Get your feminist on....

[TimT]

Get your feminist on with Camille Paglia, writing in Time magazine with a thoughtful and idiosyncratic denunciation of the age-21 drinking laws in the US.

Learning how to drink responsibly is a basic lesson in growing up — as it is in wine-drinking France or in Germany, with its family-oriented beer gardens and festivals. Wine was built into my own Italian-American upbringing, where children were given sips of my grandfather’s homemade wine. This civilized practice descends from antiquity. Beer was a nourishing food in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and wine was identified with the life force in Greece and Rome: In vino veritas (In wine, truth). Wine as a sacred symbol of unity and regeneration remains in the Christian Communion service. Virginia Woolf wrote that wine with a fine meal lights a “subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.”

She also writes, entertainingly,

As a libertarian, I support the decriminalization of marijuana, but there are many problems with pot. From my observation, pot may be great for jazz musicians and Beat poets, but it saps energy and willpower and can produce physiological feminization in men.

 

[Bribie G]

I've always been a firm supporter of rational intercourse.

 

[madpierre06]

I've always been a firm supporter of rational intercourse.

Not touching that one :blink:

 

[TimT]

But she's right, dammit! *Slams fist on table causing everyone's glasses to tip over*

 

[JDW81]

Learning how to drink responsibly is a basic lesson in growing up

I must not have grown up then….

 

[TimT]

She expands on that theme well - it's an often-made argumentl all over the Anglosphere - the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - we have a rather vexed relationship to alcohol and drinking. We veer from total prohibition to total permissiveness, and it contrasts strongly with the attitude to drinking they seem to have in Mediterranean countries. Perhaps that's a myth about a 'healthy' drinking culture in Italy, France, etc - but it's certainly true that the Anglo-Saxon relationship to drink and drinking could do with some changing.

My guess is that, prior to the introduction of factory-made booze and the temperance movement, we were more sensible and moderate about it: in those times every family made their own beer and it was as accepted and normal as bread.

Then again, maybe moderation is the exception in Anglo culture - if you go right back to the dark ages you'll find there are a number of Germanic stories boasting about heavy drinking. So it's all swings and roundabouts, really, innit...

 

[OneEye]

For whatever reason I read the title as 'Get your fermentist on...'. Imagine my confusion when I started to read the thread!

 

[DU99]

and that comes from the country that says anyone can own a gun..but the gun don't kill people..my dad offered me a beer before is was 18..and i use to drink with my dad @ the pub before i was(17y6M)18.i never fronted the bar till i was 18..


Ps you smoke joint legally in the USA

 

[spog]

Not touching that one :blink:

Umm,not touching which one?

 

[Midnight Brew]

You know you're a home brewer when you read the topic as "Get your Fermentis on..."