Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Tangent: Sexual Personae (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-31 18:11:48
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hey all,

Tangent finished. Haven't slept. Update soon!

-Natalie

P.S. I have fully committed to the 4:3 aspect ratio.

Files

Tangent: Sexual Personae

Thanks so much for your support! ▬ Contents▬ Part 0: Preambulatory Ravings 0:00 Part 1: The Book This Video Is Supposed To Be About 6:59 Part 2: The Gulf That Divides the Sexes 11:06 Part 3: Apollonian vs Chthonian 33:06 Part 4: Rousseau vs Sade 49:31 Part 5: Decadence 56:23

Comments

Michael Cuesta

I've already watched this 5 times. Great video!

Eduardo Gonzalez

yayyyyyy we’re so glad you’re back, natalie!! get rest, and thank you for getting this out to us!! :) <3

Ibraheem

Just when I needed it the most! Thanks :)

Jordan Drew

Hope you’re doing well <3

Theo Stratford

Omg this dropped at the perfect time I’m so fucking bored. SAVE ME MOTHER

Mac

CAMILLE PAGLIA HIVE RISE AND GRAB A BAG OF COKE

Alex Ladon

Another for the collection, beautiful

Denise D

Get some good rest! (And thanks for the Tangent!)

Sassy Ali

Glad you are still with us!!!!

highclass_lady

hi Natalie Sending you my support 🩷 I want to say how sorry I am I didn't comment to show you my support sooner & didn't participate in defending you. At the time you posted, it was the month 2 of my pets had surgeries, I was in the midst of apartment searching/trying to get a new lease settled, & I was exceptionally exhausted because I fell sick with a very high fever & flu a few days after. I wasn't in a condition to write anything coherent or worth your time. I imagine in the days immediately following your I/P post, you must've been so inundated with replies, both of support & the opposite, so you must've felt so overwhelmed you may not have had the bandwidth to mentally receive & actually benefit from any more messages, much less a longer 1. I'm glad a number of the people who spoke up to defend you were able to do so well. As someone who started my career in humanitarian aid, I've met genocide survivors in both Cambodia & Rwanda, & have been to genocide museums in Phnom Penh, & Kigali. (I recall those museums being even more graphic than the holocaust museums I've been to in NY & France). After Cambodia & Rwanda, I did research & presentations on genocide in grad school during my Master's in Humanitarianism, Aid, & Conflict. I’ve visited genocide survivors & listened to their stories. In my opinion, the co-opting & exploiting of media shared by genocide survivors as a tool for other people to use as harassment is disgusting (& degrading to the actual victims). It's 1 thing for Palestinians to share this media with the world, to give voice to their suffering & show the truth of what is happening, but for toxically behaving online leftists who do not live there to then misuse the suffering of Palestinian people as a weapon feels so sensationalist & disrespectful. It's belittling & objectifying their suffering as spectacle, & I agree with you that behaviour like that is not honoring the victims. It’s similar to how true crime stories are sensationalised to the point of shock value entertainment, which can be dismissive & dehumanising to the victims. The idea of anyone doing that with images of the family members of the genocide survivors I've met is psychopathic. Tragic, unnecessary suffering isn't a finite pie chart. Although awareness is important for applying political pressure towards large-scale change, the suffering of Palestinians isn't reduced by making you sad or threatened; & mentally punishing yourself isn't going to help. I studied international relations & foreign policy in DC, so believe me, when it comes to policy & litigation, online discourse about which pundits & YouTube stars have "based" takes, carries no weight (thank goodness). From my humanitarian aid perspective, Natalie you don't make the world worse by having opinions that some people consider wrong, especially on some aspects of complex & brutal geopolitical atrocities; I know you believe genocide is wrong, obviously. Your heart is good, no matter how the most exploitative people lie about, accuse, & misrepresent you. Trust me, on location, no humanitarian aid worker or medical professional has time to care about the online discourse on whose opinion isn't pure enough. And I don’t mean that as a way to belittle or dismiss your trauma, nor the egregiousness & scale of what you are going through. While there is no denying the power of online leftists to cause pain in someone’s life, be destructive in eroding any semblance of a sense of safety, & comendere widespread perception of a figure, I only hope that it is of some meager comfort to remember how little sway these people hold against those who aim to impact the world. I hope it’s also of marginal comfort that there are still competent people who do not form opinions of humans (with jobs that involve being a public figure) based on what chronically online Twitter mobs think. None of the people I’ve met in the field on humanitarian aid placements do, a lot of the people who make tangible impacts, won’t be listening to your critics. Moral perfectionism & superiority complexes can materialise as letting the idea of the "perfect" be the enemy of the good, or the best we can do right now. In humanitarian aid, we try to remove vestiges of colonialism from assistance interventions. We try not to create systems of dependency or let finances hold power & establish hierarchy. We aim to empower & involve local leaders with resources; their wisdom guides how to implement aid & ensures the forms given are compatible & helpful in their village. We proactively operate in ways to reduce (not perpetuate) unintended harm & prevent doing more harm than good. But in humanitarian aid, we can't be so guarded against accidental or unavoidable moral imperfection that we never do anything. Remaining morally pure isn’t prioritised over alleviating human suffering. Do I eat meat? No. Did I serve food with meat to malnourished children whose only meal was that soup kitchen? Yes. Is meat a product of animal cruelty? Did the water come from a well built using unethical labour practices? Yes, but there was no other source in the village. There’s no completely pure person in humanitarian aid, but if you want to do any good, 1 has to grow up & do the best 1 can in the world around them. And in paraphrasing Dr Maya Angelou, then when you know better, do better from there. Are all humanitarian aid workers bad people because past poorly informed projects have created unintended or unavoidable harm? Of course not. Is unintended harm still a reason some leftists hate aid workers & criticise & harass even people they know irl both online & in person? Yes. And you're not a bad person either Natalie. My point is, don't let internet purity standards (& the ironically morally impure harassment) be the enemy of the good. You have so much potential Natalie, & you are wonderful, worthy, & valued. Unlike the capitalist way of objectifying people, you’re not just a resource valuable for what you can produce, you are a person & you are valuable, not just for who you are as a public figure, but simply because you are. I waited to write because I wanted to share my experienced perspective in a way that could actually be useful or beneficial to you in some way, or reassuring at least. I didn't want it to just aimlessly be draining to you. Sorry for writing so much now. Remember: the people who would cause you pain do not define you. You are worthy of the best life you can live despite them. & you can still do so much good in this world Natalie, & that's beautiful, but you'll only be ready to (& have the bandwidth capable of doing more good) after you heal. Please take care of yourself as best you can, & I hope your (non-parasocial 😉) friends have healthy & helpful ways to support you through this because you can get through this. All that was to say, you have my support Natalie, & I don't mean this in the "don't squander your potential" type of way, but for your own sake, as a very wise, pretty, & beautiful woman once said: "Stay strong sister, don't let the bastards get you down." 💞

SophieT

Yay! So happy to see you and this! Can’t wait to watch!

Tanner Chaille

Ready for a hopelessly middlebrow analysis from my favorite cultural Philistine 💕

Carmen North

Yessssssssssss ❤️❤️❤️

Cat Cannon

Woot woot!!! Hang in there Nat ❤️

Tito Mercado

I'm happy about the video, and I'm happy about people's supportive comments. We support you and are here for you in a parasocially appropriate way, Mother!

Mathieu B. Lafrenière

"Part 0: Preambulatory Ravings" is the apotheosis of the aesthetic for which I always come back.

Oliver G

We’re so back

Rae

So excited to watch this! glad you’re back 🫶🫶🫶 pls take care of yourself<3

Turki

Yay I can’t wait I’ve been anticipating this literally for two years

Denise

Missed you girl! Can’t wait to watch!! 💗

Adam Pliszka

Oh, I was just finishing rewatching Envy when I got the notification. Seems today's evening is Contrapoints-themed!

Andee Blacksugar

The title triggers 1990s Paglia memories. Looking forward to this!

Leigh Hile

I don't know anything about CamilIe Paglia, can't wait for my brain to grow big from watching this! Also, unrelated, but Natalie, you are servinggggggggggg! You look gorgeous!

Andee Blacksugar

The title triggers 1990s Paglia memories. Looking forward to this!

elijah

Take care of yourself ❤️ can’t wait to watch after work!

PicarosPage

Had such a shitty day, this is what I needed! Thank you Nathalie. Thanks for staying productive in these dark days... We need you. What a blessing. Love from Germany <3

dreamer

Yaay ❤️✨️

Juno What

She’s back! 💖

Pierre Brown

Hello hello!!! The lewk is giving Natalie Portman in Black Swan vibes.

AJ

I am SAT

Armany Habed

You'll forgive me for saying you are far too unique and sensible to be the Paglia of the 2020's. You do her too much credit and yourself too little, I think

holdorz

I missed you😭💔

Tyler OB

Wow! Not a single negative comment...

Penelope - Queen Bee

the 4:3 will make my project of recording all your videos to VHS so much easier

Cool Channel Network

Paglia's audio commentary on Basic Instinct is one of the most entertaining of all time.

Wolfebrayne

Thank you mother! We love you mother!

Matt Quigley

I've only thus far watched the intro bit, but I am so excited for this, and am glad to learn that -- while you rightly recognize Paglia as the insufferable babbling grouch that she is -- you've also come to learn why anyone ever gave a shit about her in the first place. 'Sexual Personae' is absolutely essential. And it can be tough to sell younger people on this, I have noticed, and I'm perfectly sympathetic as to why. In the 90s she had a much higher media profile -- as there's no denying that she was a great talk show guest -- and I kind of lost track of her for a while before she re-emerged as whatever the hell she is now. I was also highly amused by you recognizing, as I did, that while both she and Jordan Peterson were colossally wrong about nearly everything they discussed, he was just utterly outclassed in their conversation. He's even mediocre when it comes to being a bigoted contrarian crank.

Deviant Ollam

I feel like the 4:3 ratio is a fun throwback to analog TV and simpler times. Especially for tangents, I like it. Looking forward to watching this one. 💚

Jack Cobey

cthonian slimegirlism

Tim the Canadian

Your videos provoke thought and inspire courage, love from Canada 🇨🇦

Michaella Cipriani

Girl, you simply MUST read "Blood Rites" by Barbara Ehrenreich! 20 minutes into the video and already so much overlap between what Paglia and Ehrenreich are writing about. Ehrenreich has a slightly different angle than Paglia though.

Michaela Ligman

Is anyone able to share a link? The embedded one keeps asking me to sign in to prove I’m not a bot but then nothing happens. Tried updating the app but no luck.

Tia Kushniruk

Natalie, just keep doing you and we will support you

Radek Piskorski

But Butler doesn't really say the body is constructed by language. She explains in detail (although admittedly very densely) in Bodies That Matter that materiality is a real thing.

Bipp

It’s probably your vpn tbh

Bipp

We love you mother. Don’t let the internet get you down. You may be a lib but you’re our lib!

Darren DM

So many supportive comments, yet nothing about the eye makeup. Why is nobody talking about the eye makeup? 🔥

Gnome Choomsky

Paglia seems like she's naturalizing certain things that are artificial... The patriarchy is artificial! Patriarchal society is very different from nature or natural society! Natural society, the society of friendship, is, in fact, the OPPOSITE of patriarchy! 👀

Gnome Choomsky

Paglia hates nature! She has unhealed trauma she has to work on! We don't have to argue with the delusional! We don't have to argue with people who hate nature! They have to stop hating nature first! Oh my god! 👀🙄

Leahbunny

Thank you mother 😘

Shane

shhhhh

Gnome Choomsky

24 minutes in: Oh my god... Men also have balls! Balls don't point! Any man could have a more satisfying experience from focusing on stimulating nerves in their balls rather than focusing on the head! Unless they're tangled up in a mentality that would deny them that pleasure by making them think it's "not masculine" (so what!?) 👀👀👀

Hilde

This came just in time after finishing the 8th rewatch of twilight, the second rewatch of conspiracy, the second rewatch of daddy politics and just now watching the six hour ama stream. Thank you Natalie!

Gnome Choomsky

Yes! JBP IS afraid of women! From what he says about certain things, I would go so far as to argue that he's a gigantic closet case! He's also terrified of nature! 👀

Gnome Choomsky

As far as personae, the only fkn reason we "have to" perform all the time is that we live in patriarchal society! The society that tells us all, "you are not enough"! We will not have to be "performing" all the time once we build the society of friendship! We can just be ourselves! You (yes, you, Natalie!) are clearly incapable of even imagining how much pressure this will take off of you (yes, you, Natalie!)! You are clearly a victim of capitalist realism! You (yes, you, Natalie!) need some kind of training course for your goddamn imagination so you can imagine a fkn life outside of capitalism! 👀👀👀

Theo Stratford

Damn this has instantly gone to the top of the best tangents list alongside the Male Gaze. It’s gonna take about three rewatches before I begin to grasp it fully but boy is it JUICY. Natalie going full galaxy brain intellectual is always the best

Andrew Wiebe

This is a great response to Paglia (and, quite frankly, most of the reactive activism right now). I agree: if we treat social constructs as biological truth, we kind of miss the point of liberation entirely--and treat these western constructs as the "Truth" with which we must always act in opposition to, and will always be a dialectic.

Roman Xavier

is that why he is always weeping?

SOUPCHAMP

I only just heard of Paglia from watching the Watermelon Woman and now that scene makes WAY more sense lol

Gnome Choomsky

Oh my god! Straight lines are patriarchal! They don't exist in nature! We've been brainwashed to give straight lines credit for everything, but that's all patriarchal propaganda! We have to unlearn that shit! The patriarchy is all about taking credit for everything! We have to unlearn in general giving the patriarchy credit for anything! This is a very important step in overthrowing the patriarchy! 👀

Brandon Callaway

I had forgotten how much I disliked Camille Paglia

Gnome Choomsky

Paglia doesn't seem to realize how much she's telling on herself by calling the patriarchal gaze "the western eye." she is, in fact, giving us all the reasons we need to overthrow western society as a whole, as it is entirely based in patriarchy, according to what she doesn't even realize she is saying! The whole point of philosophy is to overthrow the patriarchy! It's entirely fkn useless otherwise! 👀👀👀

Andy Pucko

I knew Paglia was an idiot when i read in Sexual Personae that women can't rock an electric guitar because they lack testicles,

Eric Williams

was excited to see this as your tangent topic this month. I’ve been a fan of Paglia for years. I’m sad to say that I cannot cite the specific lecture wherein she mentioned this, but I recall her saying that she not only considers herself transgender but also trans-species. I only heard her say this once and believe it was in the context of her intuitive understanding instinct and nature.

Elsie Hupp

4:3 (1.333:1)? Why not the Academy Ratio of 11:8 (1.375:1)?!? 😅

Patroclus

I just know there is a story about Natalie arguing with someone over the pronunciation of "chthonian."

Garrett on LSD

Are we really going to pretend she didn't paint anti genocide folks in a generalized antisemitic light? like I love her work but idk man, this is weird I hope she can admit a little to the fumble. Can we address the elephant? The hakeem jeffries style "why try and change anything when we don't have any form of recourse" style rhetoric is shameful from someone of Natalie's stature. I'd appreciate a full throated statement from her denouncing the ongoing genocide which doesn't have to include unforced errors like saying civility discourse is more important than standing against human slaughter.

julescifer

Love this tangent, never stop being you Natalie.

Io_with_fly

Loooooooved this one! All for this type of tangents

Caio Cerruti

in these interview excerpts, camille reminds me a lot of the fame era lady gaga

emre busse

I had to think a lot about The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography by Angela Carter. 🤭

Cameron Clark

So did you come here to watch this tangent? or did you come to bleet your own overblown meaningless opinions into the comment section?

Allison

Thank you for this tangent! I'm always so happy to see you in my notifications. Wanted to chime in with book recommendation: Different by Frans de Waal. His ideas seem related to embodied cognition. He has studied cognition in Chimpanzees and bonobos. I admire his refusal to oversimplify gender and reminding the reader that while our animal cousins can give us some insight into this subject, at the end of the day we are still very different species. He basically thinks that there are some tendencies in each gender, but that these aren't as 'hardwired' as is often presented. It's an interesting perspective and I'd recommend it if you also like reading about animal intelligence (as I do). He's one of those authors that I don't feel I totally agree on everything, but is worth engaging with. (Also to be clear, he isn't anti-trans)

Catanist

In 2025 women are in retrograde. Release the chthonic krakens! Love it

Garrett on LSD

I came in here to get replied to by a debate pervert like yourself. I’m just speaking my feelings.

stef

there were so many brand new sentences in this magnum opus.

Tali

Hi Natalie, haven't watched yet. Just saying hi and I love you. I'm so happy you're still here

Cameron Clark

I'm a great fan of Paglia's genius! Glad this difficult encounter could occur between the two of you.

qwuoant

i was a long time fan but seeing your response in regard to the genocide in gaza is abhorrent. please learn and be a better person.

hey_boo

Lovely to see you mother

Eric Williams

Also take any chance to offer my favorite Herzog quote which I think is on theme for you: “Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world”

Sofia Cortes

So nice to see your video and take on the book, thank you Xx

Darren DM

Miss, this is a Wendy's.

qwuoant

miss grow a conscience

Shane

I know this is such a brown-nosing comment but it's the truth. Following you over the years has facilitated my conversion from Anarchism to Liberalism. You got one, at least, Natalie. 👑

Darren DM

Feelings Nothing more than feelings Trying to forget my feelings of love Teardrops Rolling down on my face Trying to forget my feelings of love Feelings For all my life I'll feel it I wish I've never met you, girl You'll never come again Feelings Wo-o-o feelings Wo-o-o feelings Again in my arms

Garrett on LSD

nice, yeah anti genocide folks’ feelings are just “nothing more than feelings” this is also contrapoints’ opinion.

Alyssa Kestrel

Paglia is such a pick-me girl with that whole "I'm like rock music" act. It annoys me when woman claim that they don't experience sexism because they're masculine in their hobbies or behavior. That's the point, babe.

Darren DM

So many people have come and gone Their faces fade as the years go by Yet I still recall as I wander on As clear as the sun in the summer sky It's more than a feeling (More than a feeling) When I hear that old song they used to play (More than a feeling) I begin dreaming (More than a feeling)

no

flop

Peter Borsada

Very glad to see you posting and this video is excellent. I have really admired your courage and independence in the last months which only enhances your stature. Keep on it and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Mars2Venus

Girlypop you’re still on the Patreon

Allison

I'm at 45 minutes and I just have to say that I really hate when 'intellectuals' like Paglia collapse a whole culture's history into basically a cardboard cutout. As someone who has read what actual historians and architects have said about this Egyptian history (spanning thousands of years) what she says rings as false, boring, and kind of stupid. So any of her following points and false dichotomies just sound silly and immature. Why do so damn many public intellectuals ignore historians? It hurts my soul. 😮‍💨

Emily

Natalie is what I expect my favourite filmmakers to sound like in interviews and they never do.

Kris

this was helpful for some of my own struggles to grasp my and the general concept of gender,...thank you! not sure about the second half, though... may be it`s too high for me to see the point here but are we talking about actual ancient egypt or academic stereotypes of it? And how does this inform us about gender? I need to rewatch this tangent when I`m not stoned

Leonardo Corredor

It's very nice Natalie uploaded this before the patreons of me and other people jumping ship expire. I admire your insights but cannot square them with your gaza stance. All the best for you and all remaining patrons.

ugh_slug

Thesis rhymes with feces. These videos have corrupted my brain. Thank you

DaniloDaSelva

I'd be very interested in hearing some of your caveats. I barely know anything about Ancient Egyptian culture.

DaniloDaSelva

Well worded. I'm also a big fan of the tangents while somehow missing in them the extravagance and aesthetic excesses of the main channel videos. That's why I especially loved the tangent on Liminal Spaces which in a way felt to me like a compromise. Beautiful lighting, decent music and just overall a lush, immersive, dense atmosphere ... On top of that the usual concise analysis and stimulating musings. Felt like the best of two worlds.

Aly

Amazing as always, this one hit for me like envy did, in that I could listen to you dissect philosophers all day long

Tanner Gore

Loved loved loved this!!

DaniloDaSelva

That sounds like a good idea. I'm under the impression that each Contrapoints tangent has to be watched once sober and once stoned.

Vier Graybill

So glad to see you finally broke your silence on Mormonism

DaniloDaSelva

I've only had one "encounter" with him as far as I remember. At some point during my religious studies curriculum. But it was one of the more memorable essays I've read by anyone! I remember it was about interactional rituals ... (?)

Grady Wiehe

“I am a gentle lamb who is constantly persecuted for no reason” oh boy, they’re gonna love this 😂

Nate

Anyone who enjoyed the snippets of the Susan Sontag of the 90s in this video should watch the seminal 2023 YouTube Video/work of art “Camille Paglia Fruitcake Moments”

Jussi Eskelinen

It sounds like you don't understand her Gaza stance. Or are you trying to force her to make a video about it?

Juniper

she has spoken against the genocide, against the netanyahu government and has raised money for palestine. What else do you want her to do, and moreover, what have you done?

Leonardo Corredor

Neither I'm just not renewing the patreon of a creator whose opinion on an issue I care a lot about I find very disappointing. And I decided to voice this because... I want to

Jussi Eskelinen

The truth is that Natalie criticized your activism in a Reddit post and you can't handle it.

Randolph Dugan

"the point of fighting climate change is not to save nature from humanity, it's to save humanity from nature" - amazing

Jessica Cheeri

I've wanted to hear you discuss this book since I first heard you mention it back in '21, and not only is this amazing, but you also mentioned Goffman! If you talk to me about social situations long enough Goffman styled social dramaturgy will come up, so I'm very happy

Leonardo Corredor

Me not paying anymore will not imporevish her and I have given money as well. If you must know I don't like how she attempted to exculpate zionism as the driving force of the genocide, because it might hurt some people's feelings. I find that confusing because I agree with Natalie that it's dishonest to hide issues of human rights behind the "we need to have a proper debate about it" façade.

John Giacobello

Feels like I’m back at school again… So nice to take a break from “the discourse” and dig into something red in claw.

JR937

Jussi- I don't think she should make a video about it, but I found her comments incredibly distasteful and I'm not entirely sure if I want to stay subscribed as a result. In this very video, she admits that she is not an activist, so perhaps it was unwise to make a big reddit post about what she thinks real activists should and should not be doing.

qwuoant

the truth is she is a disgusting zionist just like yourself

Austin F

"plato looks down on physical beauty" my temptation to make a joke about plato being gay is more powerful than you could ever imagine right now

Joe Johnston

You are a God Damn treasure, Nat. Never change.

Julie

You make every day better.

Shepherd Aaron

I’m an academic historian (of the environmental history of the 1600s) so like, most of the content here is theoretically far from what I actually can claim to know about so I’m still evaluating Pagllia’s ideas, but until this video the three things I knew about her were: 1) said something mean about Madonna 2) like’s Sade’s ideas about nature 3) hangs out with Jordan Peterson and was obliquely involved in gamergate All of chin did not endear me to her, and I’m still not sure I agree with her claims (much less her sweeping claims, but I’m an academic so ofc im against comparing Stine Age art and Amarna Period Egyptian art) but I am glad to find out she is an actual thinker and not just some contrarian grifter latching on to anti-feminist backlash, like, she seems insufferable and wrong about some things but in the way that most theorists are

Torval Pecker

It says the video is restricted! Anyone else seeing this?

ROSE MAYER

i had no idea one could be mentally transgender. I feel liberated. Mental androgyny has been my whole life experience, and nothing could be closer to my reality. "A non binary entity, with a feminine personae, in a hermaphrodite body." I've never heard something that comes closer to capturing what i feel in myself. I'm just having a strong experience of being named, or seen. Thanks.

Michał

Subscribing drunk while leaving a corporate event in Poland. Have a nice day Natalie, love your videos.

a. j. archer

YES it is time to reclaim paglia from the red scare right...

a. j. archer

it is TIME for trans-inclusive radically material catholic gnostic feminism

Patrick O'Connell

One of my students shared with me the discussion between her and Peterson and I didn’t know what else to take away other than “her points on aesthetics are fascinating but wow she hates campus safety.” There’s a moment in that discussion where she insinuates some really questionable things about consent. Anyway. I just finished Yanis Varoufakis’s book on Technofeudalism and was curious if you had heard the argument before that cloud technology has ended capitalism and replaced it with a sort of data based feudalism. If not, I definitely recommend the book. Technofeudalism as either a horrible post-covid reality or alarmist strawman would be an interesting tangent.

Loppia

Thank you for making this and for still being here despite everything<3

Wissa

The idea of the Chthonic contained within the Apollonian, and the hidden potential toward the Apollonian within the Dionysian, that interplay seems to be the basis of so much of what we consider beautiful. Wonderful, wonderful tangent!

Nikko

Excellent work! And so good to hear from you as always bestie UwU

Jon Stewart

This is the good stuff. If this was discussed in a humorless academic context, I'd have nothing to do with it, but I had a great time with this. I'll watch it a few times over and chew on the ideas. One that was brushed past, that individual consciousness gives rise to personae through social life, rather than a self, I'm fully on board with. Anyway, I'm off to do a bump of ket and listen to Liszt's Transcendental Etudes in the bath...Chthonian AF.

Mary M

You deserve more credit for being funny btw- lots of humor in these

Ali

Why were people demanding she make a video if they believed she wasn't equipped to talk about it?

Aristana Scourtas

Ooo I have not read this but I think about this a lot! I think we are entering an era of neofeudalism driven by current tech oligarchies

RJ Carmine

No, he didn't start the uncontrollable crying thing until after his enormous benzo problem peaked and he went to Russia to be placed into a medical coma

Aristana Scourtas

I don’t know about the whole “Egypt is the birthplace of Apollonian thought” thing — what about ancient China, or Persia? Both places that embodied elegance, clean lines, order. I think it’s a mistake to try and pick one place, and assume a linear evolution, rather than embrace the idea of co-evolution

Aristana Scourtas

EDIT:when I wrote this, I didn’t hear about the current canceling attempt for what was a very reasonable and nuanced take on the I/P genocide. I’m so sorry you’re going through this Natalie — I am no longer surprised you said you feel like Paglia lol. I think one thing that’s always left out of this kind of shit is everyone has a right to 1. Have feelings, and 2. Say how they feel. Feeling bummed about the state of things is not the same as condoning them. And the best thing we can do in times of despair is talk about it, in a safe environment. The *worst* thing is to attack people for sharing how they feel in their bodies. OG post: Also Natalie I was surprised to hear you feel like the Paglia of the 2020s! I know you get a ton of hate mail/comments, but many millions of people watch your videos — and the vast majority do not do that kind of attacking. I think you’re totally right that social media creates a vehicle for vitriol that would make Wilde catatonic — but in that vein, pretty much anyone with a thought outside of the purest discourse is a Paglia

Crystaline

My ex husband is from south India and I spent a lot of time there. I got to visit a catholic basilica in Chennai in which is stored a tiny, brownish piece of bone - a piece of an apostle’s skeleton. I was told by the South Indian Tamil catholic dude showing me around that the Roman’s chased this guy all the way to some rocks on the shore of the southern part of India and he hid there until people came and killed him with a bunch of spears. I was like, “how do you know that’s the bone?!” But I was assured it’s real and verified by the church. 💁🏼‍♀️

conancat

Mother is back! (And she's taken her belt off!)

Ale Kenward

I'm happy to see you are fine (ish) after everything. It still baffles me the amount of hate you recieve for saying thing that at least intelligent leftists think but won't say out loud for the fear of not being radical enough. I am tired of the moralising that makes the left innefectual. There are people who think nobody should enjoy anything because there is a genocide in Gaza, or that if you don't talk about it all the time it is because you don't care. I've supported Palestinian statehood since I was a teen (I'm 47 now), and I just can't bear to see the news because it is too painful, and it hits close to home. I want the genocide to end, and if that means a two state solution and not the end to all ethnostates, so be it. We'll deal with the ethnostates once Palestinian children are fed.

EKXV - Projets artistiques

Ok, this is going to be a very long and tedious rant, but I'm tired of this. Go re-read her post NOT THROUGH SOME YOUTUBER OR STREAMER. When people started talking about the post, I was fully prepared to be unforgiving, since the ongoing genocide in Gaza is something I personnaly denounced since the first bomb dropped. I, also, am an anti-Zionist and have been for roughly ten years when I learned the history of Israel, I do not believe that jewishness can be used as an argument for ownership of a land, as I do not recognize any claim of land ownership based on religion. This means that I do disagree, sometimes heavily, with points made in that statement. I believe her claim that criticisms of the Democrats by leftists for their stance on the ongoing genocide had any relevance in the 2024 election to be utterly ridiculous. I overall disagree about her stance on praxis, protesting from day one being a sort of moral high ground that wouldn't have any effect, I think this is intellectually dishonest to say that any protester with the slightest clue believed the US would disengage from Israel on October 8th; the immediate denounciation of Israel's "retaliation" was to try to counter the Israeli narrative of a "just retaliation", and warn the general public about the plan of the Israeli government to take over Gaza, which is an open secret for decades now. This was not a moral stance, this was a practical one, trying to have the conter-narrative infuse into public discourse as fast as we could. On this particular point, I do blame Natalie for saying this was an useless effort. I honestly believe, and I am open to be proven wrong, that she is/was uninformed about anti-Zionism, especially Jewish anti-Zionism, which does believe in the creation of a non-Jewish state where co-existing is possible, and have concrete views on what political action can be taken in Israel and international politics. Without nuclear annihilation, as it is apparently the only option other than two states in her mind. However, there is one thing where I simply cannot say she is wrong about, and it is how anti-Zionism has been vastly misused by many leftist influencers, indeed creating a space that borders on far-right use of the term (and opening their spaces to actual antisemites, I will not give names, and no it isn't Hassan, but I did find the "redemption arc" of a supposed leftist denying the very existence of antisemitism in the West quite concerning, especially given the position he is now holding in the online discourse). She is, for example, absolutely right to point out that the two-state solution is Zionist, and although I do not believe in it, this has been a position held by many a leftist over the years. Since the genocide, many seem to have uncritically shifted to an anti-Zionist stance, holding people believing in the two-state solution on par with genocidal Zionists - on that front just see how Natalie has immediatly been labled a supporter of Israel after saying that a genocide was happening, that the US should stop supporting the actions of the Israeli government and shift towards a support for Palestinians, not exactly the stance I find on the pro-Israel side. Many two-state Zionists are prominent voices against the ongoing genocide as well as Netanyahu's regime. The result of pushing these people away is what happened after Natalie's statement, which she, in a way, predicted: actual "Israel apologists", to give these people a politeness they probably do not deserve, took that statement as a "win for their side". Even though, if we are intellectually honest, there is much more common ground between her and Hassan's stance on the genocide than, for example, Ethan Klein, who relished in the idea of a newfound ally on his left. You could argue that Natalie could have immediatly distance herself from these people; I'd argue that at that point it was too late, in fact it was already too late BEFORE she released her statement, since she got shit for calling out a video with actual antisemite dogwhistles. By alienating these people who believe in the two-state solution, who are not "moderates" by the way, they are still very much on the left if you consider actual Israeli politics, the "anti-Zionist left" or whatever just made an antagonist out of someone they could have persuaded to be more public against the genocide. Now whatever Natalie says against it, she'll be deemed an hypocrite. Because many, many online leftists I see are making anti-Zionism a primarly moral stance. Which it is, but is first and foremost a political ideology that needs to have a practical vision on what is happening now. And what IS happening now is that the Jewish diaspora is indeed shifting to more radical Zionist ideologies, not only because of Israeli propaganda, but also because anti-Zionists basically expect them to distance themselves from an ideology many of them have been told since childhood, and that is most likely held by their family, which is that Israel has a right to exist on the basis of Jews having a religious-based right on Palestinian land. Anti-Zionists who, for quite a lot of them and I will not stop being very bitter about this, never truely publically questionned the legitimacy of Israel as a "Jewish state", or ever approached the topic of Israel before the actual genocide. Glad to see they care now, but maybe have a sense of leniancy when it comes to Jewish people not having questionned it as well, and having a hard time to dismantle a narrative that is not only mainstream in the Jewish community by the way, but also in the Western world - we just put more emphasis on the need for Jewish people to have a state to protect them after WWII than the whole religious aspect of it. And the reason why many of these leftists were able to hold anti-Zionist beliefs so quickly has to be questionned, which is one of Natalie's point: you don't have to oppose the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state to want the genocide to stop, nor oppose the expansion of Israeli's domination on the West Bank. Anti-Zionism is, as she puts it, a vague notion to many online leftists who claim to be one. A vagueness that does actually make some of them unable to recognize antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism, which quickly becomes a problem since fascists have been playing that game for decades now and are very good at it. Now are leftists the "real antisemites", now that fascists holding power are on the side of Israel? Of course not. Fascists still hate Jewish people and will persecute them in their country at any given time. However, again joining Natalie on this, the rush to the label of anti-Zionist as well as the gatekeeping of any people wanting to stop the ongoing genocide without calling for the abolition of a Jewish state just made many Jewish people of the Jewish diaspora politically homeless, as well as legitimately afraid of the immense rise of verbal and physical abuse that does fit a frightening pattern - although it must be stated that the vast majority of this violence does come from the far-right, taking advantage of this climate of confusion. I have seen many times the fact of simply pointing out the actual rise of antisemitic crime in the West - data that is not provided by some Zionist lobby or whatever, being both held by Zionists as a proof of the need to support Israel, the "only thing that can keep Jewish people safe", AND dismissed if not outright denounced by leftists for being a distraction from the genocide at best (there would be much to say about some leftists thinking we should hold off everything until the genocide stops, as it is the worst thing happening right now, this is a very dangerous idea that only benefits the huge pushback on many issues like women's rights, trans' rights, or racism happening in their own country, which includes antisemitism), and Zionist propaganda at worst (which is just antisemitic). To draw towards a conclusion, Natalie is absolutely right to point out the defective anti-Zionism of the online left. I would rather accept a two-state solution Zionist as an ally than an antisemite in denial, sadly I am seeing that this is not the most mainstream take on the online left, especially since almost nobody there seems to want to educate themselves on antisemitism. However, I also believe Natalie is wrong to have thought that publically joining the discourse against the genocide in Gaza, including sharing images and videos of this atrocity, would be contributing to this confused online left anti-Zionist stance. In fact, I would argue that it would have been beneficial, as her justified worries about the alienation of the Jewish diaspora and the porosity of some to actual antisemitic rhetoric would have been better received. But her reluctance stood, as I developped, on things I consider untrue, like the uneffectiveness of early public opposition, so I guess it was inevitable. Now let's be real: no apology for anything, from bad phrasing to ideas she may retract, would be accepted by a sphere who deemed her on the side of the genocide apologists. There is no point addressing it now. When videos with tens of thousands of views are called "Contrapoints: a case study of a narcissistic Zionist liberal centrist" or something, and the most watched political streamer in the world right now has made a takedown of her post without trying to give her the slightest benefit of the doubt, on the sole basis of her whole career, what's the point. Also more broadly, ever since Natalie said she considered herself a liberal, a whole bunch of leftists of various credibility to claim themselves as such basically started a neverending smear campain against her. I guess I'm a leftist, although I never quite understood this American liberal/leftist thing, I'm French, I believe capitalism should be abolished and that society can perfectly work on a different economic system, the more credible still being communism as theorised by marxist economists, and I believe society can operate on a non-vertical structure of power, making me lean towards a more anarchist view of political organization. Will I stop listening to liberal, two-state Zionist Contrapoints? Absolutely not. And I believe a lot of leftists should have thought twice before taking this statement as some kind of pro-genocide or anti-activism coming out, but if I would allow myself to indulge in cynicism, "I disagree about many things on Contrapoints' statement" gets less views than "Contrapoints' DISASTEROUS take on GAZA". I'm sure statements like "Jessie Gender is a Zionist" made a lot of views to a certain "there is no antisemitism in the West" guy as well.

Sajl Salim

This tangent was so good!!!!!

Kaitlyn

The part about men wanting to separate themselves from nature is very interesting because to be completely honest, as a cis woman, one of the ONLY ways I have saved myself from the treachery that is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, is LEANING INTO the fact that I am a creature experiencing natural ebbs and flows of hormones in a continual cycle. I feel like my body being cyclical has been beaten out of me by a patriarchal society that operates on a 24 hour hormonal schedule and forced me to ignore my body's natural state. Our sexist society was BUILT around shutting out women, nature, and the ebb and flow (lol) of both. Do i think the patriarchy is the REASON I have PMDD? I don't know. I have spent the last year clawing back my reverence for the cycle Within Me (ugh), and god damn it, it's the ONLY thing that has worked. Maybe I am just a workaholic though, and recognizing when i'm in my luteal phase has given me the space to rest for once in my fuckin life. So it doesn't have to be so woo-woo if I put it THAT way. But I would be lying if I said that the "woo" of leaning into my menstrual cycle didn't make me feel more at peace with myself, and happier, and thus... decreasing my pmdd symptoms. (I do worry this would be some sort of alt right or radfem pipeline for some. Not me tho, yall be easy) Unfortunately the paglia kinda cooked with that one.

Max Murphy

You have no idea how happy it makes me to see a new tangent. 💖❤️💕

Isla View

Thank you for this meal, Mother.

Nintenspiders

Being a Baltimorean watching this is so funny because I’m nodding along with your description of the triumphs of Egypt just to be flash banged by the Arundel Mills mall.

Arben

Finally. I find Paglia so interesting, I think she’s terribly misunderstood by everyone. No need to love her or even agree with her to understand her.

Deconstruction Interactive

This is a great video! I like the positions you take in it, even though I don't agree with all of them. I don't feel that gender is inherently tied to sexual reproduction. For me it's one of those things where even if you can make an argument to trace any aspect of gender back to the womb or the phallus, the sociocultural context around how people feel about gender today is equally if not more critical to the concept. Gender is part of how I feel inside and how the world feels against my body -- certainly embodied and certainly socially constructed, but not reproductive. I also both agree with your desire for decadence in liberalism and derive it from a very different place. For me, decadence is about just wanting to chill sometimes. Not everything has to be perfect and correct, nor about the struggle. I think the world is both full of unimaginable suffering and basically good at the same time, and people are good, but all that goodness doesn't mean a person should avoid the Dark Mother and blithely love bears. Please keep making more videos like these!

sasha katcher

Please keep doing videos like this (if you can) this is so fantastic and interesting. I studied a lot of philosophy in high school debate class and listening to you reminds me of how much I miss it, philosophy that is. I feel so sorry that you have to keep explaining the nuances of conversation, the internet has worn you down. Love your work

Brendan

after wage slaving my soul away at Best Buy this is exactly what I needed coming home at the end of the day. thank you mother

The Bilderberg Group

I was not enthusiastic when I saw that Sexual Personae won... I'm sorry I doubted you mother.

Callie Thompson

I've gotten to the point that I'm too exhausted to stay informed and care about everything and everyone and be the most inclusive, radial left activist I can muster working 50+ hours a week in a red state doesn't see me or the people I love as people. I'm tired. I understand the centrist now. I feel powerless and numb. It's crazy to me that so many people require the people who entertain them to have the exact opinions as them at all times or else. I feel lucky that I don't have a crowd of people pestering me to share my (at the moment, uninformed half baked surface level) opinions. I don't know. I think I need a nap. I'm aware of my privilege. If anyone feels the need to debate my pathetic bitching, you've already won. I'm proud of you and I envy you. It's nice to put on a heavy brainy video like this while I stare into the void. Thank you Natalie.

Anthony Behnke

I only read the first chapter of Sexual Personae, and though its length intimidated me from reading all 700 pages, I did enjoy some of Paglia's ornate, purplish prose. She referred to jizz as a "gob of refuse" and I can't get it out of my head. Anyhoo, great tangent as always and thank you for reading long texts so we don't have to!

Karen Lowe

I have been dying for you to explain Camille Paglia to me, thank you!

Elsie Hupp

Bad-faith Twitter outrage? You mean like people getting angry at as Ms. Wynn for acting like an addict rather than a Thought Leader? 😅

Elsie Hupp

Orthogonal geometry is important for defending against vampires, though!

Nora

This is wild lol thanks for unpacking this book for us.

Elsie Hupp

You mean Jordan Peterson didn’t start weeping until after his daughter tried to murder him so she could wear his skin like a suit? 😅

demlet

Excellent, don't ever stop.

Ash Gabrielle

I sympathize with the end of this video. I want to be, not a liberal, but a leftist who embraces decadence. I feel like that's a tough line to walk.

Callie Thompson

40:12 is a win for all members of the ibtc

Gabe

This was very interesting, she puts together some interesting ideas though I am struck by: 1. The continued antisemetism of anyone picking up Nietzsche's framework which inherently seems to blame the ills of Christianity on Jews, who have been some of the biggest victims of the bad things to have come from Christians. It's interesting how easily she picks up that antisemetism insisting that out of touch word-based philosophers are inherently "rabbinical" 2. I do wonder to what extent you give too much credence to arguments that are aesthetically interesting even if they don't seem very rigorous: Eg. Freud, debunked ideas of witch cults, and now this lady. I don't even know if this is a criticism but something I think is worth bringing up.

Gabe

Also, you talk about sadomasochism as this philisophical entity seemingly in conflict with liberalism in a way I don't understand, how is a kink opposing liberalism?

Beth Jerky

lol I regret citing her in a film studies paper about basic instinct 23 years ago

Mel Henning

is cthulhu chthonian also omg a reference to the presentation of self in everyday life my faave

Rose Dombegh

I feel like there's something to be said about the "strict moralism" Natalie discusses at the end and what she's coined "punishing father morality" ... unfortunately I shan't be the one to say it :)

Ginny

Loved this one! Especially your comment about morality not being the only thing that makes life worth living

Rose Dombegh

Ooooh actually I'll give it a go: In "Daddy Politics" Natalie talks about Strict Father Morality TM as a moral system that views parts of human nature as evil & requires an external disciplinarian to keep them at bay (The Daddy of belt removal fame). Ppl who grow up under this moral system internalize the disciplinarian, become their own punishing father to keep themselves on the straight and narrow & away from their own evil impulses. I think there is genuine kinship between this structure of morality (often associated with conservative Christianity) and the kind of strict moralism that inhibits what Natalie refers to as the "aesthetic" -- enjoyment of life derived from sensation/experience rather than moralizing & analysis -- which can emerge in liberal/leftist spaces. Maybe they're the same/similar structures of moral enforcement but they enforce different moral values. I grew up in an extremely SJW Politically Correct social environment, & I often feel like that gave me an internal disciplinarian -- a punishing [gender neutral teacher figure] whom I constantly feel the need to justify myself to. This way of interacting with the world makes it hard to just experience things without needing to judge them as "right" or "wrong." (To be clear I think this is bad. Cutting up the world this way serves no one and genuinely causes me distress -- constantly judging people and things is not fun) Not exactly sure what to do about this, bc society does need to be like critiqued and certain human impulses can certainly be destructive ... maybe the answer is balance? Or something subversive, like being guided by a virtue like compassion rather than a "morality" of "right" and "wrong"

Frankie Andrien

oooo this was not what i expected it to be about but it's SO fun. extremely fascinated by your thoughts on the self as persona/social mask. I do agree, but I'm curious as to your thoughts as to what that means for gender and identity outside of social contexts. What persona do you have on when you're alone? What separates that self from your consciousness? I've got my own answers (my identity didn't develop this clinically fucked up for me NOT to come up with some theories of the self), but I'd love to hear yours. Also, everything about the words/images dichotomy was hilarious to me, honestly. Paglia's 700 page book about worshipping images over words. the inherent sadomasochistic paganism of the Catholic church, as told by a Catholic supremacist with a really unorthodox take on feminism. The idea that today's academic elite is "rabbinic" (also, it's interesting, if totally unsurprising, that the whole Western culture thing doesn't account a ton for Judaism, including in that area. The Jewish people were historically a poor but literate community, they're very much word-worshippers while also making room for quite a bit of sex and violence in their theology, and in many ways, while focused on a masculine idea of divinity, still are FAR more caught up in nature and very chthonian forms of like. reverent fear and deep connection to seasons and natural cycles than, say, just about any branch of the church. anyway hate to break it to you camille but YOU are an academic and in fact not that Jewish in your thinking). i'm spinning this around in my head quite a bit i suppose in 700 pages there's bound to be at least a couple of interesting ideas. if you're willing to sort through "the pyramids are stored in the balls."

queerly beloved

this was a fascinating episode! thanks for making this and sharing it with us :) wishing you a good august!

Beth S

I think I am not built for philosophy (me problem). My overwhelming takeaway from a book like that is always, "yeah, you could think about the world that way... but why?" Probably it has many elements of truth to it, and probably most of it only makes any sense at all if you first cherry pick examples and frame them in a way that discards 99% of other variables or context. What makes something interesting to me, even when it is horseshit that is cherry picked and isolated and given an absurd projected framing, is if it can be expressed with an artistry that makes it have independent meaning, like in fiction which also contains the powerful feelings of story, character and symbolism, or at the very least having wit or poetic turns of phrase. This also means it often is just a matter of taste, which it never seems like someone like Paglia considers - that she simply is more into primordial goo than fractals and crystals and that this informs every conclusion she draws. So it triggers my stubbornness that she does this by being a provocateur. It feels like a cheap trick, like being poked with a stick and then being told "aha! You've been stimulated!" (phallic symbol ?????)

laxsill

What a master of hot takes. I can't figure out if she's antisemitic or not but her takes are so hot I don't care.

ContraPoints

yeah her views about consent are crazy. aesthetics very worth engaging with

artificialladybug

This was really interesting. I hope you you do more videos focusing on a single book like this in the future.

misslcd

The Light Mother / Dark Mother false dichotomy is something I think about often - the same Mother Nature is both creator and destroyer, beautiful and terrible, tender and cruel. Moral absolutists are unrealistic - this duality exists in us too. We celebrate flawed characters in art (Walter White, Tony Soprano, Cersei Lannister) as "real", but for actual real people we expect flawless moral purity, no stupid / careless / cruel acts. It's unrealistic. It doesn't mean that we can't strive to be good people, learn from our mistakes, try to move through life without hurting others, and hope that others will do the same, but it's unrealistic to expect anyone to do this without stumbling occasionally.

Teageen

Whether she sees this or not, I wanted to share that it was nice for me to read this. Thank you for sharing

Carmen Blake

Slightly off topic but, I would love to hear a list of some of your favorite books if you have not created one yet! I feel like you reference so many books in your videos and would love to dive into some of your favorite ones.

Yessica Haircut

Great video! I do think that there's something to be said for the role of Mary in the "mother" role within Christianity, she did give birth to Jesus (who is in theory both God and the son of God), in a way tying "hierarchical sky god" back into the cyclical "female" archetype she describes. This feels less prevalent in just Judaism/the old Testament, but I think that especially the pedestal on which Mary is placed by the catholic church and the emphasis on the birth of Christ is emblematic of the cyclical "female" religious role.

Lore

Thank you Okaasan

pawnedliberal

someone did a lista of all of the books she mentions in her videos, it was on reddit

Sam

"When the enormity of the world's horrors makes you feel helpless, narrow your focus. Find one stranger and scold them for posting a recipe while kids are dying. Call out a new mom for not adding alt text to a baby photo. Critique a selfie. Correct a joke. Show people you care more than them."

Sam

"When the enormity of the world's horrors makes you feel helpless, narrow your focus. Find one stranger and scold them for posting a recipe while kids are dying. Call out a new mom for not adding alt text to a baby photo. Critique a selfie. Correct a joke. Show people you care more than them."

Taru Mäkelä

I think the goat one is even more

Matt Quigley

I left a comment below after only watching this video's introduction. This is my follow-up, after watching the video twice. I'll spare you the lengthy essay I could spew here about my relationship to this book. Or at least I hope I will. I'm still early in this comment. Your analysis is not too far off from what mine was, even when I was in my early-20s and Ms. Paglia was still a highly entertaining, obnoxiously self-styled iconoclast. As you allude to here, she definitely positioned herself as something of a "favorite feminist of men." I am guilty of being that persuasion (a man, that is), from birth and likely until death, but even as an early-20-something I thought a lot of what she said was patently absurd. She was one of those sorts, though, where it seemed she knew that half of what she was saying was complete bullshit. Part of my social life in the 90s was pretty heavily steeped in the third-wave, where Paglia was a contentious figure to say the least. But, sometimes I wonder if people weren't as quick to categorically write off or wholly embrace any thinker, philosopher, or even whip-smart, blatantly manic shit-stirrer. She was definitely in the conversation. It's interesting that you, and commenters here, associate her with her beef with Madonna, when I think of her as someone who gained a not insubstantial amount of attention for praising Madonna. She wrote a short piece for the NY Times in 1990 where she praised the then controversial video for "Justify My Love." MTV refused to air it, and Madonna raised a fuss on Nightline defending the video and insisting that it was neither pornographic nor potentially harmful to children. Paglia said, basically, the video is pornographic, completely not appropriate for children, and MTV was doing the right and responsible thing by not showing it, BUT she also added that the video was glorious. The piece was unambiguously gushing. She described Madonna's vision of sex as vastly more profound that that of "the feminists." Madonna, in that 2016 speech you show excerpted here, was being straight-up disingenuous in her characterization of Paglia's words, or she had her assistant read her the article while she was on the shitter, or she confused Paglia with someone else, as Paglia -- rather famously, to where it kind of put Paglia on the mainstream popular culture radar -- praised Madonna. She straight-up, and unironically, called Madonna the "future of feminism." She says some other shit in the article, regarding the dangerous dance of seduction and no not always meaning no, and well... Paglia was always gonna Paglia. But, wildly irresponsible and problematic takes are part of the fun of people like Paglia (and Dworkin, in her way, although in her case she didn't seem nearly so in on the fun). Within a single page, you can have your perception of things affirmed, then have your entire worldview challenged and artfully deconstructed, and then, when only halfway through, realize you're just reading the ramblings of an articulate crackpot who, honestly, seems to kind of be fucking with you. And before you turn the page, you've had your mind kind of blown again. And so it goes. The world needs more people like circa-early-90s Camille Paglia, or at least people who occupy that space. I will forego sycophancy here, but by saying that I think my suggestion will be clear. It's a joy, to me, that Paglia could be so phenomenally wrong about things, but in a way that forces you to better articulate your own opinion. I have never read a book of theory or philosophy -- or whatever form the non-fiction and/or philosophical fiction piece takes -- and bought into its ideas wholesale. I'm always shocked to encounter highly intelligent people who quote from one philosopher and/or economist, or whatever, chapter and verse as though their every idea was correct. There are creators who work in the YouTube space, whose named I'd dare not type here, whose framework is so clearly established, and adhered to so inflexibly, that watching their videos is simply tedious and redundant. I already know their take on any given subject before I've listened to them say a word. They apply no critical analysis, imagination, nuance, or outside perspectives to any subject. Look, I'm an egomaniac who definitely enjoys having my biases confirmed now and again, but I do have my limits. Please, for the love of God, force me think, or at least make me laugh, or SOMETHING. Back to Ms. Paglia... I always scoffed at the whole "There could never be a female Mozart, but conversely there could never be a female Hitler" stuff, or all the pseudo-freudian claptrap, but also did, and still do, find it incredibly entertaining. In truth, Paglia was something of an important bridge for me in getting away from the misogyny baked into me from an impossibly early age. While my social life at that time was sort of steeped in the third-wave, and I was getting good intel (for that era) from some very enlightened women, I was still coming from rock and roll and arising from the ashes of the counter-culture to the counter-culture, where my self-hating queerness alone was a burden to shake. Now, I've got to deal with the fact that I'm just reflexively a pretty appalling sexist? I was friends with bands and the founders of zines that proved to be important and incredibly influential to the 90s leg of the third wave, and I was reading the many books my many tuned in women friends recommended. None of them were recommending 'Sexual Personae,' but some of them did begrudgingly like it. There was a qualified respect for Paglia because she was so aggressively pro-sex. Also, while her portrayal of men seems glowing and almost too empathetic, right beneath the surface it was quite hilariously patronizing. In an overall way, Paglia was, if nothing else, legitimately funny, both intentionally and incidentally, and her 21st century persona lacks pretty much all of that. She was always a reactionary, by consciously irritating design, but I think you get about a decade of that shit, at most, before you're no longer an iconoclast but simply a loudmouth shill for an establishment that will also, in reality, find you grating. I've said too much, so I'll end it here.

DoggoDuck

Camille did used to be entertaining, I remember her on the UK Clive James Show talking up a storm. Where have all the smart hip right wingers gone?

Max Hermann

Glad to have you back Nat! 💗💗💗 Sleep well and take care! 🌿

Divdesmit Pieci

As a former humanities student these more academic topics really scratch the itch for more intellectual content. Thanks!

Adam

Lasha Bezhashvili

I just know Contra was dying to get patrons to vote for this topic for so long lol

Kat Jones

10/10 tangent. Would enjoy a book report again!

Ann C

I admit I struggled to read this book and barely made it through the first chapter. To put it mildly, it's not my typical summer book, but you've inspired me to tackle it again. Unlike you, I'm not an auditory learner, but I think I'll listen to the audio while I read the book, which should help me maintain focus. I also just started watching Peterson's interview with Paglia. From the clips you showed, it looks like it's pretty animated at times, which should be entertaining to watch. (And it is).

James

Part 1 kind of reminds me of a pinned comment on the Twilight video from a chap who said he really struggled with the idea that he couldn’t be “the beloved” and had to be the boundary crossing force in romance. I feel like I’ve also spent most of my life wrestling with that sexual personae. I don’t want to forcefully escape from feminine nurture and fashion it into something else through dominance. I’m in hospital right now and want nothing more than to have my girlfriend, mother and grandmother here to make me feel safe. If anything I want to be accepted back into the fold. The idea that my biology must place me in direct opposition to that just strikes me as suffering for its own sake. But then again, maybe that’s where the image of the lone stoic man comes from?

Olive Nicole

I haven’t read Paglia yet but I’ve been saying that about clams & oysters since I came out as a lesbian. Oysters were my favorite food as a child btw

Rose Dombegh

Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and high protestant churches! And especially if you read the gospels as kind of a resolution to Genesis (Christ's ascension being the "answer" to the fall/Christ's coming being reconciliation with God), Mary's role as the "mother of God" completes a natural cycle: From God comes man, from man comes woman, and from woman comes God. I read this as kind of redeeming the place of woman in the cosmos: Genesis links womens' role as mothers (those that get pregnant and bear children) to Eve's sin & thus the body of woman to sin; Gods/Christ's first action as Emmanuel is to emerge into the world from a woman's body through childbirth. Also notice that in Genesis after the humans eat the fruit, Adam's first action as a fallen man is to blame the woman for his own transgression, foreshadowing a dynamic of animosity between the sexes that's part of the fall. But in the gospels, Jacob's first act is to accept Mary's pregnancy and help her through it, taking almost a subservient role -- there is no cult of Jacob veneration. I've always seems this as part of a kind of reconciliation of the sexes -- mending the wounds of Genesis (no this is not me just blathering, real theologians see the fall --> Crucifixion --> rise as a kind of cycle that exists outside of time but that we humans experience in a linear fashion). Christianity also has a lot of womb/tomb imagery ... the womb is itself a kind of tomb, because people are born only to die, but for Christ (& for Lazarus, + Christians) the tomb is itself a womb, because people die to emerge into an eternal life. Baptism is seen as being buried with Christ to rise with him -- but specifically to rise into the life of the Church, which is conceived of as female. This is aclso a kind of natural cycle. So, the Church herself is sort of a Mother. Which is interesting, bc church leadership is traditionally male . . .

Jon Stewart

Me too. Although I'm aromantic gay, so my sex drive feels more like a pretty simple biological function. I'm just turned on by tacky, stereotypical masculinity - mainly bodies and there's nothing much psychological/cultural/spiritual about it. This leads me to the view that one can strip away layers of culture/conditioning and underneath is just neurology. I suspect something similar is true of gender identity, and we interpret our conscience experience of our underlying neurology through the prism of culture.

Rose Dombegh

I'm sorry you're in the hospital & hope you feel better! Also, screw DHSM (no pun intended). I think Nat's right -- we all get to play all of these roles. They're all part of the human inheritance. Including accepting & embracing "feminine" nurturance ... so say hi to your gf and mom for us <3 (My lil essay is below if you want to read it lol) I'm actually hesitant to assign labels of "masculine" or "feminine" to these inclinations, because I think all people have affinity to both of them, and both ways of being can be inhabited/stylized as an extension of maleness or femaleness. (Like I personally tend toward the Apollonian and toward traditionally "masculine" ideals of power & authority, but I see it as a legitimate expression of womanhood/femininity. Even taking up culturally "male" symbols, like a pantsuit, can feel feminine to me ... I don't think I'm necessarily taking on male symbols so much as taking on human roles that have been historically reserved for men due to social & material conditions). I also think there's a real possibility that the kind of abstraction of these (maybe real) general tendencies into ideals/archetypes for the sexes not only denies everyone the fullness of the human experience, but is explicitly a propaganda tool meant to get people to play the "right" societal roles ... like convincing men to die in war & women to die/sacrifice themselves in childbirth & motherhood. And I'm not sure the binary of "nurture v. dominance" is that great a representation of human power dynamics? Also if you want a nurturant male figure to contemplate I unironically suggest reading St. Augustine's "Confessions" ... he's so unashamed about being deeply emotional & feeling deep love for his mother. He doesn't see it as contradicting masculinity at all.

Paul Comeau

loved the vid, and the flashbacks - read Sexual Personae in the 90s cause it was the pretentious thing to do lol. great analysis too!

Paul Comeau

yeah the early interviews were fun... I can recall when I think she became dull, and it was oddly when Sopranos was popular, she'd go on these rants about how it was racist agains Italian Americans like her, and it just seemed more like "see me crap on your show" than a thought out critique. oh well.

Garrett on LSD

okay wow. The effort post here is kinda ridiculous. If only Natalie put in the effort you did here into her half baked screed that left me feeling betrayed then maybe I'd not feel this way. Really there's nothing YOU can say that will change my mind here. It really has to come from her at this point. This isn't about YOUR interpretation of events that matters here it's hers and I'm just a little confused and upset. Not here to debate just here to say how I feel not how others made me feel or told me to feel.

Elias Tsirides

I appreciate the apollonian, Egyptian themed eye make up and necklace for this tangent. Very thalassic!!

Harley

I admittedly didn't know a ton about Paglia going into this, but based on just the 90's clips I've seen of her, I picture her in my head ravenously gnashing on a raw, bloody steak like a dog – not unlike those Dionysians.

rickykanyk

4:3 ratio and reference to Grizzly Man made my day. That appolonian reflexion is now bugging my own creation behavior. Been listening twice. Thanks !

Hannah

When Paglia makes her sweeping conclusions and generalizations about men and women, I do wonder about how women’s limited voice biases the historical record. like, there always seem to be much fewer primary sources on how women have historically felt about, well, anything

Allen Bray

I need to pause to comment every now and again. I just want to say, I know i store pyramids in my balls.

Thomas Kerr

"ate to break it to you camille but YOU are an academic and in fact not that Jewish in your thinking" gag 1000% correct love this comment

Alamareth

Loved this investigation, I just grew a sense of style. Thx

Dainty Donna

*Comment before 1 min in so plz don’t crucify* I first encountered Camille adjacently when Madonna mentioned her in her billboard (I think) woman of the year award-(great speech imo btw) where she noted that Camille referred to her as a “bad feminist” for being sexually provocative on a global scale and retrograding the feminist movement back decades. That being said…I can’t WAIT to see how this turns out 🧐 (insert Rupaul here) *Edit* okay 5 mins in it was already mentioned so fuck my drag right 😂. Hopefully I have something substantial to comment by the end.

hey_boo

In the tangent, She said she hates you the most.

Garrett on LSD

I deserve it for stepping to mother. I figured she’d say from the river to the sea since she loves the dark mother the sea.

Cammi Kemonochu

As an Aries girlie w Pisces placements…. I get it.

Xylem

But what about Sexual Fursonae?

Brant Watson

"We know that nature is metaphorically mother..." Why metaphorically? Isn't nature that which from all is derived? How is that metaphor rather than simply how things are?

Brant Watson

Also why not merge light and dark mother? That distinction seems pretty black and white.

fa

so glad to see the 4:3 ratio back queen

Roisin Isner

I'm at min 20 so maybe this comes up later, but I'm struggling with some of this because I think I get annoyed with philosophers that try to do the work of biology, anthropology, or history but don't have any meaningful education in those fields. Like, Paglia whose general education outside her field ended in the early 1960s making sweeping statements about global history, or of course Jordan Peterson self-identifying as an "evolutionary biologist." Ideas that are straight up anti-scientific or ahistoric can get uncritically presented as factual reality, just because they're tropes you would have learned if you went to American or Canadian high school in the 1950s. I guess it's just that it's frustrating to see people be confidently wrong. Not a criticism of the video though, which I am enjoying a lot! Edit: Pretty much every time I get too annoyed with Paglia, Natalie steps in on why it's a dumb sweeping argument with a lot of counter-evidence. So I'm definitely benefiting from the "sweeping statements are good because they make you refine your point of view" thing. I just get so annoyed with anti-scientific ruminations on "nature," for instance, when so many fields of study are devoted to it. Evolution really confounds non-experts because it's imagined as some teleological system, rather than just the compounding results of chaos. But even tropes like "chaos vs order" don't really work to describe the natural world, because chaos doesn't necessarily preclude things like harmony. And things like culture and taboo are observable in non-human animals. There's violence, but there's also altruism. It's almost like The Day isn't actually in a cosmic struggle with The Night, and these are just two things that both exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, non-human animals have SO MUCH non-reproductive sex. The one thing I might push back on in this video is reproduction as the evolutionary imperative for sex, with everything else as a simple proximate mechanism. Don't get me started on bisexual fruitflies, sex toy use in primates, NASAL SEX (topping & bottoming) in dolphins, and the depravity of octopods. Edit 2: Also I would argue stopping climate change isn't saving nature from us OR saving us from nature, it's both. It's stopping us from making many many species extinct, including us. (Also, we are natural and largely co-adapted with the rest of the natural world, which isn't saying we should all be subsistence farmers without YouTube, just that not every cultural idea we come up with is good. Some are nice, like when we decide to oppose violence, but capitalism isn't much of a winner.)

cbp

I just learned that hormones don’t just affect you during your luteal phase! Estrogen also messes me up during my follicular if I don’t eat because progesterone and estrogen impact your insulin something something. Our natural hormonal cycles impact us in ways we barely understand and I certainly wasn’t taught about.

Kemplify

You and Matt Bernstein are becoming my favorite creators of episodes I'd call "here's a person or topic that you may or may not have heard of but boy howdy is it a doozy."

Xylem

Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Camille Paglia.”

demlet

Maybe see a doctor about that.

demlet

I totally agree and I think Natalie would as well. And yet, I really do think there's something compelling about the contrast between the Venus of Willendorf and ancient Egyptian art, that undoubtedly says something about different ways of conceiving femininity. It's a lot like Freud or Jung. We know a lot of it is bullshit, but there's still somehow something true there when all is said and done – just maybe not as true as the authors think it is, if that makes sense.

Xylem

Anyway, now I ship Nefertiti and Venus of Willendorf.

Cassidy Brinn

Your stance on decadence reminds me of one of your answers in an old AMA about the aesthetic vs moral life. There too (if memory serves) you defended your devotion to aesthetic rather than moral values, and named Nabokov, Kierkegaard, and Wilde as your comrades in beauty. That riff meant a lot to me, and your exploration here deepened and qualified it - and was extra satisfying given the implicit frame of the current moral outrage around your politics. On that front, it is fabulous to watch your strength and defiance throughout this tangent. THANK YOU!

Dainty Donna

She’s the Sasha Colby of edge lord. She’s your favorite edge lord’s favorite edge lord, Nietzsche squared. Given the emphasis she places on biology being fundamental to psychology, I wonder if she considers that although human beings are sexually reproducing mammals, if there is some deeper aspect of psychology that traces back to common ancestors of unicellular asexual biology. “The urge to merge” guiding sexuality dichotomized beings towards unity, whereby after achieving said unity, the urge is to split once again. Asexuality guided by split, sexuality guided by merge. All of life occurs with a basis of both, probably resulting in the feeling that something is always missing so the search, the evolution, marches on, demarcating creation in perpetuity. In short, just become a Buddha and end all of this nonsense

Xylem

What about the Asexual Unicellular urge to participate in Horizontal Gene Transfer by spreading Plasmids around?

Cassidy Brinn

I don't know, if we are going to make sexual metaphors out of cells, I like Bataille's reading in Erotism better. We are drawn to sex because we (like cells) want ecstasy, transgression, and sacred violence, not asexual unity.

Xylem

'I don't identify as a good person' -Contrapoints, 2025. A quote to end all quotes. Bravo.

savannah

Your best work yet! Thank you 🖤

Chazie

Voltaire once said about Rousseau "your writing makes me want to get on all fours and graze the grass"

Andrew Amand

love your content, Mother! Stay strong in this battle for humanity itself 💪

highclass_lady

hi Natalie Sending you my support 🩷 In this Tangent you mentioned the topic of people being redeemable, I hope this comment shows why I really believe you already are. I trained for a career in humanitarian aid work, my 1st 2 placements were in Rwanda & Uganda, so I too have experienced (primarily American) activists not admitting when they’ve taken things (like purity testing) too far. (I’m reposting now because my 1st version of this comment was posted right after you shared & is now so far buried under all the comments since that it’s unlikely to be seen). I imagine in the days immediately following your I/P post, you must've been so inundated with replies, both of support & the opposite, so you must've felt so overwhelmed you may not have had the bandwidth to mentally receive & actually benefit from any more messages, much less a longer 1.I'm glad a number of the people who spoke up to defend you were able to do so well. As someone who started my career in humanitarian aid, I've met genocide survivors in both Cambodia & Rwanda, & have been to genocide museums in Phnom Penh, & Kigali. (I recall those museums being even more graphic than the holocaust museums I've been to in NY & France). After Cambodia & Rwanda, I did research & presentations on genocide in grad school during my Master's in Humanitarianism, Aid, & Conflict. I’ve visited genocide survivors & listened to their stories. In my opinion, the co-opting & exploiting of media shared by genocide survivors as a tool for other people to use as harassment is disgusting (& degrading to the actual victims). It's 1 thing for Palestinians to share this media with the world, to give voice to their suffering & show the truth of what is happening, but for toxically behaving online leftists who do not live there to then misuse the suffering of Palestinian people as a weapon feels so sensationalist & disrespectful. It's belittling & objectifying their suffering as spectacle, & I agree with you that behaviour like that is not honoring the victims. It’s similar to how true crime stories are sensationalised to the point of shock value entertainment, which can be dismissive & dehumanising to the victims. The idea of anyone doing that with images of the family members of the genocide survivors I've met is psychopathic. Tragic, unnecessary suffering isn't a finite pie chart. Although awareness is important for applying political pressure towards large-scale change, the suffering of Palestinians isn't reduced by making you sad or threatened; & mentally punishing yourself isn't going to help. I studied international relations & foreign policy in DC, so believe me, when it comes to policy & litigation, online discourse about which pundits & YouTube stars have "based" takes, carries no weight (thank goodness). From my humanitarian aid perspective, Natalie you don't make the world worse by having opinions that some people consider wrong, especially on some aspects of complex & brutal geopolitical atrocities; I know you believe genocide is wrong, obviously. Your heart is good, no matter how the most exploitative people lie about, accuse, & misrepresent you. Trust me, on location, no humanitarian aid worker or medical professional has time to care about the online discourse on whose opinion isn't pure enough. And I don’t mean that as a way to belittle or dismiss your trauma, nor the egregiousness & scale of what you are going through. While there is no denying the power of online leftists to cause pain in someone’s life, be destructive in eroding any semblance of a sense of safety, & comendere widespread perception of a figure, I only hope that it is of some meager comfort to remember how little sway these people hold against those who aim to impact the world. I hope it’s also of marginal comfort that there are still competent people who do not form opinions of humans (with jobs that involve being a public figure) based on what chronically online Twitter mobs think. None of the people I’ve met in the field on humanitarian aid placements do, a lot of the people who make tangible impacts, won’t be listening to your critics. Moral perfectionism & superiority complexes can materialise as letting the idea of the "perfect" be the enemy of the good, or the best we can do right now. In humanitarian aid, we try to remove vestiges of colonialism from assistance interventions. We try not to create systems of dependency or let finances hold power & establish hierarchy. We aim to empower & involve local leaders with resources; their wisdom guides how to implement aid & ensures the forms given are compatible & helpful in their village. We proactively operate in ways to reduce (not perpetuate) unintended harm & prevent doing more harm than good. But in humanitarian aid, we can't be so guarded against accidental or unavoidable moral imperfection that we never do anything. Remaining morally pure isn’t prioritised over alleviating human suffering. Do I eat meat? No. Did I serve food with meat to malnourished children whose only meal was that soup kitchen? Yes. Is meat a product of animal cruelty? Did the water come from a well built using unethical labour practices? Yes, but there was no other source in the village. There’s no completely pure person in humanitarian aid, but if you want to do any good, 1 has to grow up & do the best 1 can in the world around them. And in paraphrasing Dr Maya Angelou, then when you know better, do better from there. Are all humanitarian aid workers bad people because past poorly informed projects have created unintended or unavoidable harm? Of course not. Is unintended harm still a reason some leftists hate aid workers & criticise & harass even people they know irl both online & in person? Yes. And you're not a bad person either Natalie. My point is, don't let internet purity standards (& the ironically morally impure harassment) be the enemy of the good. You have so much potential Natalie, & you are wonderful, worthy, & valued. Unlike the capitalist way of objectifying people, you’re not just a resource valuable for what you can produce, you are a person & you are valuable, not just for who you are as a public figure, but simply because you are. I waited to write because I had a lot going on in my life at the time you posted, (including being quite sick with a high fever) which rendered me incapable of anything coherent or worth your time. I’m sorry I didn’t participate in defending you at that time. I also wanted to share my experienced perspective in a way that could actually be useful or beneficial to you in some way, or reassuring at least. I didn't want it to just aimlessly be draining to you. Sorry for writing so much now. Remember: the people who would cause you pain do not define you. You are worthy of the best life you can live despite them. & you can still do so much good in this world Natalie, & that's beautiful, but you'll only be ready to (& have the bandwidth capable of doing more good) after you heal. Please take care of yourself as best you can, & I hope your (non-parasocial 😉) friends have healthy & helpful ways to support you through this because you can get through this. All that was to say, you have my support Natalie, & I don't mean this in the "don't squander your potential" type of way, but for your own sake, as a very wise, pretty, & beautiful woman once said: "Stay strong sister, don't let the bastards get you down." 💞

Rose Dombegh

Y'all should collab on a thesis. Biology + existential philosophy

Rose Dombegh

I'm actually really curious about this & would like insights -- why are the aesthetic & the moral held in tension here?

Rose Dombegh

Yes, pls inform us about Egypt!

HK225

One of the best "nature meets philosophy" books I've ever read was "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake, which explores the world of fungi. One chapter covers the concept of the Wood Wide Web and how scientists will impose human biases on this natural phenomenon (of a wide fungal network in the soil of the forest being the source of its very life, providing sustenance, and in some incredible cases, even information, to trees and plants connected to it). American scientists will refer to the Web as an "exchange", like a marketplace or the stock exchange, whereas Chinese scientists will refer to it as a "community" working in tandem towards a "goal". Sheldrake points this out as a human failure, a kind of apophenia. Nature is unknowable , so when people start talking about nature, they reveal far more about themselves. Listening to Herzog talk, for instance, should tell you not to leave children alone in the room with him. Just because Treadwell was an idiot for wanting to pet grizzlies, doesn't make Herzog correct about nature being the director's cut of A Serbian Film. It just means that Herzog is a disturbed asshole who is fascinated by death. Paglia (honestly, not sure what pronouns to use for Paglia, so I'll just keep referring to Paglia as Paglia) saying nature is far more connected to women, and that men are afraid of it - tells you that Paglia is the one afraid of nature and is trying to rationalize it. I think the best use for Paglia's book is as required reading for Paglia's therapist.

Rose Dombegh

Oooh I've read this book and would definitely recommend! He briefly mentions a trans woman who's also a biologist, her theory of gender, and how that derives from mammalian social dynamics in general (something about imprinting & learning social behaviors) -- I've been trying to find her work, which I'd love to read. imo he can fall into a pattern that I think is common in primatology, of seeing an animal interaction, relating it to a human one, and then making sweeping generalizations about behavior (for example, a single tiff between two female primates being related to how all human women handle conflict). At times it also made me a bit depressed about being a woman. But with that in mind, it's still definitely worth a read. Also, I loved the chapter on "gay" animals. Such a win for the bisexual community lol.

Rose Dombegh

@Darren DM -- spam them with poetry. I love this. <3 (Also. Guys. She never said she supports a two-state solution. She just says that other people do, and implies that coalition building with those people is important).

Ilana Galpert

Natalie I'm afraid for you. Leftists, thought they characterize themselves as "enlightened thinkers," kind of hate unfamiliar ideas that exist in tension with their beliefs. I think a lot of the resistance is fear of being wrong or being persecuted by their social group, and that fear breeds a lot of righteous bullying. I consider myself pretty left leaning, and I'm not sold on a lot of the Freudian body-and-metaphor-obsessed takes here, but I have no desire to send you to the guillotine. I'm afraid others would/will more... Aggressive in their disagreement.

Bogo

Can I just say that I’ve learned more about Catholicism from your videos than I did from 18 years of being raised a strict Catholic.

JC

How are you spitting out so many bangers in this comment section?

Abby Hatch

Seriously some of your best work. Thank you for taking the risk to expose us to an interesting theory I certainly wouldn't have encountered otherwise. Regarding her East/West distinction, I think the most favorable interpretation, based on your presentation, is that while both Eastern and Western cultures have struggled with birth/destruction anxiety, Eastern cultures have merged the male anxiety with female compliance whereas Western cultures have separated the two influences. Hence why there are Apollonian and Cthonion elements in Japanese art, and indeed a blending of those aesthetics in the erotica to which you refer. I still don't know if I find that convincing, but its at least interesting to ponder.

mati johnston

So, i love this lecture. It's amazing! Not that i bothered to read her book, but i'm less impressed with Paglia's brilliance than Nathalie's. I will take it on credit (Nathalie's) that she is indeed 'a thinker'. I found Nathalie propping up her ideas with the Lakhoff and Johnson stuff about embodied thinking/language really interesting! But my conclusion was almost all the metaphors they use that Nathalie cites are more features of a primate brain evolved on a savannah than a modern human experience. It's all up, down, hot, cold, soft, hard etc. I'm certainly more than sold that ideas/concepts have intuitive linkages to us, rather than the purely arbitrary option. But i really think they're more linked to how we're innately wired for perception, and so while yes being culturally near universal, are more very intuitive metaphors for our species than reflecting each individual's experience, imo. And without that holding up, i don't know what Paglia's thesis really is? It sounded like she had a lot of long bows Nathalie helped buttress with other thinkers. And tbh she'd put me in a gas chamber so i won't buy her book, so i'll only find out if i can pirate a copy.

Anthony Behnke

She calls them tangents, I call it cinema.

Ayanna

In all of this, the only thing I can agree with Paglia on is the symbolic origins of Genesis and Abrahamic religions. I think that was probably the most poignant take she's ever had, and I especially like that as someone with the religious past and present I currently have. I am an ex-Catholic and a convert to Judaism, I specifically belong to the Reform sect - and a major reason why I was so taken with the Reform sect was because it's all about correcting all of the harm traditionalist interpretations of the Torah and Judaism as a whole has inflicted onto people, both members and not. It really spoke to me as someone who grew up Christian and had excuse after excuse made about why I couldn't do certain things, like join the priesthood, because I was a woman - or why me going to hell would be justified because I am queer. It was refreshing to hear a religion, an Abrahamic one at that, be so honest about why the traditions of the past were not always fair and just. I joined a synagogue with male and female rabbis, our senior rabbi is a woman! And we have a female a cantor, a position which has always been controversial for women to have because in Orthodox Judaism men are not allowed to hear a women's singing voice. We have an entire organization within my synagogue with the goal of supporting LGBTQ+ Jews and celebrate same-sex weddings. With Paglia's interpretation of how Abrahamic religions, specifically Genesis - the first book of the Torah, the holy scripture of my religion - being men's rebellion and complete separation with creation being associated with the feminine and in effect wiping away the feminine presence in divinity all together thus subjugating women to their will with a dominating masculine being that controls everything and men being at the top of his hierarchy - it's even more eye-opening as to why this was important for me. Of course, it's not the driving force for why I became a Jew. I believe in G-d and love Judaism, so it wasn't some sort of act of rebellion, at least not conciously. But there is something subconscious in me that finds it very appealing that the people who were subjugated by a religion for centuries, me among them, are reclaiming it.

raggedy-jenna

Well, you are right. Camile is definitely a thinker--a very edgy thinker--and they sure do have some interesting perspectives on things to think about and sometimes laugh at lol

Sir Tunacan

“Anorexia with an art history degree.” I have passed away.

demolitionwoman

I remember reading Paglia back in the 90s and laughing at the idea that men are superior because they can pee standing up, couldn’t take her in any way seriously since then and I’m not surprised at her descent since then. But it was really interesting (and entertaining) to hear her ideas through your interpretation, so I appreciate this!

Bad Max

Have you read any of Karen Barads work? Meeting the Universe Halfway is a great book and has some threads to this tangent. In general, a lot of posthumanist theory is grounded in embodied experience.

Bad Max

Are the Zionists in the room with us right now?

Rose Dombegh

This is an awesome comment & I have a book rec for you (that I'm a little afraid will come off as paternalistic but really don't mean it to so I'm sorry if it does etc. etc.) Have you read "Becoming Eve" by Abby Stein? There's a really great section where she talks about exploring Jewish mysticism bc it let her connect to God as a feminine presence rather than a masculine one. I loved her descriptions of mysticism as making her feel almost high, and I also thought it was really cool that Jewish theology has this aspect of the divine feminine even in the most conservative sects. She also talks about being queer & deconstructing, then reconstructing her faith. She has some really great interviews if you don't want to read the book.

Derick Gadd

Cthonian = Golgari, got it

rk

Check out MFK Fisher’s Consider the Oyster 😀

rk

Same!

rk

Fascinating! Brava! I did not anticipate being so intrigued by Paglia, though I suspect that has more to do with Natalie’s brilliance, empathy, and wit than the original theory. 🥂

Maria Light

This tangent captures the exact feeling of when the most interesting person in the smoking section approaches you with a $1 and asks for a cigarette

Taylor

I'm typing this out midway through but will wait until the end to review and post so if some verb tenses are weird that's why: Relatively early on, you mention that male sky gods supplant female Earth goddesses around the advent of agriculture. This is linked in to the idea that what are called "civilizations" were inherently misogynistic (playing into the idea that women's equality in the modern era is inherently women participating in a world solely constructed and developed by men). I'm not an expert in this time period, but my understanding is that this isn't particularly true, and there is at least a valid interpretation of the evidence that we have that women were instrumental in creating the technology and institutions that eventually become "civilization". Agriculture itself seems to have been a long, complex, and messy technology, and early societies appear to be far less patriarchal than what came later. The sky god is believed to be associated not with the religions of the people creating the first cities but the Indo-European horsemen that conquered those cities hundreds of years after their creation. It is fair at least to see that the concepts of what early human societies were like is shaped by what historians living in later patriarchies interpreted the available information to say, oftentimes in contradiction with that very information. All that to say- while many aspects of our world culture are shaped by patriarchy, it is not some core truth that technological developments, innovations in social organization, and other ways that "civilization" develops (as much as the concept itself can even be considered coherent) is a male counter to female power, metaphorically or otherwise. While I think there is value in considering "the modern Western politics and economy and institutions are patriarchal things built by men who were deliberately excluding women, so in a sense equality for women in the modern era is in practice integrating women into the role of men in patriarchal systems and not truly dismantling patriarchy" as Paglia more or less does, extending that back in history and embedding it as something core to humans is completely unjustifiable imo. That's something she could have avoided if she approached her claims with more academic rigor, despite your misgivings for such a thing

Dawg

This was really fun Natalie, can we please get a full tangent on art history at some point

Aderyn Albarelli

The way you ended this is really sweet, It seems like Paglia helped you process the tension you experience with the online space. I hope you slept well, afterwards

misslcd

Yes! There's something universal to the struggle, it more depends how your culture frames it: a heroic battle that we must fight (Paglia's "Western civilisation), or something the wise learn to surrender to ("Eastern civilisation"). Do we attempt to dominate nature, or learn to surrender?

Marco

This is probably one of your best video ever!

Raoul (just me)

Hey Nat, great video. I found your thoughts on the entire Apollonian vs. Chthonian complex most fascinating. But not only that, of course. Sending you love, thank you for always making me doubt and think.

Elina Levkovskaya

Holy hell what a ride. The first third I was like hmm yes interesting ideas. Sometime after that I recall thinking "this is some back of the bus shit." I've only ever heard about Camille Paglia before and I'm so grateful to learn that she's the female version of my autistic conspiracy theorist coworker who blew his brain out on acid in the 70s.

Cassidy Brinn

It's a strange courage you give me, ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part! I Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze that reflects neither my face nor any inner part of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing. II Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses you in its own light. Be not chimera of morning, Half-man, half-star. Be not an intelligence, Like a widow's bird Or an old horse. WALLACE STEVENS Nuances of a Theme by Williams

Julia Estornell

I think maybe the less aggressive ones just aren't getting attention. I disagreed with Natalie's post, although I agree with her points about antisemitism creeping in (leftists can and should make a point to distinguish zionism from judaism), and that people should not be so excessive in their sharing of violent images (after a while people get numb or cannot engage). I just don't think it's worth her losing her livelihood, the value and insight of her work, and harrassing a marginalized person.

Cassidy Brinn

I understand the tension as conflicting ideas around an artist's role in society. Do artists have an obligation to promote moral values and make society a better place? Or should artists be exempt from this duty and devote themselves to a different set of ideals, like beauty, or other standards that don't necessarily align with increasing well-being.

Alexa barrett

This was a bop. I'd actually be interested to see the end of the voting system and let the creator decide what she wishes to cook for every tangent. I know the voting menue is selected by Natalie each time but I'd be happy if she just went with the one that interests her the most.

James

Thank you for the well wishes and the recommendation, I’ll definitely check the Augustine essay! ☺️

Julia Gorochovskij

Natalie, glad to see you back and thank you for this, you are as thought-provoking and entertaining as always

flyx

This is a great video. I feel like there is a whole genre of stories that try to define an Apollonian origin of humans more rigid than what Christianity did, and I feel like the whole „masculine emancipation of nature“ thing might explain why people are drawn to them. For example: A lot of conspiracy theories like that Earth is a prison planet for galactic emperor Xenu or something, or that lizard people genetically engineer and/or control humans. It is also a frequent sci-fi trope, like e.g. Star Trek had an episode about the origin of humans, and Perry Rhodan had at least three arks where they, sometimes by time travel, rediscovered how humanity actually came to be.

Matthias

"Are the pyramids stored in the balls" is the single best deranged, mushroom-trip question I have heard in a while.

Irma Alii

Hi Natalie, There’s a topic I’ve been obsessed with since I read Arendt’s Banality of evil, that I would love to see you discuss in your videos. It’s about evil people turning good. The opposite of a ”heal turn”, if you’re familiar with the expression from pro wrestling. I’ve seen this topic covered by some great books, films, tv shows and there’s a lot written in philosophy about it. I’m recently more obsessed with the topic because of our politics. I see a lot of people realize they have made a mistake with Trump but not many are willing to admit this, instead they keep falling deeper down the rabbit hole of hate. The best example of this would be Faith’s character in Buffy the vampire slayer (lol) and the complexity of turning her good again. Anyway I hope it sparked an interest. :)

Viviane P.L.

Why is genitalia phrenology still a thing

Rose Dombegh

Yes! Seconding this! (Though I'd love a source on the sky - god thing if you have one). I study religion & have come to think that any generalizations made about religions from that long ago are ... well ... more reflective of modern-day religious tensions than ancient ones. It's hard enough to understand religions that are still practiced, nvm religions that died out/faded away long ago. Also, the relation of women/femininity to the divine doesn't necessarily translate to how well women are treated in real life. The Greco-Roman world worshipped many powerful female goddesses but still treated actual women like sh*t ... whereas in the early church, women held quite a lot of influence & power. I also agree that Paglia gives men way too much credit for inventing civilization. As if women have never invented technology? Or built things? As if we don't also resist the sweet embrace of Dark Mother (ahem, medicine?)

Rose Dombegh

My mom loves that book (which is an endorsement -- she can generally be trusted with such things)

Rose Dombegh

Something I've been wondering that this tangent *almost* touches on is to what extent cultural norms around "femininity" are constructed specifically to be degrading & disempowering. Like this is clearly the case in some contexts (think of the Barbie dolls that say, "math is hard, I want to go to the beach!", the fundie voice, or even comphet -- the idea that womanhood requires male approval). It seems like one of the results of U.S. feminism has been the attempt to create other forms of empowering femininity (ie: the emergent "strong independent woman" archetype). But some have argued that this is simply a female stylization of historically "male" ways of being (like Anita Sarkeesian's princess's hero's quest) -- women putting on a hard had, as Paglia says. I oscillate back & forth between thinking this cultural shift has legitimized historically/symbolically male forms of power & ways of being while almost completely devaluing historically female forms of power & ways of being . . . and then thinking that the "femininity" this is stepping away from is actually inherently disempowering, designed to grant women influence but never authority. So, I don't know ... is a woman, say, being an ambitious political leader really stepping into a male archetype? Or is she just expressing a universal will to power that women have historically needed to suppress & sublimate into ambitions for their sons or husbands?

Seb Jones

4:3 is a superior aspect ratio!

Elise Cutts

“The point of fighting climate change is not to save nature. It’s to save humanity from nature” This. This 1000 times. As a fellow PhD dropout turned jester who just wrote a magazine feature about Earth’s climate through time, thank you for making this argument in your way. Earth science teaches the same lesson, but you show that an analysis rooted in humanities can get to the same place. Wasn’t expecting to hear that in a video titled “Sexual Personae” So much climate doomism is rooted in this wrong idea that humans are the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Earth, that we’re killing the planet and it will never recover from us. The hubris is just astounding. The planet is an ancient eldritch being beyond the limits of our comprehension and our moment in its history is a very unusual and, unless we’re very very careful, unimportant blink in the grand scheme of geologic time.

Milena D.K.

“The Birds Don’t Sing” is literally a song on the new highly acclaimed Clipse album, the chorus quotes Herzog :D

Gart Kundalini

great video! requested the audiobook of sexual personae through my library -- and i just borrowed ernest becker's the denial of death 💚

rk

I completely agree with your questioning of Wittgenstein’s use theory of language. I’ve recently been thinking that the framework propositions and inherited backgrounds he discusses in On Certainty seem to be an attempt to locate meaning in the grammatical underpinnings of language (which I read as pointing to why/causal connections). But it’s Wittgenstein… so… praxis above all, lol.

teo_shmeo

gender is a conceptual system rooted in metaphors of the body - that a beautiful, nuanced and practical definition. i am studying sexology atm and i havent heard it yet. I think it is a great addition

rk

Semantic Entanglement - yes!

rk

“Let women have a priori Achillean intolerance for the existence of others” (supreme only child vibes)

rk

Also, 🫶

rk

I hold some suspicion, perhaps fear, of people deeply convinced they are good people/right. How can one be an observer of life, history, culture, etc. and not recognize contingency (and live with the fact that we are all, indeed, wrong about things)?

rk

Second time through, again, brava! 🥂

Lindsay

I simply cannot get over how good this Tangent was. Dang. My mind is alight, it makes me want to write essays. So much to mull over but to choose one thing among many that struck me: your differentiation between activists, thinkers, and jestors is such a fascinating concept to explore. We need all of these stock characters to have healthy public discourse, but recognizing who they are and what role they play is fundamental to reasonable interaction with them. I do clown work as part of my acting and this new way of applying that class of character resonates within me

Jessie Lees

I think part of the issue around gender and archetypes is the idea that a person exists on their own. Humans are ultimately a social species. The vast majority of humans require other humans to stay sane and thrive. Which means there are variations to femininity and masculinity because no one person or two people are a whole, we are a collective. Most bees are female but only one in a colony is reproducing, and yet they're all valid. One female is reproducing in a naked mole rat colony, because everyone is just engaging with their role. Humans conceptualize our bodies, where most other animals just do the things however it happens. Femininity and masculinity exist because of our mental conceptualizations. Our bodies do whatever they do because of biology, whether or not that aligns with the patterns/guidelines (not the same as hard set rules) we have.

Jessie Lees

Loved this video. Gave me so many thoughts. The arguments people have against transness and for inherent masc and femme ways of being amuse me. Biologically we do see differences between groups, but also within. Humans are social. We just try to fit in where we can with how we think and what skills we have. You don't see worker bees complaining that they feel so useless for not reproducing where only the queen does in a hive. Then again, maybe they do and we just don't understand their dance? Reproduction may be an ultimate goal of a species, but it's not the goal of the individual. Perpetuation of a species is not always directly down to their direct biological reproductive contribution to the species. This is also likely why afab people who stick with estrogen and progesterone live longer, and live past reproductive age as there is intellectual value to having members in the group well experienced in life. Whereas amab people who stick with testosterone live shorter lives, and if they try to reproduce past 40 they increasingly with age cause risk to a partner growing a new generation. Also, male species in other animals have internal bits. So the phallic imagery we use is not necessarily that deep if we didn't make it so.

Rose Dombegh

I love that all bees are valid

João Guilherme Viana

Doodle of Rousseau as an anime girl on a Brazilian textbook was exactly the shout-out that country needed

Matthias

Honestly, werk. Both (parts of) the source material, flawed and misguided or plain wrong as some parts of it might be, and this video.

Kelly Chartier

Hi. I feel the foreboding sense of anxiety over being locked in the body. Might have been the start of the video, of which biological connection to language and mythology about Earth Mother and whether or not your body conforms with this identity. All that tension, and woman vs. men, and violence/death mixed in with life/nurture. Feels like war. I don’t think everyone, throughout our earthly history, was so keen to limit ourselves to our own bodies. We probably looked at all of the other animals, saw their limitations, and how they reacted to their own limitations, and reflected on that. I imagine one’s identity used spiritualism to overcome the limitations. Creating connections to spirits outside of the confounding confines of human organization so as to not be limited to our biology, regardless of whether or not any religion still adheres to any gendered way of worship. I’m pretty sure you take drugs and read about meditation for that. My point being the premise sounds like a POW prison for gendered bodies of which camps are made and anxieties amongst prisoners and guards are carried out throughout art history. It seems to neglect the long history of transcendence of the body for connection with nature, animals, or divination, of which may give better comfort to someone who wishes to overcome gender, as this writer seems to be starved to do. As well as neglects the potential of future reinvention of gender with different forms of bodies, either conjured or through different technologies. Recommended to read more about shamanism and cyborg feminism. TL;DR: It’s a real shame when a woman only thinks of herself as a woman when she’s capable of transcending even her own body through some real crazy shit. What’s up with accepting these limitations of identity when identity is a personal abstract concept in the first place?

Jeannot

Hot take: tangents are the superior contrapoints medium

Taylor

That's such a good point re: women in worship vs patriarchy in that society, one more reason that you can't generalize. For a source, I'll be honest and say that it's mostly what I remember scattered from other things I've read and heard. Although I take some issues with the sweeping generalizations and leaps of logic in the book, Dawn of Civilizations by Graeber and Wengrow discusses how a lot of the assumptions we have of early cities are really the features of hyper-patriarchal people groups that survived by raiding those cities, eventually conquering them, and they (somewhat briefly, as evidence for their claims) discuss the apparent religious beliefs of each group differed, so it might be there. Likewise, I don't remember the book's name at all sadly, but I read a book (that wasn't particularly academic fwiw, more like a broad overview for non-historians) about the reconstruction of proto-Indo-European that explicitly led to linguists believing that they must have been nomadic horse people who believed in a sky-God (as the descendant languages all had words for one, the whole Zeus/deus thing), and subsequent archeology backing that up, and that book credited the invasion of the Indo-Europeans for introducing the sky-god to most of the places they conquered, who usually had female gods as their primary lead deities. But some of that is complicated by later interpretations of what those older gods were (like how Inanna gets worked into stories favoring pastoralism over agriculture because of the conquerors from the pastoral hinterlands seized control of the cities... probably but the only writing we have about it is after, that kind of thing). If I remember the book I'll comment to you again with it because it's bothering me now :/

Charles Proteau

Interesting but the self flagellation after a bad genocide take is disappointing

Magali

This was fascinating thank you! Now strangely I have to think about one night at the lake when we saw in the shallow water under the moonlight a bunch of crayfish just all walking exactly in the same direction. Their shells were covered in algae and they wouldn’t deviate if we put our feet in front of them which for some reason was super scary.

Megan Jones

A tangent about apathy would be interesting

Bando Fett

IThank you Natalie. I think I understand much better the divide between you and those on the whole Palestine post outrage based on Sexual Personae - had to revisit your Twilight video for the link though 😄 I understand your argument as this: aspects of life and nature are inherently brutal. Art can, and maybe should be decadent- above morality - messy, imperfect, animalistic in order to preserve these spaces as sacred and safe since art is often a safer way to explore this inherent darkness. Just as the role of a Thinker may be in many ways a safer - though not always - way to navigate the chaotic mess of society that doesn't always offer the safety of belonging to a group that can protect you. I think those who believe that art and morality are inherently intertwined (and nature both dark and light) would almost certainly be marrying the two from the same perspective of safety. For instance an artistic, violently misogynistic film feels unsafe in a time when it is uncool to be a woman - and therefore immoral. Same as why activists feel unsafe and abandoned - despite their battlecries - when prominent breadtubers refuse to make videos in a dangerous world where babies are dying. The darkness of the world remains the constant, it's just fought off/embraced? They are really just two sides of the same coin. The role of morality and activism relying on morality is just as inexplicably intertwined with belonging and safety as a decadent plunge into the heart of darkness - and this may explain why, despite the latter appearing to be a more solitary journey as compared to the former, never seems to get the former off its back. Although a different perspective maybe just that morality is the Donkey to Decadent Shrek and they live together happily ever after. Or that morality is the nagging bitch lesbian wife to the dangerous, deadly, Dad-momic (daemonic) nature who just got home and is about to take her belt off. Insomniac ramblings to be taken with large pinches..

Kirsty McGuire

The main vibe I get from Camille is insufferable pick me. That's just me tho.

Neil

Natalie, I’m only a few minutes in but just want to say how nice it is to see your face & know that you’re still on it. Have been worried about you of late & frankly since the election but seeing you just crack on with another video makes me smile. Love you. Xx

Me

Thanks so much for this tangent, this is the kind of book whose ideas I find super interesting but which I would never have the attention span and/or alertness to wade through myself in its entirety. I recently watched Lars von Trier's Antichrist and while I won't say that I didn't *get* the movie before, hearing Paglia's ideas is making so much more of it click into place for me. I think Natalie deftly sidestepped attributing Paglia's thoughts about the female form and embodied experience to repressed gender dysphoria cope, but I'm going to go ahead and do it because no one knows who I am or can cancel me about it. You see this in some of Daphne du Maurier's writings too, intense hatred of being a woman externalized into general misogyny. I've had to fight it in myself; it's such an easy path to go down if you're denying yourself/unaware of other options.

Igor Alves

Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s

Djordje

Just when I thought I could not appreciate you more as a thinker, you drop this absolutely based take on Paglia. Never stop.

Cranial Embiggening

So much amazing stuff in here that's simply expressed as throwaway asides which are really mind blowing frameworks and insights! Well described!

william kirkpatrick

just about to watch this.......thrilled.....I just worried about Natalie so much and I wonder what the hell I was thinking......YES she made a video for US. YES. I am so proud I only pay for Natalie's patreon and nobody else's......also watch the new South Park. Just do whatever you need to do. Its savage.

william kirkpatrick

4 minutes 83 second in I am floored. Yes. Its important to be a thinker first of all. This is making me think of how I got my hands on a little Anais Nin paperback and lost it but.....couldn't I just write my own book of my own simple fetishes? But she DID IT. Paglia though.....smells bad. I feel like she has no idea of the message Marcel Ophuls tried to convey about who Hitler is and how France slept through the appreciation of the Right and who the Right Wing are....Paglia just snickers through the whole discourse and tries to be like a lesbian Russ Limbaugh

william kirkpatrick

I forgot to say the main thing I wanted to say. This video reminds me of The Darkness......Its going there. Its hitting that frequency, but in a totally different orbit of ideas

william kirkpatrick

11:26 realizing this is a huge deal and kind of regret saying anything. This is an honest attempt to see through Paglia into something that really faces foolishly or wisely the questions about what being. a man and being a woman means

Wissa

I had the same thought about Protestant churches as a way to out-Apollonian the Catholic Church. The next iteration of the Apollonian abstraction is to retreat into the abstract purity by ridding yourself of physical representations altogether, right?

Wissa

I just have to add—I’m really impressed by your reading comprehension skills. You probably do it naturally it’s no biggy, but most people read at face value and don’t stop to think “is the author here being edgy and hyperbolic?” You’re able to not just read the words, but the writer, which is a lost art. It’s like you are not just treating the text as literal knowledge, but more like music, understanding which notes are being hit to create a specific effect, and that’s amazing!

Maria van Agthoven

"There is no female Mozart and no female serial killers." And this is what I hated most about High School philosophy... the pithy examples that were meant to drive a point home, but were at best generalizations, and at worst completely false. At the time I had a vague suspicion that there was some sloppy thinking going on, but now I know better. Because by the time your're done spluttering about black widows, Eileen Wuornos, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelsohn, the fact that Mozart's sister's compositions were just assigned to him after his death... Paglia is rolling her eyes, complaining about damn nerds who don't understand what she means. Nothing of value is learned by anyone, but the status quo is reinforced, the peanut gallery is laughing (or in my case in High School, the teacher happily gives you a good grade on your essay), and that's the only thing that matters.

aljaffe

When I was a child my cousins took me to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 at the Cinemark. It's what the Egyptians would have wanted

Charlotte

Camille Paglia based??

Xylem

Based on a true story.

Xylem

Well, Paglia does look a little like Peter Pan.

Xylem

Starving for more ContraPoints videos.

Pup Scout

"Transsexuals are often accused of changing the body when we should be changing society's gender roles." Glad you brought this up. Self-determination and survival, surely, are strong justifications for changing the body in this case, even when there are viable alternatives. But more importantly, why would we not change the body and gender roles at the same time? This supports not only trans folk presenting their gender in a way that is as traditional or nontraditional as they please. But this would also support cis people doing the same. Might a tomboy actually just be a masc cis woman or a butch lesbian? Sure. But I feel it should be equally acceptable for them to turn out to actually be a trans man, nonbinary person, etc. This all goes back to the old idea that straight people are heavily oppressed by the same bigotries which oppress queer folk.

Maral

Are you familiar with Internal Family Systems? It’s a psych/individual therapy framework drawn from family therapy, wherein we all have a Self that is our unburdened, true “Self,” and then there are these various parts we have (protectors, exiles) that form as we develop in response to harm/hurt/trauma.

Maral

I ask because of your discussion of the “self” not existing (obvi defined differently in a different framework) and am curious abt analysis of IFS parts/Self and Paglia stuff

Me

Yes! Great article.

Norah Koehler

started an all woman earth cult with my banjo after watching this thank u

Denning

Previously knew nothing about Paglia but as a transmasc Catholic this HIT

highclass_lady

Natalie, 'Die Fledermaus' by Strauss will be at the Embassy of Austria in DC in September! You & your friends should go! 🎭🥂 🍾 Embassy nights in DC by the Washington Opera Society are pretty fun, especially the masquerade events! ✨

william kirkpatrick

44 minutes in I realized that Jodorowsky's Sante Sangre's "cult of blood" scenes are a depiction of all the art imagery and sensibility of Italian and Spanish catholicism.

Grace W

Glad you’re back.

MT_Mogs

This is legendary stuff 👍

Jon Patel

I think if you were an avowed good person it’d be hard to do your job, and the left and the good do need a more impartial mirror via which to view themselves. Almost like the Jester character in The City and the Stars.

Max Murphy

Tangent idea: can you make a video about being “post-woke.” There’s something about having been chronically online in a political way for so many years that has just gotten old. Like, many of us are spitting out the Black Pill that you described in Envy. I’ve watched that video at least 7 times and keep walking away with new insights and an urgency for self-reflection. Somewhere between the first time I watched Envy and now, I looked in the mirror… not exactly liking what I saw. So, I’m following the advice of the great American philosopher, Michael Jackson and changing the world by starting with the man in the mirror.

Roi Ankori-Karlinsky

Thank you:) Jewish sources read Genesis very differently than the way Greco-Roman/Christian traditions do. We actually don't have a "sky-god" that is male. For example, "Adam" means person and has "they" pronouns in Hebrew. It's not "man" and is the same root as "adama" which is earth in Hebrew. Elohim (G-d) is also "they" pronouns in Hebrew. https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/37225?lang=bi

Murguly Mátyás

In sumerian mythology we were the invention of Enki, the trickster water god as some form of self-replicating immortal golems, but we became too noisy and El was not able to sleep, so he started to order disasters like disease and storms to make people silent, but it made things worse, so he decided that he will flood the world (Umnapistim). Or something like this. But mesopotamian mythology has a lot of devouring mothers like the Lamastu - demon of child mortality* and Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld called Kur. Egyptian mythology have this creation myth, too, like we were made by Ptah or verbalised into existence by Thot by naming us - the story depends on the specific mystery. *It is funny that the bible belt - where antivaxxers are in the highest concentration - started panicking on the Labubu dolls because Labubu rymes with Pazuzu, who was technically a guardian daimon/scary guardian minor god or spirit/ against Lamastu, the god/spirit of child mortality.

Silvia Sofia Siliprandi

“A non-binary consciousness with a feminine persona and a hermaphrodite body” 👌🏻 Post-woke gender ID 👌🏻 Love this ❤️

rk

Third viewing… Ok, I’m buying the book (I want to read more of Paglia’s thoughts on aesthetics). Thank you for the introduction! 🥂 I would love to hear more of your thoughts, Natalie, on cognitive neuroscience & consciousness (tangent idea?), as this is one of the most fascinating areas of research today (along with deep space, Mesopotamia, and early American archeology. I’d probably throw in under-water archeology and that weird basic science research into how non-living matter gains the characteristics of life - the inanimate to animate transformation, like the book Deep Life by Princeton University Press… but I’m rambling 🤣). As Always, Thank You! Cheers!

Alan Meeker

Bravo on another excellent Tangent! Some of the material relating to the female figure in history, and having to do with Rousseau, reminded me of discussions in Graeber and Wengrow's, The Dawn of Everything. Highly recommended, if you've not yet read it.

Elliot Theodor

Hot take: Warmth = good is Eurocentric. I'm from the middle east, where the sun's heat and light can literally kill you and the cold is mostly a relief. I don't think these metaphors are unanimously human. I think they originated in humans who lived in a cold climate.

Elliot Theodor

As a fellow Hebrew speaker: maybe, but in natural language the reference to god is still male and I've never heard a "they" in Hebrew in my life

William Knight

She writes about the gender politics of medieval armour? Damnit do I need to read this shit?

Rose Dombegh

Yes, seconding this! I'd love a science + philosophy + psychology tangent about consciousness (& didn't Natalie study neuroscience in undergrad?)

Rose Dombegh

I would love this tangent. It's super interesting to me bc I grew up in the "woke" era ... and a lot of my "coming of age" has been learning to question some of the "wokeness" I was taught (& realizing which adults in my community were chronically on Tumblr and why I probably shouldn't listen too much to them). To be clear, I still want to carry the basic values forwards ... but I have questions & nuances I'd love for Natalie to examine :)

Rose Dombegh

Also buying into the idea of yourself as a "good person" creates a pretty strong confirmation bias to look away from your flaws . . .

Zacharooo

I remember in a book I read on Buddhism, the fact that the word “nirvana” (or nibbana) literally means “extinguishing,” as of a fire, was explicitly tied to the warm climate of India for exactly the reason you cite. If you live somewhere hot, the metaphor of putting out a fire is an apt one for the elimination of painful consciousness.

Ayanna

I love getting book recs! I don't consider this paternalistic at all. I don't believe I've actually heard of the book, but I looked it up and it seems very fascinating. I've put it on my "To Read" list. Also interesting that she was able to find a feminine presence in G-d with Jewish mysticism, because that's not the first time I've heard people being able to do so. I was once talking with one of my rabbis, and she relayed the story of the time a Jewish man (can't remember, sorry) caused controversy in the 2000s because he did a photoshoot about femininity in Judaism which featured some very racy photos of women in suggestive poses and such doing Jewish things such as wearing the tallit (traditional Jewish prayer shawl). Now, do I think that part of the photoshoot was to just to photograph sexy women in relation to religion? Yes. Do I think it's cliche to automatically associate femininity with overt sexuality? Yes. But I do remember his reasoning being interesting and about a dive into Jewish mysticism and the female-ness of G-d.

anton26

do you know the book "the castration of oedipus (feminism, psychoanalysis, and the will to power) from J.C. Smith and Carla J. Ferstman - intro by Ann Scales... 1996 New York University Press..... the book goes a few steps further that Paglia in its psychoanalysis... ofcourse the entertainment and wonderful details from Paglias book are irreplaceable...

Xylem

Eli: No, warm is good because living flesh is warm. A hug is warm. In every location where humans live.

Xylem

Zacharooo: oh come on, it's a metaphor about Fire, not a particular climate. Using fire is an universal human trait. Even in Africa you need to cook meat to get these wonderful calories. PS. Maybe almost universal trait, but I don't think we know of any tribe that can't use fire.

Xylem

Yahweh began as a Male Mediterranean Thunder god, of which several examples are know: Zeus, Marduk, Baal, Teshub, and so on, all with their own story of fighting the primordial Sea God/Monster. Then Yahweh merged with El, a different but also Male, Father god. I'd say the Hebrew God is pretty Male. Also, אבא מסתכל מלמעלה.

Xylem

I think all such methods are better thought of as tools that can help achieve the goals of therapy, and not theories that explain how a mind works. Since obviously none of us has any "families" inside our skull, in the same way as we don't have "id", "ego" and "superego" up there.

Elliot Theodor

If you pass your life sweating and avoiding the sun then no, warmth is not unequivocally good

Roi Ankori-Karlinsky

אלוהים, אדוניי, שמיים, מים, חיים כולן מילים רק ברבים.

Roi Ankori-Karlinsky

Yes I agree the every day language is gendered and the history of the gods etc. I was just trying to refer to rabbinical sources that developed after that discuss multiple genders and also Rambam who explicitly says human metaphors can’t capture Elohim. As per the link. 💜

anton26

Natalie, you look very tired at the end of the tangent. Then your last few minutes , talking about yourself are coming "naturally" and are very true and valuable for me. The below mentioned book was a shock to me, I had to read it multiple times to accept some of it.. But in the end, admitting is healthier than denial. It is often also tiring...

anton26

yes, 100%

Laura Puentes

How did I miss this? Only found out about it through social media 😭

leavesarefalling

This was so fascinating... a treat for my brain. I relate heavy to the ending, wanting to exist within both morality and decadence. One thing I thought would be worth noting, since I just wrote a paper on Wilde and the editing process of Dorian Gray a few months ago, is that that intro (the one that goes on and on about art and morality) was put in for the final version after Wilde was already being accused in the papers of writing a text that failed to condemn its obviously gay character. So basically, the intro is a social defense of himself, rather than a true piece of the novel. It made me sad to learn that since I'd always loved the intro (it's so cheeky), but yeah... to me it reeks of desperation now rather than a true philosophical statement in a vacuum.

Elliot Theodor

רבים, בהחלט - אבל לשון זכר. וגם כשקוראים לו ככה, עדיין מדברים אליו היחיד, למשל בתפילה.: ברוך אתה אדוני, וכן הלאה. ספציפית בתור בחור טרנס חיפשתי הרבה זמן דרך למצוא לשון דיבור ניטראלית בעברית, וזה לא באמת עובד.

Elliot Theodor

Not taking anything away from that, as far as I know you're correct on the ancient sources. I was only referring to modern spoken Hebrew

Sirenkai

4:3 is better and I won’t elaborate

terence whalen

You may be too smart for your medium, you've outgrown your audience.

terence whalen

Wait, maybe you're too smart for your audience and you've outgrown your medium? Oh shit, now what?

terence whalen

The band Pigface: Hips,lips tits POWER!

Cherry Darling

I remember the time she said women should be as mean as possible lol. Something I still agree with her on.

Caedmon Jamonsta

In Lucumi, "cool" is ideal, while heat is linked to agitation. Cold water is a blessing.

Caedmon Jamonsta

The body itself has not been thought about in the same way across history and culture. In many (maybe even most) cultures throughout history, there has been an acknowledgement of more than two variations of adult genders. Often, specialized labor was divided among these variations. My take is that gender was once more closely related to the division of labor, rather than roles in procreation. At one point in time, identity was largely linked to labor, parentage, and location. It's how we got so many jobs for surnames. As identity has shifted from our positions in society or within our families to our internal experience of ourselves, gender has taken on a new meaning. The meaning of ancestry and location has also greatly shifted in the modern age. For me, this indicates some trouble with current identity models.

william kirkpatrick

I am playing a ballet class at Shawl Anderson by the Rockridge bart staion tomorrow at 6 pm. I am just saying this because if anybody is a ballet student and gets a huge kick out of Contrapoints and showed up I would die, 6pm College avenue Shawl Anderson Dance Center. My mom's cat is finishing my turkey sandwich and this is a huge step into a progressive future. I was a vegan for five years in seattle and all the cats were all after my food. Anyways my Mom's cat is never after human food until tonight and all the sudden.....well I know she loves me.....but seriously I am going to keep working on the Bach-Busoni #4 in g major because I think if I could play that for Natalie it would.....well.....I would be so happy inside. so I watch her take apart Paglia again......I still. hope she will do Baudelaire in full......JESUS!.......nobody has ever done Baudelaire on film. He is the singlemost cinematic poet. We humans are so slow

Max Murphy

Yes, exactly! A while back, I met someone who was a “radical leftist” but only ever trolled people in my small town. For example, she submitted paintings of Muslim women in hijab to a local art contest. Nothing inherently wrong with that—but she did it in a tiny town of a few hundred in the Bible Belt. She doesn’t know any Muslims, nor has she read the Quran. She created an opportunity to be the “persecuted progressive who stands up for racial and religious equality.” She was 10/10 cringe and made me embarrassed to be a leftist. Sadly, she was not the only “leftist” that gave me those vibes.

Milena Gonçalez

Ah, the perfect tangent to listen while working today. That Grizzly Man documentary haunted me for years! And so much of these philosophers musings were background noise to me in Fine Arts College, but now in my 30s I’m finally able to listen without rolling my eyes. But maybe it’s just you :)

Tineke van Ravenswaaij

Thank you so much Natalie! I hope you can find a bit of rest. The most important thing is how you are doing, not what you make. That being said: what you make is genious!

Xylem

Hobbits disagree: Sing hey! For the bath at close of day that washes the weary mud away A loon is he that will not sing O! Water Hot is a noble thing!

Tineke van Ravenswaaij

Also, if all great minds of the past, were as online as we are now…they would so so so have been canceled. Why would we expect perfect people? Perfect people do not exist, thank Madonna! I need less ‘look at me on the right side of history’ online and more: let me just talk to someone in the supermarket and compliment them on their shoes or taste for sour candy!

Jenavive!

Are there any philosophical statements born from a vacuum? Are there any true philosophical statements? (Thanks for this context, great to know!)

unemployed_waif

paglia feels like reverse dworkin. Instead of dworkins claim that every vagina is dominated, colonized, and belittled by every penis, paglia asserts that every penis is consumed by and made less in every vagina. this seems like a pure expression of mens sexual anxieties, as discussed in the twilight video. women fear violence and betrayal, men fear consumption by the woman

Madeleine Anderson

Girl, these tangents are brilliant. I hope you feel how much your thoughtful insights are appreciated! Thank you for all the effort you put into these!

Grady Wiehe

Dearest biological mother, a thought just popped into my head…Tangent about the history of Israeli Pinkwashing? I know you don’t feel like you’re the best person to make a video about Palestine overall (perhaps true) but given your existing positioning on issues like Groomer Libel, Anti-LGBT Bills, etc…might be a good angle and I think you’d be able to speak well to the topic. Or maybe not, just a thought since they still won’t leave you alone 🤷‍♂️ I for one am just so tired of hearing actual die-hard Zionists act like genocide is ok if a single homophobic or transphobic Muslim has ever existed and that feels like a place my own perspective touches on the issue

Rose Dombegh

lol I loved Natalie's nod to this in "Envy" ... "ah, help, I'm being consumed!"

Brunoat

Refreshing to watch. Thanks for the honest perspective.

Kat

Thank you for sharing, I never would have gotten around to engaging with paglias work because she annoys me in the same manner as chihuahuas.

Socialswine

‘Natural society, the society of friendship’ complete Rousseauian dogma. I don’t think she’s right but she definitely grounds that claim in the material and concrete much better than you do when you dogmatically claim that the state of nature is harmonious and without conflict. Where does conflict come from? Us? Are we outside nature? You are stuck in the 18th century my friend.

Alys Rowe

Imo the biggest problem with Paglia is she has to betray all of the most interesting parts of her thought in order to make it fit into the conservative metaphysical position she's ultimately trying to advance. Like you cannot at once argue that Nature is this fundamentally ungraspable chaotic turbulence /and/ simultaneously that it can all be grasped in terms of some set of eternal categorical distinctions. What are the Appolonian and Chthonic (or indeed the eternal Masculine and Feminine) then but foundational essences that prove that nature does in fact have some primordial stability that just repeats forever? If Nature really is this unconquerable mystery, darkness and chaos, then you also cannot domesticate it in a reactionary framework that disallows anything fundamentally new happening. Marx is way ahead of all this with his Gattungswesen: the human is the animal that participates most radically in Nature as undomesticable flux through precisely those transformative activities that oppose us to Nature as any kind of mere givenness. From there all of her eternal recurrences turn into dialectics.

Definitely Dylan

Your tangents are consistently better than what most people put out in their main feed. Thank you!

Bryony Eilish Porteous-Sebouhian

Just coming here to say I'm glad you're taking time before responding/updating and that you're continuing to do what you love. And to say, when you think you've taken enough time and thought it all through, take some more time. No one here wants or needs you to update. And anyone who loves your content but was critical of what you said regarding Israel and Palestine shouldn't want that either.

Alys Rowe

Dworkin actually asks at one point in Intercourse why the concept we use is penetration rather than engulfment

unemployed_waif

oh this is interesting. I've only read right wing women

Marisa

This was my favorite tangent ever and one of my favorite videos you've ever made overall. I learned a lot. Thank you.

Miguel

¡Profundamente profunda!

Catherine

I may be biased as I also have a severe case of transexualism... but this line feels like a mood. If she adds she/they to her bio I'll change my mind.

Aysel Akhundova

Rewatching 5th time and going into rabbit hole about Tiamat. Thinking also how underworld, Earth, became hell and a lodge of evil creatures.

Brent

This was a balm to my eternal and unique soul

ContraPoints

I think her argument would be that the Apollonian is an artificial human evasion of nature, rather than a principle belonging to nature herself

ContraPoints

Yes. Paglia and Dworkin are often asserting the same ideas but with inverse value judgments.

ContraPoints

I admire Coldness and Cruelty (and so does Paglia, who exempts it from her general hostility to French theory)

ContraPoints

Yeah. This is the most glaring counterargument.

ContraPoints

yeah that's an interesting possibility. Makes me think of the Quran's emphasis on the rivers and streams of Paradise.

Xylem

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

Elliot Theodor

The old testament mentiones shade as a relief at least twice that I know

Rose Dombegh

Also ... maybe the female Jack the Ripper was just never caught?

Leila

"How am I supposed to be a populist in these conditions?" You and me both.

ContraPoints

The first great female rock guitarist has to be read musically

Alys Rowe

Yes but this is what I mean. She can't grasp nature-culture as a dialectic only as an opposition, and so ends up with nature as a static essence of ceaseless uncreative chaos. It's a metaphysics of sterility under the hood, even if the surface level is full of feminine fecundity. Nietzsche treats this much better, because he's able to grasp that negentropy is also nature.

Neil

Rose West & Ghislaine Maxwell come to mind.

Neil

Paglia seems like a narcissistic troll with a one note worldview: everything is to be seen through the lens of genitalia. She does a good job of (ahem) milking the themes as much as possible but because she clearly always has an eye firmly on being so contrarian, there’s an air off insufferable ‘pick me’ desperation to what’s she doing. Her ideas are somewhat deep, but the whiff that she seems them as comprehensive & universal is strong & cringeworthy. We can also talk about things like grief, innovation, joy, despair, companionship, curiosity, etc, etc, without obsessing over which reproductive organ or action they most closely resemble in the eyes of someone who so clearly needs to be seen as an edgy genius for fear of not being noticed at all.

Billy

16:25 you missed an opportunity to say “paglialithic religions” smh I’m not mad I’m just disappointed

Liz Jones

Loved this tangent! The personae concept has stayed on my mind for days. Interesting stuff here even though Paglia herself seems incredibly annoying.

Liz Jones

"a bad genocide take"? are you hearing yourself?

Charles Proteau

Yeah. A genocide is happening and she made it all about herself...that ain't quite swell

Ilana Galpert

I listened to this a second time and...did I imagine a part about pedophiles and swamps? I'm pretty sure it was in there. If I wasn't imagining it, then I think, generally speaking, people don't get put on those lists for simple thought crimes. Either they've done something terrible to real children, they have child sexual abuse materials on their computer, or they drunk urinated in a public playground. I don't think the last guy belongs in the swamp but the rest of them surely do.

Ilana Galpert

A fatal flaw in Paglia's argument is that history is told from a male perspective. There's little documentation of the contributions women made in ye olden days. She poses the question; why are women seen as mysterious? I don't think other women generally view women as mysterious. I think men view them this way because they aren't women, and therefore don't know what it's like to be a woman. I also think women do rage against nature. Periods have long been a source of frustration and pregnancy a threat. I'm sorry for the "women this, men that" phrasing, but Paglia's argument is founded on rigid difference between genders and those are the arguments I find not credible. Also, men are made lesser by having sex with women? A more common stereotype is women being polluted by having sex with men, and men sleeping with loads of women have masculine swagger and status among their peers. If anything, it elevates their social standing. I feel like Paglia's argument is willfully blind to common stereotypes and social mores.

Xylem

>through the lens of genitalia. Warning: do not put lenses in your genitalia!

Cm

Definitely watch Matt Bernstein’s latest video, he talks with a trans Israeli woman who resisted the draft. They talk about Israeli pinkwashing a bit

Tanner Gore

I think the “men are made less” thing was more referring to the idea that successive sex implies the passage of time, which in turn means for men the eventual return to “the dark mother” which they have focused their lives’ ambitions against. Men subconsciously understand this. They try to view sex as conquering nature/the primordial mother that will consume them, but this is simply wishful thinking.

Wobtax

Natalie, have you read anything by Robert Stoller? He’s known for coining “gender identity” but his actual research and thought was on the meaning of erotic fantasy. The words you said toward the very end about the need for decadence, for art that can step freely outside the dimensions of morality and politics and reconcile itself to our hostility which we’re never actually getting rid of—these words remind me very much of what Stoller wrote in Observing the Erotic Imagination, Perversion: the Erotic Form of Hatred, and Sexual Excitement: Dynamics of Erotic Life.

Ilana Galpert

You're interpretation makes sense. I don't know that it squares with the image of toothy vaginas though. In this metaphor, are men projecting the "dark mother" on the vagina's they're penetrating? They came from a vagina therefore vagina=dark mother? Maybe that is the idea, but it all seems a bit silly to me.

Ilana Galpert

I think one of my hangups is American Gods, a book written by Sexual Predator Neil Gaiman. There's a goddess in the book that devours men by having sex with them through her vagina. Gaiman constructs a female goddess devourer, and maybe he does fear women, maybe he fears the Dark Mother. In real life, though? He's the one doing the devouring. He's the one r@ping teenage lesbians. It just feels so ironic to me that this guy, this abusive sonofabitch, is writing about some awe inspiring divine vagina. It feels like his behavior reveals the lie behind the imagery, how flimsy the fear really is

Neil

If you do, Paglia will go into an insufferable rant about snakes & eyes that’s DEFINITELY profound & not at all a travelling circus style bit for the sake of attention.

Abby

Beautiful essay. Very much appreciated this.

whatyouhadisnevercomingback

this video was one of my favorites in a while, and i enjoy them all a lot so thats meant as a high compliment. you're the only good youtuber, thank you

Vier Graybill

Paglia would love Strauss’ Salome as an expression of the devouring primal cthonian, it’s a shame Camille Paglia isn’t real

Andrew May

an appreciation for your editing: I cannot accurately convey the joy that springs from my heart whenever you cut off the last word of a quotation. What elegance, what divine intelligence 🤌

Xylem

"they aren't women, and therefore don't know what it's like to be a woman" Accidentally, this strikes me as a weird argument. I'm a man, but I equally don't know what it's like to be anyone other than me, man or woman. Claiming knowledge of half of humanity on the basis of shared gender (whatever it may be) is quite arrogant.

Ilana Galpert

Sure, but we tend to stereotype people who are different then us, right? And we tend to make assumptions about the groups we are a part of and project our experience onto them. It's less that the experiences of men and women are inherently different and more that a large demographic (men) assume that a (somewhat) separate demographic (women) experience an exaggerated difference in reality.

william kirkpatrick

I just spontaneously have an urge to comment on here and I just sent a new friend The Darkness and I just gotta say I WORSHIP NATALIE "Life is.....Kind of Bad".......and doing something about it is kind of rough and following that statement by showing what unmitigated assholes Gervais and Chapelle are and Natalie is not just sticking up for trans people, she is sticking up for all of us human beings who are all lonely and F'd up and scared and it is just great.

william kirkpatrick

I always find myself commenting on myself. Sorry. I am 49. I barely know how to use an iphone. I am always hoping Natalie will cover Baudelaire. There used to be a mural of him in from of City Lights books, I am sure SF was a far better place before that mural went down, I don't have a non-nonviolent bone in my body but I woulld love to beat the crap out of whoever made that decision. I get to meet Peter Coyote tomorrow so I have a head full of RIngo Levio Emmet Grogan.....I am always hoping to talk to someone on here out of Natalie's millions of fans or Natalie herself(lucky) but one person suggested I need therapy and btw FUCK YOU! I actually do need therapy in order to keep my SSI ("not trying to be snarky") yeah.....you ARE trying to be snarky. I hate vague bullshit. I look forward to the next Contrapoints video with extreme glee and I believe she is nothing less than the living David Lynch with a bigger bent on combatting anti-semitism, bigotry, we are all jews, we are all fags.

william kirkpatrick

sorry this has nothing to do with Paglia, also fuck Paglia. For some reason she has to exist, but goddamnit, she would be so cool if it weren't for a few wrong turns. Kind of like Woody Allen. Actually they should be a couple, not that cute asian girl. Actually I love Woody Allen too.....what are we gonna do? People suck, even really great people who are really amusing SUCK!!!!

Wolfebrayne

Men want to fuck the Venus of Villendorf, but they want to marry Nefertiti. Is this where the Madonna-Whore complex started?

Calliedude

Something about Paglia gives Courtney Love vibes. Obviously very smart, combative, polarizing. Peterson? Pfffft. I wanna be a fly on the wall while these two female rock guitarists have a chat!

Uri Baruchin

I am so grateful for the intellectual pleasure, reflection, beauty and respite you provide in these dark times. 🙏

Lasha Bezhashvili

Wait wouldn’t they rather have sex with Nefertiti and marry Venus?

Wolfebrayne

No, cause straight men like sex with the dummy thiccc body but wanna marry the social status of a pretty face

Bryce

I took the "made lesser" as literal, as in through ejaculation the man is drained of part of him as it flows into the woman and he literally has less physical mass afterwards. And you could argue that at least temporarily the penis is "devoured" by the vagina. You're right that current cultural and social views do not see it this way, but i think her argument was drawing from the actual physical/anatomical process of sex. Also I just want to respond to the woman being mysterious to men thing but men not being mysterious to women. I've always thought this has to do with men not being encouraged socially or culturally to empathize with women while the opposite is true for women empathizing with men. An easy example is with media. Growing up girls read countless books and watch countless shows and movies from the perspective of men while media from the perspective of girls or women is "for girls" and is easily avoided by boys.

Ilana Galpert

That's an interesting may to think about it, it's definitely a read that hasn't occurred to me. Yeah, I fully agree with the second half of this. Books where men are the main characters are marketed to everyone, but books where women are the main characters are *generally* considered books for women. Women are expected to empathize and identify with the main character in either case. And barely anyone considers nonbinary people. (Speaking in broad terms. There are definitely exceptions to this.)

Elad Gilo

“I don’t identify as a good person” - really wish you can expand on that in a future video! This line of thinking has legitimately not occurred to me and I would love to hear your thinking on it

Xylem

ITT: people who don't know standards of beauty fluctuate wildly across decades and centuries. No, no, it's whatever trending on instagram in the year 2025 that is eternal.

Molly Eilenberger

I kinda get the female vs feminine thing. Like I'm fat (30 ish pounds overweight), I have heavy milk sacks, hourglass for days, hips with dips. I'm so female it hurts. But am I (in my naked form, unrelated to style or personality) feminine? I feel like I'm not. It feels like a different thing.

Lya Rogers

Hi Natalie. Just wanted to send you love 💜. I will miss your funny tweets, but it is definetly not worth the hatred and stupidity you were getting. Those of us who find great entretainment in your work, who can understand the complexity of the world beyond a hashtag, who appreciate your work and persona as it is, will always be here. Take care 🙏

Travis Draper

iirc she mentioned she just considers herself "morally average" (Maybe in the Q&A video? It was in response to a vegan question I think)

kaitlyn gentilin

Hi Natalie! Long time listener first time Patreon commenter. Would you believe I came to your YouTube by way of the podcast “the witch trials of jk Rowling”? TBH I am an accidental Luddite and had never heard of a TERF before that podcast. I strongly felt that something was waaaaay off in the podcast tho, and was so pleased to listen to my first fated contrapoints video. Now, I binge your twilight video at least once a month and still gain new insights from it. Thanks for being insightful entertainment. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Xylem

Hi Natalie! Did you know there was an ancient Greek philosopher named Gorgias (pronounced as Gorgeous)?

highclass_lady

heyyy Natalie, 🩷 Just want to let you know you are appreciated, valued, worthy, understood, & supported. You are a fundamentally kind, well-meaning, intelligent, sweet human being with a bright sense of humour, & a good heart. There are still some of us around who empathise with you & can see your intentions are good. We see much of the stress & pain you are dealing with. We get how that influences your writing, we see the storms that have driven & exacerbated your need of an outlet to express emotions. We see your caution, the pressure of feeling like you can't say anything that will ever be good enough but you have to say something, because of the level of assumptions, abstraction, & judgement going on in the public eye. You are so often held to impossible standards, & your statement implications conflated & distorted by the worst of that anger. All of which is worsened by the severity of parasocial expectations. And although I hold my own opinions & beliefs, & don't always agree on every single nuance, or with every decision you make, I always believe in you & want the best for you. I've never let the narcissism of small differences trick me into thinking that somehow I'm always one of the correct ones, or respect you any less or think you in any way less worthy or inferior & less inherently good. You are allowed to be different than me, & have a different perspective or think of things in a different way. I've always loved people who can enrich my perspective, challenge me, introduce me to experiences other than those I have lived, & even change my mind. And you're allowed to word the well-intentioned thought in an imperfect way too. And you are allowed to still be learning, but a person who is still reflecting & growing, is not automatically a person unworthy of being heard. Always remember that not every opinion holds the same amount of weight, or is built of such as to be worthy of your attention. We need also remember that different types of attributes, qualities, & skill sets, different levels of nuance & complexity, will be most admired/esteemed in different times, seasons, waves, & tides. What is popular, & what is useful, will both change. They are not always the same, nor always trending, at the same time. But never blame yourself for feeling hurt, in this situation, anyone would. Just know that that pain is not evidence of some flaw in you, does not diminish your worthiness, & is not brought on or justified by any failure of yours. Although none of us have had an audience near to the scale of yours, some of us here still understand you to the extent that those of us who are not active public figures on such a scale can. While I don't feel the need to judge you, here's a reminder that you don't need to be perfect to be worthy of being cared about, trusted, believed in, or loved in the way a parasocial audience loves a creator/ performer. And I hope you have many strong, intelligent, loyal, & enduring non-parasocial in person (orthosocial) irl friendships & relationships that are there for you as you deal with what you're going through. Lean on their love Natalie, & know that when you're ready many of us in your parasocial audience will still be here, you're a wonderful woman & those of us who are here wish you happiness & healing in the meantime. 🩷

william kirkpatrick

I am so glad there is a new Contrapoints video soon. I say over and over again that positive satanism should be covered and I recently discovered Dion Fortune. There is a book called Moon Magic she wrote about a doctor who embraces magic or magick and he pursues this fantasy woman and then the narrative shifts; the fantasy woman is suddenly the narrator. Satanism is often confused with Sadism or the belief in amorality and cruelty, when the powerful and meaningful aspect of satanism is simply the opposition to, or deliberate ignoring of christianity, patriarchy, and conventionality, and I do not know why I discovered Dion Fortune so late, but I want to tell all the intelligent people out there Dion Fortune is NOT BORING. I don't know why I discovered her so late in life.

ijbol

Aww. This is sweet. I’m glad fans like you exist who are able to see her humanity and reach out to that, and I’m sure she appreciates your heartfelt messages too. 💙

Richard Earley

This vid, combined with Daddy Politics and with 'The Situation™️' that you're currently handling, really made me think of Wendy Brown's book States of Injury. What happened to the Left that made us so obsessed with nursing our wounds? To paraphrase Tobias Fünke "I don't wanna blame it all on 1991... but it certainly didn't help". Brown recorded a conversation about the book in May 2024, and everything she said about leftism, Trump, nation states and identity could have been written by you (and was deeply prophetic). I'm sure you've read her but worth listening to the conversation. Might be good fodder for your next video 🙏 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vMU7OD4PZNg

Rae

Thank you for leaving such a sweet, thoughtful comment high class lady. Echoing everything here. Natalie you are so loved and appreciated 🥺💕💕

Rae

Definitely feel this as a curvy brown woman. My form is more “fertility goddess” than “perfect hourglass”. Didn’t help that growing up in the early 2000s meant the beauty standard was being thin and often white (thinking about the plucked brows, straightening my curly Indian hair to make it flat, spending ages painfully removing my body hair). I can feel female but not “feminine”.

oriliuss

hey natalie, really happy you covered this, not necessarily for its contents, but for the methodology & your specific alignment with and reading of it. i think it’s so so so important to go through works that we borderline hate and also can somehow sympathise with and understand why it is so and work with it rather as a model than scripture, see the merits something like this has, comment what we find fucking ridiculous, engage with it in different ways. i really really sympathise also a lot with your position on activism, on not seeing oneself as a Good person, yet aligning with liberal values and being at the same time aware and critical of one’s own reactionary tendencies i guess? this type of transparency is so much needed right now, especially an open discussion on it i feel? this is at least what i’ve been feeling a lot from the students i assist & my peers i’ve been following you since 2019 and really respect and admire you a lot. i hope you’re doing ok considering the Incident or whatever, idk why i’m writing this, the world is so weird, people are getting weirder and weirder, it feels so comforting to hear someone speak so sincere and relatable. all the best; cannot wait for your next tangent <3

Marya

As a recovered anorexic, I am absolutely willing to entertain the argument that anorexics are waging an Apollonian war against female cthonian nature. Against the ungovernable demands of the unrelenting human body.

n€hØcKy🪁🐲🛸🧙🏼‍♀️🎬📚

Back in one of our Comparative Literature classes, our professor did something I’ll never forget. She took three Madonna videos: Frozen, Open Your Heart, and Vogue. And she read them through Camille Paglia’s lens of the chthonic and the Apollonian. It felt like watching pop culture suddenly turn into mythology right in front of us. In Frozen, Madonna appears almost like a dark goddess. The desert, the black gown, the animals morphing...Everything breathes this chthonic, primal energy. It’s mystical, eerie, raw. But at the same time, the video is full of symmetry, icy elegance, and almost sculptural poses. That’s the Apollonian side: order, beauty, form. The whole video becomes this tension between dark magic and pure shape. Then there’s Open Your Heart. At first it looks like a straightforward erotic cabaret act; Madonna dancing, teasing, owning the male gaze. That’s the Dionysian excess, the raw force of desire. But the staging itself; spotlights, theatrical structure, and especially the ending, where she takes the boy’s hand and walks away, turns the whole thing into an Apollonian frame. It’s not just lust; it’s also a performance that closes with an almost innocent gesture. And finally, Vogue. This one is my favorite to think about. On the one hand, you’ve got pure chthonic energy: the body, the dance, the invitation to “strike a pose” and join the collective ritual of movement. But then, it’s all wrapped in black-and-white cinematography, classical Hollywood references, and frozen, statue-like poses. The chaos of desire is literally sculpted into form. Fashion becomes Apollonian discipline for Dionysian energy. What our professor showed us that day is that Madonna is basically a mythmaker. She takes the wild, chaotic energy of the body and reshapes it into timeless images, balancing shadow and light, desire and order. And honestly, it made me see her videos in a whole new way, not just as pop, but as modern mythology. That being said, I’m not exactly chairing the Paglia Groupie Club annual picnic. Sure, her whole Apollonian-versus-chthonic shtick is fun, I’ll give her that. But then she goes off on these endless rants about trans people and pronouns, like the self-appointed TERF grandmother of them all, and honestly, it’s just cringefully exhausting at a brain-cell-frying level. Half the time she’s brilliant, the other half she’s insufferable, like that elder relative at dinner who starts making sense and then suddenly puts on her tin foil hat&veers into conspiracy-theory territory. So yeah, I can borrow her mythic vocabulary when it works, but I’m not about to put her on a pedestal by any means. Thanks for your insightful tangent though, much Dionysian wine-dness& Apollonian fine-ness🥰😘🥂🤗

Kemplify

This was a great tangent as usual, really informative and thought-provoking. I'm not gonna search all the comments if someone else brought this up, but I knew of Camille Paglia because she said that Mustafar from Revenge of the Sith (and apparently, indeed, all of Revenge of the Sith) to be among the greatest art she'd ever seen. After watching this vid...yep, I can see why this person thinks that (no slander to ROTS, of course): https://www.vice.com/en/article/camille-paglia-believes-that-revenge-of-the-sith-is-our-generations-greatest-work-of-art/

Lux

Carnism is harmful enough – don’t become the J.K. Rowling of defending it.

firelizard

Do you think that Stephanie Meyer has ever read Paglia? I haven’t read breaking dawn since like 2009 but there’s something I’ve always remembered about it.. The reason Bella gets pregnant in the first place is because (as far as I remember) none of the Carlisles were aware that male vampires were still fertile, or that vampire sperm and human eggs could create viable offspring. Rosalie desperately wants children yet she can’t ever have them, because she’s a woman frozen in time. I remember a line that went something like, “Women are bound to monthly cycles that are frozen when they become a vampire, but men aren’t bound by any cycles at all.” I remember her writing something like, “Men are free of natural cycles.” I found this idea very interesting at the time. I was in 10th grade and hadn’t thought that much about how my period was cyclical, and how that makes my body connected to time and nature in a more obvious way than mens’ bodies are. I’ve always thought of Renesmee’s conception as very ironic. Edward tears himself up over how much of a carnal danger he is to Bella, but he was mostly just thinking about his thirst for her blood, not of sex itself. The metaphor of blood drinking as sex becomes literalized or whatever once they surpass the metaphor and have sex—that’s when everything starts going wrong in that book. I always felt like Stephanie Meyer was maybe trying to comment on sex education in Mormon communities or something. Mormon kids get married asap so they can finally have sex and pop out like 7 babies in 8 years, but Mormon teens aren’t taught anything about how sex or fertility work and what the implications are for their bodies, what kind of treatments and care might work best (let alone anything about pleasure, etc). They’re only taught to be abstinent until marriage, which is the rule Edward follows. He wasn’t taught that he could still get human women pregnant, (maybe because nobody really knew, I don’t remember), so he didn’t bother to wear a condom. It’s like when people are on birth control so they see no reason to also use condoms or whatever and end up passing around STI’s. Edward endures his blood lust, learns to control it, and gets married to Bella, only to harm her with the consequences of his REGULAR lust. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? I’ve always liked that Bella and Renesmee both survive in the end. It’s always felt like a gentle rebuke of the sexual politics of the day. The way I remember it, everything turned out well for mother and baby because people gave them the right medical care—Bella was fed blood and immediately turned during childbirth. It WASN’T a sin for a vampire and a human to be together—it’s just that literally nobody gives vampires sex ed classes. Nobody except Carlisle teaches vampires to control their carnal urges for human blood, and because they don’t interact with humans much nobody really knew anything about their unique challenges of procreation. The idea was just “abstain from interacting.” I remember that Bella gets used to vampirehood a lot more quickly than anyone expects, and I think they speculated that it could be because she went in KNOWING what would happen to her. That sounds like a not insignificant endorsement of teen sex education to me—although I assume she still believes in not having premarital sex and other conservative things that go along with Mormonism, etc. Her writing makes her seem a bit more compassionate about it all though. Anyway yeah, I wonder if Stephanie Meyer has ever read Camille Paglia.

zach steidl

after binge watching all your tangents and i remembered you saying in an old video that you occasionally have to look yourself up on wikipedia to remember what you even do with your life but I feel like you are like the modern version of a philosopher. like philosophy tube your videos reference lots of old thinkers and principles but the difference in my eyes is Abilgail focuses on explaining the philosophy of others (which makes sense since she said she was inspired to start the channel as a way of giving her philosophy degree away to people for free) and uses them to construct and argument or perspective on some topic where you go further and use the old ideas as jumping off points to form your own ideas. Even the perspective you bring on these pieces you bring in makes them more than they were on their own. In the sexual personae tangent you identify yourself as one of "the thinkers" and I think that's true. I think you enjoy thinking and have simply made video essays instead of written essays. I think it would be really interesting if you were to look back through your body of work (an exercise i realize is your nightmare ~"sweaty, if you turn on one of my videos i will leave the room!"~) and look for continuity of underlying ideas. Most old philosophers have had their work posthumously woven together from essays and speeches but also letters, diary entries and even scribbled thoughts. We know them and their philosophy through the ideas of their fan boys. I doubt that it would be a first but at the very least it would be interesting if you were to take your own body of work and ideas and made a video presenting your own view. I also think that the fact that you are basically a breathing Socrates intending to entertain (and i realize that's more the way you view your work: entertainment. And yourself an entertainer. And it's true I am extremely entertained by your content. It's one of my favorite sources of entertainment . A particular favorite of mine is when you talk about or to these old philosophers like they are current peers. The familiarity and your tendency to roast them is hilarious. When you suddenly say things like: fuck you! If you wanted me to read you, you should have made yourself easier to read; or roast one of them and end with: this is a callout is honestly one of the funniest things I have ever heard, So you aren't wrong about being an entertainer but I think being a thinker is too large of a component to overlook.) I think this, to some degree, inoculated you to the habit of the left to eat its own. I mean, it is still constantly being done and I don't mean to minimize that. I can see your anxiety over the reception by the various "factions" that theoretically should be your allies but will roast you alive for any perceived "transgression" as if their rhetoric is unquestionable scripture. You outright admit that reality many, many times in your videos. You, however, have found a devoted audience of fellow thinkers. People who--recognizing you as a fellow thinker--look at your controversial opinions or views with curiosity rather than vitriol. And I love that for you. Move aside Derrida. Who will be left willing to read through his written work when there is a new Contrapoints video.

zach steidl

Ma'am, this is a Wendy's

Cole

George Lucas was the first great female rock guitarist

Cole

Hey how are YOU Gorgias?

Lasha Bezhashvili

I was thinking today, would it be correct to say that the world of fine arts today is completely taken over by Apollonians who have banished pagan imagery and beauty from art and have l given us conceptual pieces that need walls of text attached next to them to be understood and appreciated instead?

caitlin ruth

Came here to say I’ve watched this 2.5 times and have thought about it a lot. It’s fantastic, thank you!

T M

Hope you are doing okay, Natalie. I know things gotta be wild lately and just want to know, appreciate all you do and your work

Gwen Stearns

I have been sober for a few months now, but I really wish I could get high to this video.

Sean Covington

I love irrational time signatures and aspect ratios!

Xylem

Wendy's what?

Griffin Deubler

I would love to see you do a video on Batailles/ Frazer and the idea of sacred kingship!!

Kia Nicole Tudor

I can't stop pronouncing pornography as "puhnography" after that one video so thank you for that

Serena Lang

I love your work so much. I would be fascinated by your thoughts on Sex at Dawn. Please take care!

Aimee Deng

have been thinking about a professor who noted the alternative to understanding via penetration was understanding via exploring something’s surface completely… i really admire the breadth of perspectives, history, and cultures you research whenever sharing information. it feels like knowledge and it feels meaningful. i was never sure exactly what my professor meant by completely exploring the surface of something but i do think your research accomplishes that…. just connecting dots in my life and feeling compelled to share.

M

Can you do a deep dive into new age philosophy like people like Teal Swan, Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle

highclass_lady

Natalie has a birthday coming up! To wish her a happy birthday, you can leave a nice message in her BIRTHDAY e-CARD, here's the link! 🎂 https://www.groupgreeting.com/sign/adf75fa34247f3e People have formed online mobs to cancel her before so I figured let's do something the opposite to show how appreciated she still is! I'm glad a portion of ContraPoints viewers are open to doing something collective & hope everybody who wants to shows up for Natalie! 🥂 I'm moderating & safety checking the e-card, & if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me in the replies! If you're wondering how Natalie has responded to recieving a birthday card in the past, I've posted a screenshot of her thank you note on r/ContraPoints, the post is titled "A Thank You from Natalie for her Birthday Card 💜" If you've seen a comment or announcement about this before, sorry for posting these invites multiple times, I'm just trying to give everyone who might want to the opportunity to see & know about this, like you did! Any collective effort like this unfortunately requires the indignity of having tell everyone all about it! So far just over 1/3rd of the number of people who signed Natalie's birthday card last year have this year, Natalie's audience is all around the world, so I'm still trying to get the word out! 🌍🌏🌎🎉

Tanja

The first great rock guitarist was in fact female: Meet Rosetta Tharpe!

Robert Palumbo

I use proper operation how does aching work... works well

highclass_lady

Natalie's birthday is coming up! you can wish her a happy birthday in her BIRTHDAY e-CARD, here's the link! 🎂 https://www.groupgreeting.com/sign/adf75fa34247f3e Just click the pen icon & it will take you automatically to where you can write! If you're wondering how Natalie has responded to receiving a birthday card in the past, I've posted a screenshot of her thank you note on r/ContraPoints, the post is titled "A Thank You from Natalie for her Birthday Card 💜" I'm moderating & safety checking the e-card, if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me in the replies! If you've seen this before, sorry for posting these invites multiple times, I'm just trying to give everyone who might want to the opportunity to see & know about this, like you did! A collective effort unfortunately requires the indignity of having to tell everyone all about it! Natalie's audience is all around the world, so I'm still trying to get the word out! 🌍

Astrid Budolfsen

Im like 5 minutes into this video and already In like "Yas Queen, that is what I have been trying and failing to put into words, now I have language for what I know, thank you"

CassieWasRight

On second watch, Paglia's description of eastern culture as compliant with nature just reads as warmed over orientalism. (With the caveat that she is including Islam and SWANA as part of the West)

M

I resubscribed after deleting my account a few months ago, and just within a day of resubscribing, my laptop died while I was watching this video. Love.

nope

Idk if you read these comments but i really feel the need to let you know that i absolutely love your work and have endless respect for how you handle the exhausting attitude that the internet-people have towards you.

highclass_lady

Natalie's birthday is coming up! if you'd like you can tell her you appreciate her work & wish her a happy birthday in her BIRTHDAY e-CARD, here's the link! 🎂 https://www.groupgreeting.com/sign/adf75fa34247f3e People have formed online mobs to harass her recently so let's do something the opposite to show how appreciated she is! If you're wondering how Natalie has responded to receiving a birthday card in the past, I've posted a screenshot of her thank you note on r/ContraPoints, the post is titled "A Thank You from Natalie for her Birthday Card 💜" I'm moderating & safety checking the e-card, & if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me in the replies! If you've seen an announcement about this before, sorry for posting these invites multiple times. I'm trying to give everyone who might want to the opportunity to see & know about this, like you did! A collective effort like this unfortunately, requires the indignity of having tell everyone all about it! Natalie's audience is all around the world, so I'm still trying to get the word out! 🌍🌏🌎

Rose Dombegh

Anyone else think the witch clans in "Throne of Glass" are devouring Chthonian mothers?

Madame Grenat

Who else is exploring the sadistic aspect of nature in their work? I wish their was another word for "sensual sadism" of "consensual sadism" inspired by a woman, not related to a serial sexual criminal. :( Please, someone make it fashionable, otherwise I am gonna do it.

frogsmore

4:3 is much more personal than wide screen

Nora

Okay, I had never really heard of Camille Paglia until your video. As of now, I have read Sexual Personae twice and Provocations once and read Lakoff’s Philosophy in the Flesh once and a half. Thank you for an entertaining month. I will never look at a clam in the same way ever again.

Friendhead

Not sure if I’m too late to the party for engagement, but have you read Paglia’s essay “Sontag, Bloody Sontag?” It’s probably the most hilarious piece of writing I’ve ever read in my life and sheds a lot of light on Paglia’s bizarre feud with Sontag.

Flatlander Woman

Rewatching this one for the second time. For some reason, it was wiped from my memory right after the first watch. The continental tradition does this to a bitch - it almost sounds like a profound revelation and like something that has the potential to reframe my entire worldview while sounding like someone’s acid trip. I’m too Apollonian for this. Anyways, back to my sex dungeon, my hair ain’t gonna pull itself.

Rose Dombegh

HOLY SHIT I JUST WATCHED THE VIDEO WE REALLY NEED THIS ANALYSIS

Rose Dombegh

Tucker Carleson somehow looked ... emotionally intelligent, even wise, even kind in this video

Eww Hay

Thanks for the 4:3 it looks great on my folding phone lol

Lauren

I would love to know if you've read Angela Carter's The Sadean Woman?

Ella Martini

I study biological engineering and always have environmental influence on the mind - The idea that Ancient Egypt is kind of the embodiment of an Apollonian desire to control makes me wonder how the surrounding landscape influenced them. A need to bring order to an otherwise pretty unforgiving environment, exerting control over the Nile in order to provide for themselves, since the Earth would not. Then even as "apollonians", the Earth still controlled them... mother always finds a way🙂‍↕️

Willow Yaar

actually the venus of willendorf does have arms they're just hard to see, they're over her boobs

evan mcwilliams

gotta say i was hoping "sexual personae" vid would explain my frilly collar.

Asocksual

I totally get the feeling of wanting to understand someone because you're afraid you're gonna end up like them someday. The fact that you're self-aware enough to have that thought, though, suggests to me that you won't let that happen. I'm surprised that Paglia, sweeping generalist as she is, didn't go for Apollonian and Artimesian as words for impulses towards order and nature, given that Artemis is a goddess of nature and the wilderness, and the moon, it's all very Earth-Mother Mistress-of-Animals-y. There's also a lot of myths where some guy sees her naked and gets punished for it, so that squares well with her "feminine sexuality is rooted in secrets and the unseen" thing. Maybe the eternal maidenhood and her huntresses made it too complicated. Also I gotta say, Camile Paglia talks a lot about ancient cultures and makes a lot of generalizations about them, saying that Greeks honored the word and Egyptians honored the image, and that both have a weird relationship with Judaism and its traditions. I think it really would've behooved her to talk to some archeologists about this stuff... but then I guess she might learn things that would disrupt those generalizations. It's so funny that we think in terms of humans/society vs. nature, like, humans ARE animals, everything we do is an extension of nature in a way. I do love it when people appreciate the weird or unpleasant sides of nature, though. I really love a lot of animals people think are gross or annoying, especially anything that falls under the colloquial term of "bug." Seeing people joke about how, mosquitos, for example, are annoying or useless, pisses me off. Does an animal need to be helpful to humans in order to have the right to exist? I don't think so.

Squirrel & Turtle

I would love to hear your thoughts about Contingency, Irony, Solidarity.

Levy Lannister

The infection is called being a white woman

Piotrrr

Amazing, I absolutely loved the Apollonian vs Chtonic part. Discussing broad overgeneralizations about human culture is so much fun, despite them never being completely (or even remotely) correct

Kajan - Art Co-op

Will there be more Tangents? These really help me keep going through the day, they’re amazing

PloubleUno

This one was very good

Temates

Fun fact: the Italian word for clown is Pagliaccio that comes from the traditional figure of a naïve poor farmer in Commedia dell'Arte which costume typically had a hat made of hay, which is "paglia" in italian.

Francesco Lombardi

I can't wait for an occasion to present itself where I can say "that's pretty fucking chthonian."

Jasmine Berno

Something I've always loved and admired about your work is your willingness to be honest and introspective about your own faults and self-doubts rather than manicure your personae for the audience and attempt to come across as a "good person" or as "correct". I'm really thinking of the part at the end of the video where you talk about why you're attracted to this edgy figure, but also your own doubts about that attraction.

Katy

When I first found Natalie's channel, I was somewhat surprised that she hasn't done a video directly concerning the philosophical exploration of trans existence and identity. I now understand that this would be guaranteed to enrage approximately the entire world population. I find this tangent extremely interesting, because it touches on aspects of that topic. This has inspired me to make an attempt at organizing some of my own thinking on the subject. I feel like I should preface by saying I'm also in a time of questioning perspectives and not entirely knowing what to believe. The observations I make in my life are colored by the lens of my own perception, and I want to explore some philosophies of gender and sex without making the claim that any are necessarily correct. I make this disclaimer because some of the thoughts I feel driven to explore, are not so much playing-with-fire as playing-with-the-demon-core. I have often felt invalidated by the post-modernist discourse that embodying social categories is the essence of transness. I want to support the liberation of people whose experience with gender is different from my own, but I personally feel very de-realized from dominant narratives about trans identity. I think I am not alone in this and I'm unsure as to what to make of it all or how to fix it. A major element of this is that I've never succeeded in finding an explanation for my existence which separates my transness from medicine. I hate the label transmedicalist, because I've only ever disagreed with the ideological viewpoints of people who self-describe as such. I think it's wrong to gatekeep behind diagnostic criteria / "crippling dysphoria," I think people who do not wish to pursue genital reconstruction are nevertheless entitled to binary womanhood and manhood (should they desire it), and I have found myself arguing against self-avowed transmeds for the validity of non-binary people. Natalie's video "transtrenders" is also *the* video which convinced me to watch her channel. Still, the fact remains that afaict MY OWN experience as trans has always originated from an instinctual inability to make sense of specific sexed characteristics of my body (or lack thereof). I believe this problem to be neurological due to various factors (one being it significantly predates my gender questioning), and only medicine has successfully alleviated it. I've encountered non-binary people like this as well - whose androgynous social personae stems from their need to embody physiological androgyny/hermaphroditism/annulment. When I look at the mainstream queer discourse on gender, I'm increasingly struck by a feeling like being not just forgotten, but even like my experience is altogether taboo. I sometimes see dysphoric trans people *consterned* for feeling dismay at the presence or absense of certain sex characteristics. I find this horrifically callous. It's like we're so traumatized by transmedicalists that we're ceding the concept of *medicine* to them altogether. Can we not reconcile a multitude of experiences with the recognition of sex congruence as *a* formation of trans identity? Something I've noticed in the past few years is that it seems like there's been an increasing movement among some trans people, both binary and non-binary, to earnestly reclaim the term transsexual, or adopt the alternative form transsex. I can't tell how much of this might be motivated by a kind of in-group-cringing desire to create categories for distancing reasons, or a desire to ground trans identity in tangible materialism as a response to increasing transphobia, or a benign desire by people whose transition is characterized by physical sex to have their defining experience recognized. I'm sure these are all factors, but I don't know how much of each is behind the phenomenon. I don't know whether this might help mend the rift, or make it worse. In any case, it seems like the pure social-constructivism framework of transness is insufficient as a way of characterizing many lived experiences. I don't know how to solve it. I don't even know how to properly characterize my own identity.

Lisa Smits

As a (Dutch) Catholic, I’ll take Paglia’s compliment. When I enter a Catholic Church I feel the presence of God through the art displayed. The Rheims Cathedral made me cry. Belief isn’t only rational, it’s corporal. I really feel sorry for my Protestant friends who have to stare at blank white walls and reach God through pure thought only. Seems hard. And boring.

g.border

So Zergs are Chtonic and Protoss are Apollonian. Also elves are usually depicted as full of grace: they're close to femininity but not femaleness, while drow are much closer to femaleness.

Alice Blomqvist

I really admire your analysis of- and immersion in feminist theory and I would love to get feminist (or otherwise philosophical) book recommendations from you

Archer Jons

Hello Mother, I'm new to the Patreon. Could you please consider doing a similar sort of video analysing The Second Sex. Beauvoir gets a pretty bad name by people who haven't read it. Anyways, it seems Camille n Simone may have got on.

Stargrime Slug

Did you refference Gerda Lerner for this? seems very similar, but i think her theory more grounded. after all, civilation relied on reproductive cycles of cattle and grain - tying neatly to Engels of course, I am operating at a very primitive level Andrea Long Chu's Female also feels parallel to your own thought

Stargrime Slug

This is probably the best video you ever made, at least for me. I knew Werner Herzog, that exact clip, would be brought up by min 5. You set it up perfectly, it is a sign of true mastery of speakers to lead the audiance to their conclusion before saying it

Saxifrage

When are we getting the VHS box set release of the Tangents series? All cropped to glorious 4:3 of course, and labelled "Special Edition"

Emily Baker

ps Camille, have you ever heard of Suster Rosetta Tharp. guess not.

Ari

I spent my early 20s collecting grip socks and abusing research chemicals instead of going to college, and while growing those brain cells back will be a lifelong journey, I am convinced that this analysis has gotten me about .001% of the way there on its own. Thanks for making my work day a bit more survivable.

Garrett DF

Some of your best work!

Jesse Lewis (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-17 06:00 McMorm.UT here. Little Johnny Harrisite. You've got JoSmith as America's MoHamm served bland. It will matter cuz Olympics. Matters cuz sports and law. Sports kick ass. Maybe fixed in Conspiracy. Cuz Masons. -------- Cool shit I done lernt 1st time (will edit): > "Alright everyone, human in nature stories have changed slightly over the past 8k years" Is nature romantic and friendly AF? A hottie ripe for the picking? Or not because big planet lots of different environment and geography that are different great. Nature is fem won out tho. Sky-nature man-stuff pretty much the ginormous combo-catchall metaphor story of God in the West. > Gender/Sex ~ bodies in places move fancy/simple. Long time and lots of food mue importanté. Long time words like "generation" and "gen" and stuff get chucked around. Big catchall meta story stuff that plays with "gen" es mue importanté served al dente. > Bodies smart AF. Metaphors emerge, meta-stories too. Probs cuz they make cool shit like good food.. With fire and shit. > Daemons were godlings but Demons are actually fallen angels that are evil oh no! (Mus have been some calamity that made it real) > Vine of Villain dorf was just a smalltown hot thang saucy Daikon. > Nefarious Titties and...I'll take Famous Titles and S-words for 1000. (Hello metric system!) > Apple and Nice Dino and sex/gender stuff. Cool. So tech landscape Apple and Oil. > Movies rock cuz Egyptians kicked the suns ass in a staring contest. And good at emojis. And makeup.
2026-10-14 01:38 McMorm.UT here. Little Johnny Harrisite. You've got JoSmith as America's MoHamm served bland. It will matter cuz Olympics. Matters cuz sports and law. Sports kick ass. Maybe fixed in Conspiracy. Cuz Masons. -------- Cool shit I done lernt 1st time (will edit): ⛳⚽ Course pass, no filt: > "Alright everyone, human in nature stories have changed slightly over the past 8k years" Is nature romantic and friendly AF? A hottie ripe for the picking? Or not because big planet lots of different environment and geography that are different great. Nature is fem won out tho. Sky-nature man-stuff pretty much the ginormous combo-catchall metaphor story of God in the West. > Gender/Sex ~ bodies in places move fancy/simple. Long time and lots of food mue importanté. Long time words like "generation" and "gen" and stuff get chucked around. Big catchall meta story stuff that plays with "gen" es mue importanté served al dente. > Bodies smart AF. Metaphors emerge, meta-stories too. Probs cuz they make cool shit like good food.. With fire and shit. > Daemons were godlings but Demons are actually fallen angels that are evil oh no! (Mus have been some calamity that made it real) Yeah yeah democrats and secret fancy. > Vine of Villain dorf was just a smalltown hot thang saucy Daikon. > Nefarious Titties and...I'll take Famous Titles and S-words for 1000. (Hello metric system!) > Apple and Nice Dino and sex/gender stuff. Cool. So tech landscape Apple and Oil. > Movies rock cuz Egyptians kicked the suns ass in a staring contest. And good at emojis. And makeup.

McMorm.UT here. Little Johnny Harrisite. You've got JoSmith as America's MoHamm served bland. It will matter cuz Olympics. Matters cuz sports and law. Sports kick ass. Maybe fixed in Conspiracy. Cuz Masons. -------- Cool shit I done lernt 1st time (will edit): ⛳⚽ Course pass, no filt: > "Alright everyone, human in nature stories have changed slightly over the past 8k years" Is nature romantic and friendly AF? A hottie ripe for the picking? Or not because big planet lots of different environment and geography that are different great. Nature is fem won out tho. Sky-nature man-stuff pretty much the ginormous combo-catchall metaphor story of God in the West. > Gender/Sex ~ bodies in places move fancy/simple. Long time and lots of food mue importanté. Long time words like "generation" and "gen" and stuff get chucked around. Big catchall meta story stuff that plays with "gen" es mue importanté served al dente. > Bodies smart AF. Metaphors emerge, meta-stories too. Probs cuz they make cool shit like good food.. With fire and shit. > Daemons were godlings but Demons are actually fallen angels that are evil oh no! (Mus have been some calamity that made it real) Yeah yeah democrats and secret fancy. > Vine of Villain dorf was just a smalltown hot thang saucy Daikon. > Nefarious Titties and...I'll take Famous Titles and S-words for 1000. (Hello metric system!) > Apple and Nice Dino and sex/gender stuff. Cool. So tech landscape Apple and Oil. > Movies rock cuz Egyptians kicked the suns ass in a staring contest. And good at emojis. And makeup.

Jesse Lewis

Empire/colony as worst thing that's happened that produced things like expertise about humans is pretty self-defeating, isn't it.

Jesse Lewis

Hard/soft mask/fem and multi-layer maskness of metaphor?