/lit/ - Literature

One of Camille Paglia's theses is that pre the 1960s revolution the "Old World" still existed in families.

What she means by this is that the world of patriarchs, matriarchs and the separation between the sexes in most things still existed. Adult males had final say in all matters but older women were next in line in authority, and would also be seen as authority figures when it came to midwifery and educating young dumb girls with knowledge about boys and how to behave as a woman, but also who married whom.

Since there were still large extended families living under the same roof, women also had a sense of solidarity with each other and were never alone in the same way that they are now in the nuclear family.

One of the consequences of abolishing that kind of Old World family structure but also the patriarchal authority structure is that it also removed the matriarchal part of it. Older women today have zero authority at all, and most Western people either leave their older family members to themselves and rarely have anything to do with them, or they delegate them to a retirement home.

And in place of this authority and power vacuum that is gone in the female sphere, female beauty and youth is now the authority and power instead.

Paglia claims this is very counterproductive, and is one of the reason for the problems with the current problems between men and women; young, but beautiful women shouldn't have any authority for the precise reason they are young and dumb.

This is from her essay collection Free Women, Free Men by the way, I'm just paraphrasing.

Let me hear your thoughts /lit/erati.

>read a book
>makes you cry at the end

Which book is it /lit/?