Rock Music as Masculine Energy—Sex, Art, and American Feminism

Asher introduces the rock music writings of non-traditional feminist Camille Paglia (in extenso). Quoted with interspersed commentary by Asher, Paglia's paean to RAWK comes through, effectively "mansplained" by Asher (because just reading books on the air is not fair use). Asher underscores Paglia's observation that one cannot simultaneously laud masculine energy and denigrate the experience out of which it arises. Paglia calls rock musicians "America's most wasted natural resource."

This is Asher black, your host, and this is the podcast about being a man. I want to pick up where

The last two episodes left off, which is about music and about rock music in particular and take this in a bit of a different direction. Now I'm a huge fan of a particular feminist, not the only one, by the way, I've read some Gloria Steinem and stuff like that, but there's a particular one that I did just because her way of cutting through and talking is I think it's very man hearted. And, you know, granted, she is an outcast by what I would call mainstream feminism, but she is ardent and is, you know, has much more extreme views than I do that are quite feminist, but she's a lightening rod very much like iron Rand another person I'm fond of or Hannah, aren't a person. I, I like a lot is a lightning rod. These days. One has trouble disagreeing with somebody's views without sort of nuking their whole village in sort of cancel culture on both the left and the right, what you end up with is if you don't agree with me, I have to completely block you out and reject your entire being.

And I've never found that useful. I think that's a fad. I think it's anti-intellectualism, I think it is part of the decline of, of Western culture. And so I reject it because you know, when we're talking about rock and roll, man where do you think that stuff comes from Western culture? I'm into it. You can derive what you want. I'm sure somebody in the comments sections will say, oh, you know, let me tell you everything that's wrong. Western culture never denied it. I was there for Vietnam where you, but I will tell you that you can't say everything is wrong with it without finding the good. If you can't find the good, then I call into question your perspective in the first place. So what I want to talk about with regard to Camille Paglia is a particular book that she's written. Now, she's known for this massive tome, which is kind of a literary philosophical work called sexual persona.

And that's not the one, I mean, this one's called sex art and American culture. And it's about that. It's about sex, art, American culture. I dig it. So you'll find articles in there about prince Madonna, rock and roll, the rolling stones, you know, it's quite awesome. And Puglia, by the way, writes for Playboy. I mean, in that sense, she's kind of in the vein of an iron Rand who wrote quite pithy articles for the New York times among other places and would, would have rather controversial interviews it campuses. And in this particular book, much like Iran's book on romanticism and aesthetics, Paglia is talking about rock and roll and sex and almost in the same breath. And so I want to read a few excerpts from the book and make a few points based on it. So, whereas my view, and this is a quote, whereas my views on sex are coming from the fact that I'm a football fan and I'm a rock fan and football are revealing something true and permanent and eternal about male, energy and sexuality.

They are revealing the fact that women, in fact, like the idea of flaunting, strutting, wild, masculine energy, the people who criticized me, these establishment feminists, these white upper-middle-class feminists in New York, especially who think of themselves as so illiterate, the kind of music they like is like Suzanne Vega, you know, women's music and the, the ho the, the host at spin. This is from spin magazine. The host says yuck. I found that hilarious, that...