc.) before women.
A female version of Obama (she suggests the name “Achola Obama”) would not have succeeded with the same charisma or style; emotional displays acceptable from men would be judged differently for women.
camille paglia quotes about gloria steinem from grokt
Camille Paglia has repeatedly criticized Gloria Steinem as a symbol of what she sees as the rigid, man-bashing, establishment wing of second-wave feminism. She has called Steinem a “Stalinist,” a socialite, and someone who failed to evolve, while sometimes acknowledging her early role in making feminism more mainstream.
Here are some of the most cited Paglia quotes and statements about Steinem:
Playboy interview (May 1995)
“She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She’s a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she’s out having her hair streaked at Kenneth’s. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her.”
On Steinem’s marriage (widely attributed)
“Gloria Steinem’s marriage is proof positive of the emotional desperation of ageing feminists who for over 30 years worshiped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms.”
As you note, in "Right Candidates, Wrong Opinions" (NYT, 7 Feb 2007), Steinem claims to quote Gunnar Myrdal. The antepenultimate (love that word!) paragraph of Steinem's op-ed reads:
<< But those activists were reinventing the wheel. They were rediscovering Gunnar Myrdal’s verdict of the 1940s that “the parallel between women and Negroes is the deepest truth of American life, for together they form the unpaid or underpaid labor on which America runs.” >>
As far as I can tell, the precise words between the quotation marks do NOT appear in Myrdal's 1944 opus, AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: THE NEGRO PROBLEM AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.274820/]. The closest statement in the book seems to be in the final paragraph of Appendix 5, "A Parallel to the Negro Problem." This paragraph (on page 1078) reads:
<< In drawing a parallel between the position of, and feeling toward, women and Negroes we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture. Although it is changing, atavistic elements sometimes unexpectedly break through even in the most emancipated individuals. The similarities in the women’s and the Negroes’ problems are not accidental. They were, as we have pointed out, originally determined in a paternalistic order of society. The problems remain, even though paternalism is gradually declining as an ideal and is losing its economic basis. In the final analysis, women are still hindered in their competition by the function of procreation; Negroes are laboring under the yoke of the doctrine of unassimilability which has remained although slavery is abolished. The second barrier is actually much stronger than the first in America today. But the first is more eternally inexorable. >> [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.274820/page/1077/mode/2up?q=%22fundamental+basis%22]
It is, of course, possible that Myrdal elsewhere epitomized this sentiment in the precise words Steinem quotes. More likely, it seems to me, is that Steinem ended up putting words into Myrdal's mouth while quoting from memory. Whether Steinem's putative quotation accurately captures Myrdal's thesis, expressed repeatedly throughout the book, is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
Another person came to mind while reading this and that is Barry O. "They" give the public an attractive person to push their agenda, but when what is wished to be accomplished is achieved they release the attractive person into the wild which is when we discover said person is an airhead.🫥
Compare and contrast Gloria Steinem with Camille Paglia, a truly original thinker and trailblazing "feminist". Leaps and bounds ahead of Gloria Steinem intellectually, academically, and by any other metric you might come up with (beyond magazine covers...) Everything about Gloria Steinem reminds me of the fabulous Tom Wolfe book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. The ultimate virtue-signaling poseur, on countless covers of every fashion magazine you can think of. How subversive... LOL
Camille Paglia is an ugly douche bag also. A feminist shill and a KOOK
LOL. Thanks for weighing in.
She dumped on Cosby & Weinstein who were obviously FRAMED with FALSE charges. She also called for the castration of rapists at West point all-male military college who were foolish enough to even let her make a speech and actually applauded her like the bunch of pussies they are. Consider 60% of w0e-MEN in the military have LIED about rape according to an Airforce study back in the 1990s
This is from AI so it could be wrong, but is the best info on this specific topic I could find:
Did Camille Paglia say anything about castrating rapists?
No, Camille Paglia did not advocate for castrating rapists. In fact, her controversial stance on rape and male aggression is based on the exact opposite logic. Paglia is a biological determinist who views rape as an extension of a male "hunting reflex" and an expression of raw, chaotic nature. Because she believes these violent impulses are hardwired into male biology rather than socially constructed, her arguments focus on civilization's duty to restrain men and women's need for tactical vigilance, rather than attempting to alter men's bodies or minds through measures like castration.
The idea of castrating rapists is a viewpoint historically associated with different corners of the political spectrum or radical anti-pornography/anti-rape feminists of the 1970s and 1980s (such as Andrea Dworkin), whom Paglia famously detested and frequently publicly criticized.
I was going to go look into her but yeah castration for crime that's generally really hard to prove => no. Cite on that though
You're really going to defend Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein while calling Camille Paglia a "douche bag"? "You're killing me, Smalls!"
I'm not intimately familiar with your West Point case here. Still, there have been many cases of female soldiers reporting abuse and the military circling the wagons to defend those accused of that abuse.
While some, or even many, of those accusations may be false, and we've seen plenty of that, it doesn't mean that they all are. It's a very dicey subject, and as much as I believe the accused have every right to due process, the accusers, likewise, have the right to present their case.
I’m proud to say I never bought a copy of Ms. magazine. Gloria Steinem always seemed to me to be an opportunist and, like every opportunist, have no core values that didn’t align with self-promotion. She supported Clinton (I’m guessing) as she and the Clintons are fellow travelers on the road to getting whatever they want no matter the damage to others.
In the few interviews I saw her questioned about abortion, I thought her attitude dismissive and contemptuous toward anyone who objected to abortion on demand. Anyone who dared to say not every abortion was about the life of the mother, incest or rape and should be regulated closely, she acted as if every unwanted pregnancy met those criteria.
Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant left-leaning intellectual (how often can you say that?)
wrote the ultimate Clinton Inc. takedown, Nobody Left to Lie To. He also torpedoed Mother Theresa in a book titled The Missionary Position. Hitch had the balls to take on all of the liberal pieties that were considered untouchable by the leftist media of his time. He was the original South Park, and God bless him for it.
Roe v. Wade was supposed to guarantee abortion would be "safe, legal, and rare." Safe and legal, it delivered, but like everything else about the left, give them an inch, and they'll take a mile. Rare... not so much. 1 million annually, and the overwhelming majority are black (if only to be an underrepresented segment of the population here...) The left generally considers ethnic cleansing on a far smaller scale genocide, but don't seem to give much of a rip about this one! Just look at where most of the Planned Parenthood "clinics/butcheries" are located. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and original eugenicist (limiting birth rates among "undesirable populations"), has got to be smiling up from Hell!
Steinem understood how to accrue the social power she craved above all else, knowing that influence and wealth reinforce and multiply each other.
Steinem served Steinem, faithfully and well.
That she did so by leveraging the credulity and fecklessness of others, is an unexceptional observation; her appeals to negative emotion are part of the standard playbook used by narcissistic mediocrities seeking personal gain.
I do enjoy reading your work, sir. I always appreciate (even if I don’t agree with) the support you provide for the positions you take. It’s very refreshing.
She was a spook. Nothing more banal than propaganda.
Can you lock the other Michael in a moldy cistern or something and let us keep this one permanently?
I know you want to believe I have split personalities or something depending on the topic, but unfortunately for you, it's all the same "me," operating with the same general epistemic principles.
Well. I disagree with that final clause of your reply.
I wonder what she would have had to say about the Lindsey Clancy trial, given the hold out juror is African-American
Steinem and the wave of feminist silliness sent women from "Mom's & Wives" to the land of discontent and regret. I want to go back!
Now it's OK to strangle 3 of your own children. Girl power! "You've come a long way, baby!" I know Michael Tracey has been somewhat defensive of Ms. Clancy in this case, or at least hostile to those who aren't, and I don't disagree with him. To me, strangling 3 of your own children is, just on the face of it, not the act of a rational, sane human being. Game, set, match for me. It really is that simple. She's obviously, at least to my mind, what I would hope would be considered legally insane. If she has any humanity at all, she will pay for her crime for the rest of her life, and that's, quite frankly, more than I would wish on anyone.
The point of most of this being, you gotta wonder how much of this feminist girl power, fuck the patriarchy bullshit is driving women on the edge of sanity, over it. No doubt, motherhood and postpartum depression are real issues that have to be dealt with, but it does feel like the radical feminists are greasing the skids to defend and excuse these most tragic outcomes.
That being said, I've told my adult son, because my wife has made it so clear to me, how much bullshit we put on our women without meaning to or even realizing that we're doing it. We work, they work. We may make more money, but they are still expected to take care of the home, the children, and so much more. I so wish that I understood this so much better 20 years ago but here we are...
i mean i’m open to having less historic figures to admire. I’m a woman and call myself feminist. I like her overall but sure, imperfect. What you’ve provided here in your efforts to highlight her unoriginal ways and substance free commentary is also a bunch of inconsequential fluff. I was looking for something meatier i think.
Gloria Steinem was an EVIL FEMINIST MONSTER, and her ilk cut the Jewish race down to as 2% minority due to infanticide which is biblical.
i actually cringed in embarrassment reading your comment. You sound so ill. Like a bad stereotype as old as time. Go to the doctor.
NO, I don't believe in shrinks. Psychology is a pseudo-science. READ THE BIBLE.
JEWISH mothers KILLED the MALE children for thousands of years as offerings to Moloch the Canaanite God. Jews are conspicuously sympathetic to fe-MALE child murderers because it's in their genes.
bye now
These Cult Occultist Sadistic Psychopaths, shouldnt be given any air time by humanity .
Wonderful writing
Gloria did not originate the "Fish and Bicycle" idiocy, but she promoted it until the end. Such a damaging philosophy/slogan. We've seen it morphed into "A girl without a father is like a fish without a bicycle" with single moms by (whose?) choice, lying to themselves and their kids that the hole in their lives is imaginary.
Steinem on Women vs. Black men. Race v. Gender
1971 Smith College graduation address
34:46. Even if women were paid equally for the work they already
34:51 do, it would revolutionize the economy because a woman, a white woman with a college education
34:58 working full time makes less money than a black man with a high school education working
35:02 full time. There are other kinds of suffering involved. I don't mean to equate the two things,
35:08 but it is true that women earn only about 60% of their income.
Steinem's 1.8.2008 NYT oped "Women Are Never Front Runners
OpEd
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html
From Grok summary:
Gender is “probably the most restricting force in American life,” whether regarding domestic roles or the White House. The U.S. ranks low among democracies in electing women and polarizes gender roles more than average.
Historical pattern: Black men gained the vote roughly half a century before women of any race, and men of color have generally reached high positions (military, boardrooms, etc.) before women.
A female version of Obama (she suggests the name “Achola Obama”) would not have succeeded with the same charisma or style; emotional displays acceptable from men would be judged differently for women.
camille paglia quotes about gloria steinem from grokt
Camille Paglia has repeatedly criticized Gloria Steinem as a symbol of what she sees as the rigid, man-bashing, establishment wing of second-wave feminism. She has called Steinem a “Stalinist,” a socialite, and someone who failed to evolve, while sometimes acknowledging her early role in making feminism more mainstream.
Here are some of the most cited Paglia quotes and statements about Steinem:
Playboy interview (May 1995)
“She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She’s a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she’s out having her hair streaked at Kenneth’s. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her.”
On Steinem’s marriage (widely attributed)
“Gloria Steinem’s marriage is proof positive of the emotional desperation of ageing feminists who for over 30 years worshiped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms.”
As you note, in "Right Candidates, Wrong Opinions" (NYT, 7 Feb 2007), Steinem claims to quote Gunnar Myrdal. The antepenultimate (love that word!) paragraph of Steinem's op-ed reads:
<< But those activists were reinventing the wheel. They were rediscovering Gunnar Myrdal’s verdict of the 1940s that “the parallel between women and Negroes is the deepest truth of American life, for together they form the unpaid or underpaid labor on which America runs.” >>
As far as I can tell, the precise words between the quotation marks do NOT appear in Myrdal's 1944 opus, AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: THE NEGRO PROBLEM AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.274820/]. The closest statement in the book seems to be in the final paragraph of Appendix 5, "A Parallel to the Negro Problem." This paragraph (on page 1078) reads:
<< In drawing a parallel between the position of, and feeling toward, women and Negroes we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture. Although it is changing, atavistic elements sometimes unexpectedly break through even in the most emancipated individuals. The similarities in the women’s and the Negroes’ problems are not accidental. They were, as we have pointed out, originally determined in a paternalistic order of society. The problems remain, even though paternalism is gradually declining as an ideal and is losing its economic basis. In the final analysis, women are still hindered in their competition by the function of procreation; Negroes are laboring under the yoke of the doctrine of unassimilability which has remained although slavery is abolished. The second barrier is actually much stronger than the first in America today. But the first is more eternally inexorable. >> [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.274820/page/1077/mode/2up?q=%22fundamental+basis%22]
It is, of course, possible that Myrdal elsewhere epitomized this sentiment in the precise words Steinem quotes. More likely, it seems to me, is that Steinem ended up putting words into Myrdal's mouth while quoting from memory. Whether Steinem's putative quotation accurately captures Myrdal's thesis, expressed repeatedly throughout the book, is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
Another person came to mind while reading this and that is Barry O. "They" give the public an attractive person to push their agenda, but when what is wished to be accomplished is achieved they release the attractive person into the wild which is when we discover said person is an airhead.🫥