In Praise of Patriarchal Society

In The War Against Boys, Christina Hoff Sommers describes Camille Paglia’s “refreshing” view of men:

For Paglia, male aggressiveness and competitiveness are animating principles of creativity: ‘Masculinity is aggressive, unstable, combustible. It is also the most creative cultural force in history.’ Speaking of the ‘fashionable disdain for ‘patriarchal society’ to which nothing good is ever attributed,’ she writes, ‘But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.’ Men, writes, Paglia, ‘created the world we live in and the luxuries we enjoy.’ ‘When I cross the George Washington Bridge or any of America’s great bridges, I think — men have done this. Construction is a sublime male poetry.’

-Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys, 63-64.