Androgyny and Middle Class Values
June 28, 2010
CAMILLE PAGLIA writes that middle class values are killing eroticism and romance.
Writing in The New York Times, Paglia says middle class propriety is behind the stifling regime of postmodern androgyny. Although she makes some excellent points, I don’t agree with her thesis. It’s true that androgyny is a natural sex suppressant, in the same way cages suppress desire in animals, but it’s not middle class values that have encouraged confusion in sex roles unless one considers “middle class values” to be inherently immoral and materialistic. To the contrary, middle class women have followed the lead of their higher ranking counterparts, the Gloria Steinems and Katie Courics of the world, into a life that makes them masters of their men and asexual careerists. It’s not middle class values that are the problem but the intoxicating drug of ideology.
To Paglia, it’s “Down with the bourgeoisie! They never knew how to enjoy sex anyway.”
