Word: paglia
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...Paglia, for one, sees men and women for what they are--not for what we'd like them...
Prudence is better than idealism. Mansfield and Paglia reject the naivete of idealism and advocate prudence instead. Prudence is a political and personal virtue suited for real humans who inhabit a world filled with danger, risk, irrationality, prejudice, conflict and instability. Other words for prudence are realism, common sense and street smarts...
...particular, were never noble savages--they're natural savages. "Hunt, pursuit, and capture are biologically programmed into male sexuality," Paglia writes. "Generation after generation, men must be educated, refined, and ethically persuaded away from their tendency toward anarchy and brutishness. Society is not the enemy, as feminism ignorantly claims. Society is woman's protection against rape." Men's natural biological instincts--not society--tell men to ravish women...
What does prudence say about rape? Paglia says it succinctly: "Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in a totalitarian society." Given certain intractable facts about men and sex, there is an inevitable trade off between safety and freedom. There is no way women will be able to "take back the night" completely. Individual prudence and responsibility will have to take up the slack. Paglia blasts feminists for blinding women to the this simple fact. "A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot," She writes. "Feminists call this 'blaming...
...Paglia and Mansfield teach us that the purpose of justice should not be, as some would have it, to make the world ideal. Given human nature and the fact that people don't agree on what the ideal society should look like, making the world ideal would entail an unacceptable amount of coercion. It's true that liberty has its own costs and hazards, including risk, conflict, hostility, insecurity--even rape. But like the very first liberals, paglia and Mansfield both think the price of freedom is worth paying...