You Made Crazy Grandma Cry: Camille Paglia vs. Feminism, Again

July 3, 2008 4:30 pm     Posted in News, Reality  ccandysarao g+ page

paglia-2.jpgSay, have you heard of Camille Paglia? If not, good news: it turns out that you are not old. You’ve also, apparently, managed to avoid the massive headaches that she’s been inflicting on thinking people for the better part of the last two decades. Now, for the bad news: she’s back, and she’s aiming to annoy the world once more.


By Ccandysarao

Here’s the deal: Camille Paglia was the Ann Coulter of the ‘90s. She wrote a book, Sexual Personae, which dealt “shockingly” with issues of sex and gender, in that it basically re-iterated the talking points of idiot wife-beaters across the nation. (Here’s a sample quote: “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”) This book turned her into a popular media personality, and spawned countless essays and TV appearances; she was the go-to girl when conservatives needed to call upon some random crazy to bash women.

The peak of her career, of course, came when she took it upon herself to defend rapists, by saying that women who got drunk or wore skimpy clothes in the presence of men deserved to be sexually assaulted, because men simply could not be expected to contain their awesome sexual power. In her words, “woman’s flirtatious arts of self-concealment mean man’s approach must take the form of rape.”

However, I also enjoyed it when she claimed that women should be beaten for getting uppity (“much violence against women originates in emotional territory that they already command… women are in total, despotic control of their marriages”), and that feminism turned dudes gay (“middle-class men, neutered by office life and daunted by feminist rhetoric, are shrinking… male homosexuality is increasing, because masculinity is in crisis”). It is true, however, that nothing beats the opening chapters of Sexual Personae, in which she claims that only men are capable of creating civilization and technology, because… wait for it… they stand up to pee, and their urine streams help them transcend nature.

Yes, she actually says this.

No, I am not kidding.

Yes, it’s in the chapter where she says that women’s periods make them incapable of rational thought. Check it out.

Now, this is the thing, boys and girls: you cannot make a permanent career out of shocking people. Before long, you run out of obnoxious things to say (“only a dude could have created this Diet Coke, because it is so sparkling and transcendent – like male urine!”) or else people get tired of you. People got very tired of Paglia. The last time I saw her, she was on a Star Wars documentary special, claiming that “there is nothing sexier than Darth Vader.” This triggered, in any rational viewer, two responses: a) yes, there are lots of things sexier than Darth Vader, and b) why is that crazy old lady on my TV?

For that matter, why is she presenting lectures on feminism? It’s true: as reported by the infelicitously named journal Arion (say it aloud a few times), Paglia recently delivered a lecture on just such a topic. Her main thesis: that the feminist movement excludes dissenting points of view. Her main supporting point: no-one will accept her, Camille Paglia, as a feminist. Here’s a sample of her epic whine:

“When my first book, Sexual Personae, was published by Yale University Press in 1990, that 700-page tome on art and culture was compared by Gloria Steinem, who clearly had not bothered to read it, to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. When an op-ed I wrote on date-rape for New York Newsday in January 1991 was reprinted via syndication across the US, there was a huge reaction, including what was clearly an organized campaign of vilification: the president of my university in Philadelphia was besieged with calls from around the country calling for me to be fired from my teaching job.”

Yes, it’s true, Camille: when you say that women are incapable of creating culture, and stand up in support of rapists and wife-beaters, people might not think that you are a feminist! They also might not want you teaching their children, given the whole “rape is hot – GO DO SOME RAPING, KIDS” issue. (“You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered.”) It’s not that we’re fascists; it’s simply that we tend to believe paid teaching professionals should not endorse crime, or, for that matter, blatant stupidity.

The fact is that feminism has one basic premise, which is that women deserve full equality and full human rights. If you agree with that, you are a feminist, and there is plenty of room within the movement for debate on how to achieve those goals. Paglia clearly doesn’t agree with it, and she never has – so her choice to carp about being “rejected” or “excluded” from the movement that she routinely attacks is just more baseless attention-mongering from a woman who’s built her career on empty ploys for notoriety (well, that and an apparently staggering love for men’s pee-streams).

I must say, though, that her lecture did impart one very astonishing fact: somehow, despite all reason, Camille Paglia still has a job.

14 Comments on "You Made Crazy Grandma Cry: Camille Paglia vs. Feminism, Again"

  1. Claire says:
    Thu, 3rd Jul 20086:23 pm 

    Paglia has always saddened me. I love her book "Break Blow Burn" (her explication of Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for death…" was awesome), but she just doesn't GET feminism.

    Sady, what prompted this post anyway? Was there some recent crap that she said that set you off?

  2. bert smith says:
    Thu, 10th Jul 200812:47 pm 

    Interesting. Actually, more then just merely "interesting". Much of foundation of this deranged womans writings are valid. Men and woman are not equal, you mindless PC wishful-thinking delusional fools. But this woman is clearly equally delusional.

    Back to the point. We are very different. Feminism is a joke. There exists great imbalance now, since we are comically trying to go against everything that that is fundamentally male and female, both physiologically and physically. Perfect worlds exist in storybooks, children.

  3. Katelyn says:
    Fri, 11th Jul 20082:24 pm 

    While I will NEVER endorse that women should be disrespected, ignored, or mistreated – women and men will NEVER be equals. It just goes against everything in nature. If I'm expected to believe that I evolved from nature than I can never believe that women can go against the laws of the animal kingdom and take the same place as a man. Just doesn't work. Though – yes – this woman is a complete nut. The argument that because women wear skimpy clothes or flirt DESERVE to be raped is bull. I was sexually assaulted in college and it had nothing to do with what I was wearing. Besides – I believe that men need to learn to control their sexual urges just as much as women need to control the urge not to buy every pair of shoes on the planet lol. Basically – we're not equals – but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be treated like humans and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that we don't deserve the utmost respect – if anything – for bringing life into the world. Women deserve every choice and every opportunity with what they want to do in life – but as a society I see that we're becoming more and more emasculating and I really don't agree with that. It's like we're trying to buck the system and things are falling apart because of it. Let men keep the only thing they've got – the burden of responsibility. The responsibility to take care of their wives and children and to lead. After all lol it's not like letting men be in control is any worse. We still hold a WHOLE LOT of power…how does the quote go? "The man may be the head of the family, but woman is the neck – and she can turn the head any way she wants!" Think about it :)

  4. Bea says:
    Mon, 14th Jul 20089:01 pm 

    Oh my God. What the f*** is up with these comments? They're so depressing…like Paglia herself.

    Great article Sady. I always enjoy your writings. Keep it up on the feminism/gender stuff, too. Hopefully more young women will come around if you continue to post these stories.

  5. Kel says:
    Thu, 17th Jul 20089:25 am 

    I kind of feel for Paglia. Why should her belief that woman are inferior prevent her from being considered a feminist? I went through something similar when I tried to become a pagan but they wouldn't let me because I believed in Jesus. What gives? Just because my world view is the opposite of the one they teach. So discriminatory.

  6. Sarah says:
    Thu, 24th Jul 20087:05 am 

    Kel's comment = hilariously sarcastic

  7. Phil says:
    Sun, 22nd Mar 20099:19 am 

    To compare Paglia to Ann Coulter is not only insulting, it's highly inaccurate. Paglia has never advocated killing people for their political views.

    She doesn't say that the mere fact that men pee standing up makes them want to dominate nature. She says that that is an extension of the way men think. She's completely right in saying "If society had been left in the hands of women, we would all still be living in grass huts." She also says "Construction is sublime male poetry. A woman who slaps on a hard hat and enters a construction site is merely imitating men."

    Paglia never says that women are inferior to men, but it is rather easy to twist her words to make it sound like that's what she's saying. She's been rejected by most feminists because she refuses to embrace their virulent anti-male doctrine, and even though she's a lesbian, she recognizes the importance of men in society.

    This article is a shoddy piece of work, and little more than an ad-hominem attack upon this brilliant woman.

  8. Dan says:
    Tue, 14th Apr 20097:12 am 

    I'm happily surprised to see that most of the comments are on the right track here – so much that I don't even need to say much of what was on my mind after I read this. You can disagree with Paglia all you want, but this article is ignorant and misleading. Anyone with an eyedropper's worth of knowledge about Paglia's writings knows that you completely oversimplified and twisted her words to serve your own agenda. Do your research, write an honest, unbiased article, and next time you won't embarrass yourself. Oh, and why did you even write this?

  9. Alejandro says:
    Tue, 14th Jul 20096:33 pm 

    Agree with Dan. You don't know how to read. Better to read Paglia and learn something. And, in case, reading means being able to catch irony.

  10. Doug says:
    Mon, 4th Jan 20107:57 am 

    I completely agree with Phil, and particularly with his calling this article a shoddy piece of work. Well it's worse than shoddy actually. It's straight up tendentious vilification in service of radical feminism.

    As well much of the feminist effort to redefine date rape into anything the woman regrets the next day, or feels dirty about having done, with the excuse that she was tipsy, or any time she's mad at the guy soon afterwords (he didn't call?) is obscene and viciously oppressive to men. It's most assuredly a power grab, by design.

    To convict a man of the serious felony of rape, a woman should have to make her non consent crystal clear, persistent and not change her find – or else she should be passed out and thus physically unable to indicated non conesent. That's the least we should ask of the accuser before she can send him to jail for years, life ruined. She used to have to make her feels crystal clear by stuggling physically and violently to the best of her ability to escape his clutches. Maybe that was asking too much of the woman because in a tiny number of case it could be seriously dangerous for her as opposed to some bruising (but it was a TINY number, luridly expanded), but now we ask FAR too little.

    A whole lot of moaned nos do become yeses or stop being verbal at all and become enthusiastic return kissing and moaning. Very hot sex for both.

  11. Da Baddest Chiq says:
    Wed, 24th Feb 20104:21 pm 

    That article against post-Nazi-occupational France…as I forgot to mention in my hurry to get to work….can be found in Arion. lolz

  12. Da Baddest Chiq says:
    Wed, 24th Feb 20109:17 pm 

    This article is terrible. Camille Paglia comes from a 70s line of critical disjunction, when tensions both intellectually and on the end of tenure (threatened by the late entropy of 60s radicalsim) broke open a space between new criticism and deconstruction. Feminism merely crystalized the marxist/neo-historicist/post-occupation french theory equation into a static jumble to maintain tenure throughout the 80s. All those people are retiring now, and everyone’s tired of them. Feminism has been a cadaver since Gilbert and Gubar based an entire manifesto on two foundational fallacies and a Longman’s understanding of contemporary theory. Multiculturalism has proven, through its approaches to rhetoric absolutely incapable of indicating any authentic or important cultural differences (that is, a “system of tropes” doesn’t explain why the cerebral british psychiatrist on VH1 can’t say tool academy). There was a total stagnation of perception, widespread hypocrasy, and declining respect within social science and humanities programs…Paglia called them out, and used an extravagant, revised 70s formula of close reading–melding the structural approaches of the great 20th century german philologists (Neumann, Curtius, tenatively Auerbach) with the American turnings, Neo-Paterian, Emersonian, and Nietzschean Deconstructivist she found among her in the amazing Yale school of that time (hillis miller, bloom, and hartman). For a long time, the book was a huge underground success, published, i believe n 1979. Hillis Miller and Harmann both cite her in some of their major transitionary articles of 80-83, she falls into the feminist fold, with even G&G quoting her writings with warm enthusiasm until she openly attacked them in 86. She wrote a HUGELY influential article on comparing Joyce’s treatment of isomorphisms and “epistemes” to the sorry attempts of Kristeva and Foucault, and spawned a lot of her later attackers. Plus, its funny you should imply that Arion magazine has anything to do with Reich-based anti-semetism, haha…how utterly stupid. In fact, Paglia also wrote a polemical article against post-occupation french threory, particularly the heideggerean offspring Foucault, pointing out his pregnant silence in regard to Hitler and the Nazi Occupation. She was also an early apostle of Hauserian marxism…whatever. Paglia got drunk on media exposure, but she was very influential within the academic community before the 1990 publishing of Sexual Personae. You completely misrepresented her stance on date-rape (Which, btw, is the currently accepted method of approach)…she also is one of the very few serious cultural theorists to have treated popular culture (especcially recently with her articles on rye rye) is a way that coincides with its actual contribution–not sterilely biased and over estimating, but likewise with a severe rigor, dedicated to widening intellectualism into the community generally. As Kenneth Burke remarked 80 years of Wilde, that no one so strenuously attacked the bourgeious/bohemian opposition, can be applied with justice to Paglia…which should make her a hero…but if you prefer the real huswives of Princeton, that can’t be helped.

  13. John Henry McCann says:
    Mon, 26th Jul 20108:25 pm 

    I see it is true that you can say anything on the Internets and have many people, especially the ideologically driven, believe it. Having read some of the work of '' crazy grandma '' I could find little here but ''straw men. '' You completely misunderstood or misstated Paglia's stance on rape. Give me Paglia any day over Steinem and Faludi. At least I do not have to hear '' the myth of the matriarchy '' from Paglia. That alone exonerates her in many eyes.

  14. kenny says:
    Wed, 8th Dec 201012:32 am 

    There was a time in the 90s when paglia addressed PC feminazism in a way that had to be addressed. But the world has changed. And it can be frankly said that camille paglia is a useless, gutless, idea free, frightened little squirrel who has made a career out of sycophantic praise to a deluded right wing in the hope of converting them. What a hero. Without her, we'd all be really divided one against another, left versus right. She isn't just a performer for the anti pc crowd. She's genuinely dumb enough to think that only that and that alone is enough to convert them into liberals. If america had even one intellectual who could provide an interesting take on modern life in all its aspects, instead of a bunch of specialists peppered everywhere, Paglia would've been absolutely nothing years ago. But here we are. Desperate, ugly little times that we live.

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