R E C E N T L Y The disintegrating public schools (01/13/99) Tragicomic Clinton deserves censure, not impeachment (01/06/99) Men: Fair game for banal feminist office humor (12/23/98) Out with self-esteem tutorials, in with standardized tests! (12/16/98) Corporate America needs bosses, not "non-hierarchical management" (12/09/98) ___________________ Do you love Camille Paglia? Worship at her altar at barnesandnoble.com ___________________ A L S O About Camille Paglia Ask Camille archives - - - - - - - - - - C O L U M N I S T S Sexpert Opinion By Susie Bright The year in sex (01/08/99) The Reluctant Capitalist By Heather Chaplin Consumer retorts (01/08/99) Left Hook By Joe Conason The vendetta continues (01/12/99) Unspun By Steve Erickson A battle for the soul of America (01/20/99) Right On! By David Horowitz Betty Friedan's secret Communist past (01/18/99) Mr. Blue By Garrison Keillor Should I wait for my lovable Silicon Valley engineer who's so afraid of the M-word? (01/05/99) Word by Word By Anne Lamott Sleeping in (01/07/99) Media Circus By Susan Lehman Of think tanks, Republican phone sex and demon goddesses of love (01/14/99) On Television By Joyce Millman Married ... with hit men (01/11/99) Under the Covers By James Poniewozik Magazine racks (01/19/99) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg A corporate game of 3D chess (01/20/99) Home Movies By Charles Taylor Fool for love (01/18/99) Second Thoughts By Sallie Tisdale Earning credit in the straight world (01/14/99) Salon Columnists - - - - - - - - - -

ASK CAMILLE | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Dear Camille: Let me lay before you what to me seems a strange double standard. As a teenager, and later in college, my girlfriends and I would sometimes read "romance" novels. Just as boys have their copy of Playboy or Hustler in the bathroom, my college roommates and I had a Silhouette novel in the little partition with the toilet (one of the few truly private places in the apartment, since only one person would fit in there!). To my mind, there is little difference between romance novels and girlie magazines -- they are both a form of sexual voyeurism. Once upon a time, most of these novels were fairly chaste, and one might have been able to argue a difference, but no more -- the Silhouette novels my roommates and I read were as graphic as anatomy books. What is interesting is that romance novels can be found out in the open in virtually every drug store and most grocery stores. Their male counterpart, the girlie magazine, is kept hidden behind counters, or in some states, packaged in plastic so that it cannot be read before being purchased. Why do you think this is? What is going on in the minds of the store owners, that they perceive written erotica to be acceptable, but not photographic? Puzzled in Pennsylvania Dear Puzzled: Finding the steamy bits in a romance novel requires some effort, and one doubts that frazzled store owners have the time or inclination to troll through their book offerings -- particularly when weekly tabloids are screaming sex and scandal from the cash-register racks. Porn prose, even by the Marquis de Sade, is slow and linear and will therefore never have the neon impact of a visual image, which hits a different part of the brain with atavistic, animal force. It's a truism by now that most men are sexually stimulated by nude pictures, while most women prefer the emotional context of a narrative, a build-up before the orgasmic fireworks. In the 1980s, a diabolical coalition of anti-porn feminists and religious conservatives conspired to drive the men's magazines out of the convenience stores -- which is why it's so hard to find even Playboy and Penthouse in the suburbs. Male-female differences were dramatized for me once again over the holidays as I perused the new book displays at Lambda Rising, the gay bookstore in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The lesbian table was arrayed with cartoon collections, dreary feminist theory, PC fiction and murky, pathetically inept photography books with all the eroticism of damp mushrooms. The gay men's table, meanwhile, was heaped high with crisply designed, superbly produced photo books of gorgeous studs in a constellation of personae and in every stage of piquant undress. With a whoop, I immediately seized and purchased Jonathan Black's compact collection "Idols" (released in 1998 by German publisher Bruno Gmünder) -- a charming, exuberant, full-color extravaganza of phallic pulchritude that, as far as I'm concerned, restores gay men's recently wavering reputation for creating culture at the cutting edge. Dear Camille: Listening to you, and reading your writings, I often get the feeling that you are a libertarian. Yet, you seem to support politicians who are big on Big Government. Using the Constitution as a basis, where do you see the role of the federal government and what do you believe is better left to the states or even local government? What areas do you think all governments should stay out of altogether? What behaviors should the government try to encourage/discourage through law? Sexual orientation? Having children out of wedlock? Smoking and other unhealthful habits? The work ethic? Personal responsibility? What is your view on regulation? On welfare (all kinds, including corporate)? Do you believe in affirmative action? If so, at what age (compare Head Start types of programs with university quotas)? Please reveal any other of your views that will help me understand you and decide whether you are friend or foe! However that turns out, I'm sure I will continue to enjoy your columns and your entertaining and likable (from what I've seen on TV) manner. Joy Hartley To Joy Hartley: In regard to your long list of detailed questions, my libertarian politics are outlined in "No Law in the Arena," the main theoretical essay in "Vamps & Tramps." Affirmative action is one of many issues already dealt with in my Salon columns: I view it as a nobly intended program that was designed to aid economically disadvantaged minorities but that was hijacked by white, middle-class women who didn't need it (notably in academe). Too often coarsely applied as a quota system, affirmative action may have unnecessarily fomented racial hostilities in this country. A substantive affirmative action would avoid racial preferences at the college and employment level to focus instead on primary education and vocational training programs, the real doors to equality and opportunity. As for smoking, it's none of the government's damned business! I am radically pro-tobacco (though I only smoke the occasional cigar or full-bodied cigarette these days). Tobacco, an aromatic Native American herb, has made extraordinary contributions to Western civilization in the past 400 years. It focuses thoughts, stimulates energy and improves efficiency. Like everything else, it can be abused -- particularly when manufacturers doctor it with noxious chemicals. But tobacco, with all of its long-term health risks, is a far better choice for teenagers than the host of other legal and illegal drugs that are out there, which dull the mind over time. Tobacco is a handmaiden of the arts -- while Ritalin, which dopes kids into servitude, will be the end of art as we know it. SALON | Jan. 20, 1999 Got a question? Ask Camille. Bookmark http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/pagl/