While Camille Paglia is on hiatus with her regular Salon column, she recently wrote an opinion piece for the NYT about female viagra. As with any essay by Paglia, female viagra is simply a door to open up other ideas, taking a literary critic's skill in revealing larger issues about a society who cares not a wit about literature. I just wish she wrote more.
In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.
Meanwhile, family life has put middle-class men in a bind; they are simply cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women. Contemporary moms have become virtuoso super-managers of a complex operation focused on the care and transport of children. But it’s not so easy to snap over from Apollonian control to Dionysian delirium.
