Camille Paglia Speaks

The interview is two years old but Camille Paglia’s insights stand up well.If you missed them they are worth reading.

Recently, Paglia was excoriated for having expressed the wrong opinion about transgenderism. Her antagonists called for her firing from her academic job. And, as you know, the president of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia responded by telling them all to stuff it. Regrettably, his counts as one of the few academic leaders who has been willing to stand up to the mob.

Paglia begins by calling out feminists for imposing a narrative where men are oppressors and women are victims:

What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life. They have surrendered their own personal agency to a poisonous creed that claims to empower women but has ended by infantilizing them. Similarly, boys will have no motivation to mature if their potential romantic partners remain emotionally insecure, fragile, and fearful, forever looking to parental proxies (like campus grievance committees or government regulators) to make the world safe for them.

According to Paglia, feminism has made women emotionally insecure, weak and vulnerable. One might say that the #MeToo movement has portrayed women as less than strong and empowered.

Paglia’s remarks about the worthless and unaccomplished Hillary Clinton are well worth attention… especially since they echo remarks that I have often made myself. Better yet, she calls out Hillary and other feminist leaders for defending that notable sexual predator, Bill Clinton:

Hillary was handed job after job but produced no tangible results in any of them—except of course for her destabilization of North Africa during her rocky tenure as secretary of state. And for all her lip service to women and children, what program serving their needs did Hillary ever conceive and promote? She routinely signed on to other people’s programs or legislative bills but spent the bulk of her time in fundraising and networking for her own personal ambitions. Beyond that, I fail to see how authentic feminism can ever be ascribed to a woman who turned a blind eye to the victims of her husband’s serial abuse and workplace seductions. The hypocrisy of feminist leaders was on full display during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which incontrovertibly demonstrated Bill Clinton’s gross violation of basic sexual harassment policy. Although I had voted for him twice, I was the only feminist at the time who publicly condemned Clinton for his squalid and unethical behavior with an intern whose life (it is now clear) he ruined. Gloria Steinem’s slick casuistry during that shocking episode did severe damage to feminism, from which it has never fully recovered.

And, last but not least, Paglia suggests that feminists should have been able to recognize the good intentions of their pro-life adversaries:

Contemporary American feminism has distorted and desensitized itself by its inability or refusal to recognize the ethical weight of the pro-life position, which it routinely mischaracterizes as "anti-woman." In contrast, I wrote (again in Vamps & Tramps): "Modern woman has become an agent of Darwinian triage. It is or should be ethically troubling: abortion pits the stronger against the weaker, and only one survives." The inflammatory abortion issue has consumed far too much of feminism, to the point of monomania. I used to be a contributing member of Planned Parenthood, until I realized that it had become a covert arm of the Democratic party. If Planned Parenthood is as vital to American women’s health as feminist leaders claim, then why can’t it be removed from the violent political arena altogether and fully funded by wealthy liberal donors? Let the glitterati from Hollywood to Manhattan step up to the plate and put their money where their mouths are.

Strangely enough, associating female sexuality with procreation means that you hate women. As many people have noted, the two sides of the debate ought to find a middle ground, a mean between the extremes. As of now they seem not to want to do so… they prefer to play it for political advantage.