Master Qui-Gon, sir,
Wait, I’m Tired…!
I’m trying to keep
Something Alive,
and I don’t think
I can do it…..
Anakin..!!
DROP!!
Why Do We
Fall, Bruce…?
“And so, this is one of the reasons I think
Men are bailing-out of
so much of academia,
and maybe
The Academic World in general.
And maybe,
The World in general…..
"So, part of The Problem is,
Men actually don’t have
any idea
How to Compete
with Women.
Because The Problem is that
if you unleash yourself completely,
then you’re an
Absolute Bully.
And there’s no
doubt about that,
because even if
Men unleash themselves
on other Men,
that can be pretty goddamn
brutal, especially for
The Men that’re
really tough.
And so that just
Doesn’t Happen
with Women, ever.
So you can’t
unleash yourself completely --
Because,
If You Win,
You’re a Bully;
and If You Lose,
well, You’re just
bloody pathetic.
So, How The Hell are
You supposed to play
A Game like that…?”
The Father, Senex,
Lord of The Dance :
You Know — I’ve learned
a few things over The Years :
Ye can’t….
Ye can’t make An Omelette,
without crackin’ some eggs…
What Doesn’t Kill Ye,
makes Ye Stronger;
We ARE — What We Eat.
You Buy Cheap,
You Buy Twice.
The Open HAND,
has The Strongest Grip.
•NEVER• parachute
into an area,
Y’ve just BOMBED….
PAGLIA :
I can remember, still,
the life of the agrarian era -
which was for most of Human History -
The Agrarian Era, where
there was The World of Men,
and The World of Women.
And the sexes had very little
to do with each other.
Each had Power and Status
in its own realm.
And they laughed
at each other,
in essence.
The Women had enormous power.
In fact, The Older Women ruled, not
The Young Beautiful Women like today.
But the older you were the more
you had control over everyone,
including the mating and marriage.
There were no Doctors,
so The Old Women were like midwives
and knew all the ins and outs
and [had] inherited knowledge
about pregnancy and
all these other things.
I can remember this.
And the joy that women had
with each other all day long.
Cooking with each other,
being companions to each other,
talking, conversing.
My Mother remembered,
as a small child in Italy,
when it was time to
Do The Laundry
they would take The Laundry
up The Hill to The Fountain
and do it by hand.
They would sing, they would picnic, and so on.
We get a glimpse of that in the Odyssey when Odysseus is thrown up naked on the shores of Phaeacia and he hears the sound of women, young women, laughing and singing. And it’s Nausicaa, the princess, bringing the women to do the laundry. It’s exactly the same thing. So there was. . .
Each gender had its OWN hierarchy, its OWN values, its OWN way of talking. And the sexes RARELY intersected.
I can remember in my childhood in a holiday - it could be a Christmas, it could be a Thanksgiving, whatever - women would be cooking all day long, everyone would sit down to eat, and then after that the women would retire en masse to the kitchen. And the men would go. . . I would look at them through the window and see all the men. The men would be all outside, usually gathered around the car - at a time when cars didn’t work as well as they do today - with the hood up. And the men would be standing with their hands on their hips like that. Everyone’s staring at the engine. That’s how I learned men were refreshing themselves by studying something technical and mechanical after being with the women during the dinner.
So all of these problems of today are the direct consequence of women’s emancipation and freedom from housework thanks to capitalism, which made it possible for women to have jobs outside the home for the very first time in the nineteenth century. No longer to be dependent on husband or father or brother.
So this great thing that’s happened to us, allowing us to be totally self-supporting, independent agents has produced all this animosity between men and women, because women feel unhappy. Women today - wherever I go, whether it’s Italy or Brazil or England or America or Toronto - the upper-middle class professional women are unhappy, miserable. And they don’t know why they’re unhappy. They want to blame it on men. The men must change. Men must become more like women. No. That is the wrong way to go. It’s when men are men, and understand themselves as men, are secure as men - then you’re going to be happier.
Peterson: There’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man.
Paglia: Absolutely. Especially all these quislings spouting feminist rhetoric. When I hear that it makes me sick. But here’s the point. Men and women have never worked side by side, ever. Maybe on the farms when you were like. . . Maybe one person is in the potato field and the other one is over here doing tomatoes, or whatever. You had families working side by side, exhausted with each other. No time to have any clash of this. It was a collaborative effort on farms and so on. Never in all of human history have men and women been working side by side. And women are now. . . The pressure about Silicon Valley - they’re all so sexist, they don’t allow women in, and so on. Men are being men in Silicon Valley.
Peterson: Especially the engineers.
Paglia: And the women are demanding that. . . ‘Oh, this is terrible, you’re being sexist.’ Maybe the sexes have their own particular form of rhetoric, their own particular form of identity. Maybe we need to reexamine this business about. . . Maybe we have to perhaps accept some degree of tension and conflict between the sexes in a work environment.
I don’t mean harassment. I’m talking about women feeling disrespected. Somehow their opinions, when they express them, are not taken seriously. Even Hillary Clinton is complaining. When a woman writes something online she’s attacked immediately. Everyone is attacked online. What are you talking about? The world is tough. The world is competitive. Identity is honed by conflict. The idea that there should be no conflict, that we have to be in this bath of approbation. . . It’s infantile.
Peterson: That’s right. It’s absolutely infantile. Okay, so, a couple of things there. Well the first thing is that the agreeableness trait that divides men and women 16
most. . . There’s three things that divide women and men most particularly from the psychometric perspective. One is that women are more agreeable than men, and so that seems to be the primary maternal dimension as far as I can tell. It’s associated with a desire to avoid conflict. But it’s associated with interpersonal closeness, compassion, politeness. Women are reliably higher than men, especially in the Scandinavian countries and in the countries where egalitarianism has progressed the farthest. So that’s where the difference is maximized, which is one of the things James Damore pointed out quite correctly in his infamous Google Memo. Women are higher in negative emotion. So that’s anxiety and emotional pain. That difference is approximately the same size. And again that maximizes in egalitarian societies, which is extremely interesting. And then the biggest difference is the difference in interest between people and things. And so women are more interested in people, and men are more interested in things, which goes along quite nicely with your car anecdote. But the thing about men interacting with men again is that it isn’t that they respect each other’s viewpoints. That’s not exactly right. What happens with a man. . . I know a lot of men that I would regard as remarkably tough people for one reason or another. And everything you do with them is a form of combat. Like if you want your viewpoint taken seriously, often you have to yell them down. They’re not going to stop talking unless you start talking over them. It’s not like men are automatically giving respect to other men, because that just doesn’t happen. It’s that the combat is there, and it’s expected. And one of the problems. . . And so, this is one of the reasons I think men are bailing out of so much of academia and maybe the academic world in general. And maybe the world in general. Men actually don’t have any idea how to compete with women. Because the problem is that if you unleash yourself completely, then you’re an absolute bully. And there’s no doubt about that, because if men unleash themselves on other men, that can be pretty goddamn brutal, especially for the men that really tough. And so that just doesn’t happen with women ever. So you can’t unleash yourself completely. If you win, you’re a bully. If you lose, well you’re just bloody pathetic. So how the hell are you supposed to play a game like that? I’ve worked with lots of women in law firms in Canada, for example. And high achieving women, like really remarkable people I would say. And they’re often nonplussed, I would say, by the attitude of the men in the law firm, because they would like to see everyone pulling together because they’re all part of the same team. Whereas the men are like at each other’s throats in a cooperative way because they want the law firm to succeed, but they want to be the person who is at the top of the success hierarchy. And that doesn’t jive well with the more cooperative ethos that’s part and parcel of agreeableness. So we don’t really have any idea how to integrate male and female dominance hierarchies.
