Camille Paglia - a leading feminist
academic gives her view of why women need to be encouraged (or even told) to stand up for
themselves. This applies in all situations in life, not just at folk dances.
Taken back to their roots, some dances are a sort of mating
display - and this applies to other species as well as humans. Some birds take the whole
affair very seriously: they have developed ornate feather displays that are used only at
times of courtship.
Many dances are, to some extent or other, ritualised sexual
display and properly include an element of exhibitionism. The history
of dance over the last few hundred years has many examples of how some types of people
(dancers as well as non-dancers) have sought to control or extinguish these aspects of
dance - yet this has proven difficult. Time after time, people have disobeyed 'authority'
and danced as they wished to do.
In contemporary folk dance (and in many other types of
dance) there is necessarily some physical contact - holding, touching, etc. It is
therefore possible for men (or women) to overstep the mark and do more than is required by
the dance itself. In these situations the aggrieved party needs simply to tell the
perpetrator to desist - and that is all that is ever necessary except in extreme examples
(see discussion here). However, many dancers arguably hold
less firmly than is required, and the quality of the dance then suffers.
Image from a dating website profile. |
Some folk dance and festival organisers
delight in treating women as helpless beings who are incapable of looking after
themselves. They seek out opportunities to exercise their own power, to tell other dancers
what they can and cannot do. Examples from one festival are discussed here. Sometimes these
'bossyboots' and despotic characters go to extreme lengths to find trouble where none had
even been reported - for example by soliciting women, asking if they had any complaints
about a particular dance partner.
All of this has its roots in the thrill of exercising power over someone else - a trait
seen the world over in anyone given a uniform or (in the case of folk festival stewards) a
walkie talkie radio, a fluorescent jacket or even a stewards badge. Election as a
'committee member' can have much the same effect on particularly inadequate people. |
But the heart of the matter is that women should be
allowed, encouraged and where necessary told to stand up for themselves. Unless and until
they do so, they are in effect submitting themselves to live under the authority of other
people (often men) and admitting they are incapable of fighting their own battles.
But don't take my word for it - listen to a woman!
The iconoclastic American feminist Camille Paglia
summarized these issues in an article published in the Spectator magazine (UK) in
October/November 2016. The article (written by Emily Hill) was centred on Paglia's dislike
for Hilliary Clinton - and dislike is putting it mildly. She also mentions courtship
dances (of pigeons). I have downloaded the full text in case the link becomes inactive
(please let me know if this happens).
The relevant paragraphs for present purposes are reproduced
below. The article was published before Donald Trump's election victory.
Adapted from : Spectator
magazine (UK) 29 October 2016.
Paglia
is pro-liberty, pro–pornography, pro-prostitutes and anti- any and all special
treatment when it comes to women in power: ‘I do not believe in quotas of any kind.
Scandinavian countries are going in that direction and it’s an insult to women —
the idea that you need a quota.’
Perhaps,
like all radicals in pursuit of the truth, Paglia is still hoping the revolution will
come. ...... Her book Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism will be published next
year (March 2017). |
Professor Paglia does not seem to mind much if
she makes herself violently unpopular with her contemporaries — she’s an expert
at it. Currently professor of the humanities at the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia, she first shot to fame in 1990 with the publication of Sexual Personae
— a manuscript turned down by seven publishers before it became a bestseller.... ‘My philosophy of feminism,’ the New York-born 69-year-old
explains, ‘I call street-smart Amazon feminism......The way I was brought up was: the
world is a dangerous place; you must learn to defend yourself. You can’t be a fool.
You have to stay alert.’
Today, she suggests, middle-class girls are being reared in
a precisely contrary fashion: cosseted, indulged and protected from every evil, they
become helpless victims when confronted by adversity.
‘We are rocketing backwards here to the Victorian
period with this belief that women are not capable of making decisions on their own. This
is not feminism — which is to achieve independent thought and action. There will
never be equality of the sexes if we think that women are so handicapped they can’t
look after themselves.’
Paglia traces the roots of this belief system to American
campus culture and the cult of women’s studies. This ‘poison’ — as she
calls it — has spread worldwide. ‘In London, you now have this plague of female
journalists… who don’t seem to have made a deep study of anything…’
Paglia does not sleep with men — but she is, very
refreshingly, in favour of them. She never moans about ‘the patriarchy’ but
freely asserts that manmade capitalism has enabled her to write her books.......
‘I wrote a date-rape essay in 1991 in which I called
for women to stand up for themselves and learn how to handle men. But now you have this
shibboleth, “No means no.” Well, no. Sometimes “No” means “Not
yet”. Sometimes “No” means “Too soon”. Sometimes “No”
means “Keep trying and maybe yes”. You can see it with the pigeons on the grass.
The male pursues the female and she turns away, and turns away, and he looks a fool but he
keeps on pursuing her. And maybe she’s testing his persistence; the strength of his
genes… It’s a pattern in the animal kingdom — a courtship
pattern.....…’
But for pointing such things out, Paglia adds, she has been
‘defamed, attacked and viciously maligned’ ........ |
 
|
In conclusion Professor Paglia states: Girls would be far better advised to revert to the brave feminist
approach of her generation — when women were encouraged to fight all their battles by
themselves, and win.
‘Germaine Greer was once in this famous debate with Norman Mailer at Town Hall.
Mailer was formidable, enormously famous — powerful. And she just laid into him:
“I was expecting a hard, nuggety sort of man and he was positively blousy…”
Now that shows a power of speech that cuts men up. And this
is the way women should be dealing with men — finding their weaknesses and
susceptibilities… not bringing in an army of pseudo, proxy parents to put them down
for you so you can preserve your perfect girliness.’
.............As with Greer, it is Paglia’s power of
speech that utterly devastates. Her collected works read like a dictionary of vicious
quotations. (Leaving sex to the feminists? ‘Like letting your dog vacation at the
taxidermist.’)
.............yet if Trump wins it will be an amazing moment
of change because it would destroy the power structure of the Republican party, the power
structure of the Democratic party and destroy the power of the media. It would be an
incredible release of energy… at a moment of international tension and crisis.’
All of a sudden, the professor seems excited. |
As a methodology for how women should be encouraged to deal
with men at folk dances in the West, the view of Professor Paglia are to be recommended.
Women in both the UK and the USA are completely free to express their views and to look
after themselves - and they should be encouraged to do so, if only to limit the scope for
despots to assume authority over often trivial and imagined complaints as a means to
enhance their own self-importance.
However, in less developed countries women are still
severely disadvantaged. There are many influences: one of the most pervasive is that
religion (of all types) is male-dominated. For both social and environmental reasons,
religion needs to be phased out. This has already happened to a large extent in the UK but
not in the USA - where over 50% of people still apparently believe that there is a god in
white robes looking after their country! Many even believe (and teach) that the Earth is
only 6000 years old.
Ex-president Jimmy
Carter of the USA has his own views on how little some men care for women's rights.
The internet is also awash with extreme religious and feminist ideology - take your pick
of which views to support!
Full Spectator article.
Article in Progressives Today
My Folk Diary - 2016 - index page
Brief history of folk dance : (part of folk club section).
Folk dance section
Folk festival reviews 2016
Gittisham Folk Dance Club
Home page.