I'm just weirded out by the assumption that playing loud music is aggressive? Most of the time, the kids are just sitting or standing there, groovin' to the music, volume cranked. I recall doing lots of things as a kid that weren't respectful. I used to go across the street to the NYS Conservation Department and bang a tennis ball against a large steel door on their garage, weekends and evenings. The thing had some dents in it when I was done! I look back on that and think, "Geez, what a little asshole I was." People were working after hours, occasionally, so I can imagine a constant banging for an hour or two irritated them. Once in a while, one of them would come to a window and observe. Being self-conscious, I wouldn't make eye contact and just assumed that if they felt I shouldn't be there or if I annoyed them, they'd say so. Of course, I was just taking advantage of my sexuality. Deep down I knew that the men didn't mind that a 16 year old flaunting her boobs in their face because I just soooooooo loved to be looked at and just sooooooo wanted to get away with something I might not were I a boy.
The clitoral hood is powerful! (response to heartfield below)
I would agree with Tahir that most of what I've observed in the US is "look a me." I suppose it's impolite but I guess I'm not offended because I like the music and I hear music, not [c]rap and certainly not irritating noise. So, I've never read a kid playing a boom box as aggressive.
I can sure understand how a kid who is constantly regulated by someone or some entity would get pleasure out of cranking up the volume in defiance of social conventions. I don't really see that as much different than the goths who like to wander the malls sporting a style and comportment that defy conventions about how one is to dress in public.
I'd have to agree with Tricia Rose's analysis of hip hop style. She argued in _Black Noise_ that the rise of hip hop was about taking over public space in urban areas (and now rural and suburban areas) where public spaces were increasingly regulated. Park jams, for instance, were about taking over public parks in defiance of laws regulating how people were allowed to use public spaces. And decades later, I wish we had a bigger movement to fight the way the Ghouliani's of the world have come to regulate public spaces even more tightly.
Anybody following the outrage against Eminem in The Source recently? I just glanced at the cover at the 7-11 last night...
At 05:25 AM 2/25/2004, heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
Angels fear to tread, huh? Who's afraid? You? Roiphe? Paglia? Doesn't look like R and P are. Neither has ever impressed me as afraid of anything except, of course, their phantasy of a monolithic feminism that leaves no room for dissident voices like their's!
>I can't believe that the comedic value of Doug Henwood, Paul Childs, John
>Lacny and James Heartfield debating Katie Roiphe and Camille Paglia's
>claim to the title 'feminist' is hard to get.
At least wrt Doug, he did a few things, among them:
1. he pointed out that Roiphe, herself, claimed she was anti-feminist. (she should have said that she's anti-establishment feminism, which seems more in line with what I've read from her.)
2. he noted that she knew nothing about feminism.
3. he questioned the claim that she was a "well-known feminist" since her books haven't been best-sellers:
"By chance I sat next to Roiphe at a dinner once and talked with her for nearly two hours. Despite her self-identification as an "anti-feminist" (her choice, after having rejected "right-winger"), she knows absolutely nothing about feminism. She seemed shallow and not very bright. And her books have sold less than mine even. How is she a "well-known feminist"?
I'm not particularly interested in policing the boundaries of the feminist canon. Indeed, I enjoy feminismS that include the like of Patai, Sommers, Roiphe and Paglia.
I do think it odd that Wente chose to equate all feminists with just two, Roiphe and Paglia., in order to claim that Wolf "(who, it must be noted, is ravishingly beautiful) ....
I agree with Paul: there was really no _must_ involved in noting that Wolf is "ravishingly beautiful."
>is getting precious little sympathy from the sisterhood."
Are their ad hominem attacks on Wolf indicative of a general feminist response?
>But Paglia has been in academia for some time, and is a former student of
>Harold Bloom's so her qualification to comment seems reasonable enough.
Both are free to comment, of course. The issue is, are their comments indicative of "the sisterhood's" response to Wolf?
>But of course the only reason that anyone is pouring scorn on credentials
>is because of the arguments being put. What offends everyone about Camille
>Paglia and Katie Roiphe is that they are both women who object to the
>caricature of predatory men and delicate women. Plainly premissing a
>movement on gender is no guarantee of agreement about what the problems are.
Roiphe's and Paglia's criticisms are empty ad hominem. Roiphe says that Wolf is simply seeking fame in the wake of a failed book on motherhood. Paglia dismisses Wolf as a child who needs to grow up and, I guess, is perimenopausal, which is what? supposed to explain away her behavior?
Other feminists have been speaking to Wolf's article. Several of them reject victim feminism but they engage in argument, not ad hominem.
Kelley