RObert:
<Squuers interesting observations. I've yet to see any real justification though for the view that women are less tied to the perks of capitalism than men. We're all in this together, sometimes with a different focus on specifics but much of the same effect>.

Too true. Indeed that's where Paglia gets it wrong; men didn't build the pyramids on their own, women had to keep the home fires burning. As Poirot says, the sexes complement each other--or at least they used to, despite its being an unequal relationship--nature has a lot to learn about PC.
Poirot:
<What shape do you think a Dionysian influence would take that could tame Apollo>
I think the answer is that women, as a class, should accept the responsibilities of equality as well as the privileges. They have to stop complementing men and start contradicting their creation. Men tamed nature and now women should be disabusing them of their "obsessiveness"--obsessive artifice! Democracy is patriarchy's Achilles' heal and women have the power to change the world. But they're at least as seduced by artifice as men are obsessed with it.

I think we should stop the blame game. I don't think we should go back to the stone age--though a little moderation would be nice. I don't see why we can't maintain lifestyles not much below the current level. We just can't maintain the current numbers. For me the problem is that our economy manages us (very badly), rather than us balancing a budget. We're dedicated to the economy, rather than the economy being dedicated to us--isn't this blindingly obvious? We have to develop a realistic mode of production, based on need and realistic expectations--pegged to the sustainable exploitation of support systems of the planet, rather than the madness of endless expansion in a closed system.
If democracy (both sexes) can't do this, then it's a failure.
Democracy is based on the flawed premise that individuals will vote in the best interests of the common good.
In a capitalist system, individualised self-interest rules.
The first thing both sexes need to do is wake up

Squeers,

Yes, it is blindingly obvious....everything you said.
I thought I was missing something, but it seems that collective humanity at this stage of development is only interested in a one way journey singing praises to the glories of consumerism.

The system is stacked against any diversion from the current trajectory. A monumental shift in psychological perspective would be necessary for Western women to even glimpse an alternative, let alone its value.

Children are programmed from infancy these days to fall into line with the orchestrated, standardised and competitive consumer paradigm. Mothers actually feel guilty if they fail to institutionalise their offspring at the earliest juncture in case they are seen as tardy for failing to "socialise" them into the system. All the little girls grow into the culture in the same way that their brothers do.

I'm wondering, under the circumstances, how we get from the one mindset to the other. It seems more likely that the necessary shift of consciousness would emanate from educated women in the third world than from our own go-getters who are too immersed in consumer culture to even sense the need for an alternative.