Culture gives Men what they lack

Since it is in the nature of binary structures to be opposed to one another. "great" art enacts a struggle between

Romanticism and Decadence, paganism and Christianity, woman and man, nature and culture, mother and son, sex and violence, and so forth. This essentialism is used to

prove why culture is destined to be the preserve of the male: culture gives men what they

lack.

Art, culture, literature (Paglia is reckless in her use of the terms) represent a male

 

desire to appropriate, by whatever means, what he fears, lacks, and/or desires most-the

female, the mother, nature in all her awesome beauty, terror, and cruelty. The psychic

drama of the artist, usually male, is projected into his work in the form of sexual

personae. Fascinated by what he cannot be, the Western artist is in essence driven by the

androgynous-and Paglia presents us with an idiosyncratic taxonomy of androgynes in

 

her whistle-stop survey of the literary giants. In spite of the subtitle, the only female

 

 

writers included are Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, who apparently conquer their

biological sex with hermaphrodite personae.

The manipulation of violence and sexuality