"Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life" (1979), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
Context: There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relation ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration).
Ellen Willis: Quotes about ideas and thoughts
Ellen Willis was writer, activist. Explore interesting quotes on idea.
"Hell No, I Won't Go: End the War on Drugs," The Village Voice (19 September 1989)
Context: The centerpiece of the cultural counterrevolution is the snowballing campaign for a "drug-free workplace" — a euphemism for "drug-free workforce," since urine testing also picks up for off-duty indulgence. The purpose of this '80s version of the loyalty oath is less to deter drug use than to make people undergo a humiliating ritual of subordination: "When I say pee, you pee." The idea is to reinforce the principle that one must forfeit one's dignity and privacy to earn a living, and bring back the good old days when employers had the unquestioned right to demand that their workers' appearance and behavior, on or off the job, meet management's standards.
"The Pernicious Concept of 'Balance'" http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/1124.html, The Chronicle of Higher Education (9 September 2005)
Context: Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college — that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home — is redefined as a problem.
"How Now, Iron Johns?", The Nation (13 December 1999) http://www.thenation.com/article/how-now-iron-johns/
"We Need a Radical Left", The Nation (29 June 1998) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/Radical_Left.html
"Dreaming of War" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011015/willis, The Nation (15 October 2001)
"The Democrats and Left Masochism", New Politics, Vol. 8, No. 3, issue #31 (Summer 2001) http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue31/willis31.htm