Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues

[7962]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579240022857012920

'What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide," says Camille Paglia. This self-described "notorious Amazon feminist" isn't telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can't Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that's just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation."


Let the discussion begin!

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Paglia's been beating this drum for 20 years...she's a slightly better educated Ann Coulter

Why anyone should give one fuck now...

Oh, this is about some DU War, yeah?

Whatever, then.

[freshwest]

12. Second verse, same as the first. What is it, a seasonal disorder? Amazed at the RW shit lately. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Paglia is a feminist?

Good grief.

[BainsBane]

3. Paglia, why not Ed Meese?

[Matariki]

4. I've never been able to distinguish between Paglia and Coulter or Phyllis Shaffley

Who calls her a feminist? And what in the world does "schools neuter male students" mean?

[seabeyond]

5. she defends duck dynasty too. what else do you have

"I speak with authority here because I was openly gay before the Stonewall Rebellion, when it cost you something to be so," Paglia said. "I personally feel, as a Libertarian, that people have the right to free thought and free speech."
Paglia said the punishment of Robertson is a "level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. It's the whole legacy of the free speech [movement] of the 1960s that has been lost by my own party."

[Kingofalldems]

6. Paglia is a republican

Please don't post republican propaganda here. I don't care what they think.

[BainsBane]

7. Since we're going with RW arguments on gender roles, let's ramp it up

Schlafly told Time magazine in 1978, "I have cancelled speeches whenever my husband thought that I had been away from home too much."[34]

In March 2007, Schlafly said in a speech at Bates College, "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."[35]

She has called Roe v. Wade "the worst decision in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court" and said that it "is responsible for the killing of millions of unborn babies".[37]

According to an article in the March 28, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, "New Drive Afoot to Pass Equal Rights Amendment," Schlafly was then working towards the defeat of a new version of the Equal Rights Amendment: "Today, she warns lawmakers that its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows."[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly

Nice to see the pretense dropped that there is anything progressive about such positions.

[chervilant]

27. While in graduate school, I got to see Sarah

Weddington debate Schlafly. During the debate, Weddington was gracious, informative, and funny. Schlafly was shrill, derisive and rude.

[Vashta Nerada]

8. Trash thread.

I'm really sure this thread was started for purposes of discussion.

[7962]

15. She just seems to be all over the map. She's been around for years;

I thought it would be interesting considering she supports Democrats, yet seems to say so may things that would be against what she votes for. I dont really know what to think of her gay comments, considering that she IS gay herself.
So, yes, that is why I posted it.

[PeaceNikki]

9. Camille Paglia has been trolling since before trolling was A Thing.

She's the OG of barfing up archaic assertions about women, men, and feminism, justifying them with sweeping, unverified statements, and dressing them up with $2 words, and calling it new. Her latest, "It's A Man's World, And It Always Will Be" is so absurd that it doesn't merit a response; it merits an edit.

Paglia doesn't exactly have a history of saying things that make any damn sense. Most recently, she yammered on about Katy Perry and Taylor Swift being awful because they are The Bad Kind Of Pop Star, then lauded "bootylicious, confident urban women" because they are The Good Kind of Pop Star. During the 2008 election, she compared Sarah Palin's incoherent and endless run-on sentence style of talking to listening to some pretty excellent jazz and declared her the savior of "third world feminism." She's endlessly weird about fetishizing women of color as paragons of hotness (that makes a cameo in the piece you're about to read) and repeatedly slapping the air around her for invisible, vague feminists who hate all men and want sex to end forever. Planet Paglia is one where white bitches are hating men and fun and the only people who can save it are movie versions of hyper sexualized women of color. It's refried bullshit is what it is.

http://jezebel.com/camille-paglia-please-see-me-after-class-1484324950

[PeaceNikki]

10. Molly Ivins' takedown of Paglia is classic.

http://grigr.com/2011/09/i-am-the-cosmos/

"What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decadence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions? One fashionable line of response to Paglia is to claim that even though she may be fundamentally off-base, she has 'flashes of brilliance.' If so, I missed them in her oceans of swill."

[BainsBane]

11. How I miss Molly

She knew how to cut to the chase.

[7962]

16. She didnt need a publicist to make her famous; she had george Bush! I hate cancer.

[7962]

19. Here's Molly's article on Paglia:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080306071615/http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/02/MJ_1991_Sept_Ivins.pdf

Takes a minute to load.

[BainsBane]

20. If you knew about this, why did you quote her?

One might have imagined you didn't know you were quoting a rabid right winger, but apparently that isn't the case at all. So why would you think it acceptable to refer to her as a voice of authority?

[7962]

24. Good lord, this is "General Discussion". Dont we post comments from wackos all the time??

How many articles about Cruz/santorum/ limbaugh et al are posted? There are constant posts about loonies here on DU. Isnt that the point? To show whats being said out there? Otherwise, why would ANYTHING about duck dynasty EVER be posted? She doesnt even consider herself a right winger! I never said anything about her being a voice of authority, I just thought that it would generate a discussion about people like her who seem to make statements just to make people say "WTF?"
Sometimes i feel like I'm in the 8th grade again

[BainsBane]

25. Usually they are posted to make fun of

Not as an appeal to authority. You posted it as something valid to discuss, not as a subject of ridicule. Obviously she's a right winger. She votes Republican, and she's totally reactionary.

[7962]

26. I know; I never said it was a valid viewpoint, just thought she was kinda crazy,

thought it might make folks shake their heads and wonder where the heck she's coming from and offer their opinions. The article says she voted for the President, but I guess you never really KNOW if thats the truth.

[Ms. Toad]

33. Far too many apparently serious statements have been posted here

the last several days which are pretty much indistinguishable from her views. Posting her thoughts without comment (other than "let the discussion begin" seemed to me as if you were bringing her in, as a self-described feminist, to support the "men are victimized just as much as women" version of feminism. I would have reacted far differently had you added a disclaimer that you believe her to be a loon.

[PeaceNikki]

21. I linked an html version in this subthread, too.

http://grigr.com/2011/09/i-am-the-cosmos/

[mythology]

22. This post means that this thread was useful

Because anytime Molly Ivins can be cited on a subject, it's a good thing.

She had a hell of a brain and knew how to use it.

[Squinch]

13. Gracious. She seems awfully far to the right to me. Is this what we are discussing on DU, now:

"One moment she's praising pop star Rihanna ("a true artist&quot , then blasting ObamaCare ("a monstrosity," though she voted for the president), global warming ("a religious dogma&quot , and the idea that all gay people are born gay ("the biggest canard," yet she herself is a lesbian)."

I'd rather talk about the Duck guy. At least he's current.

[redqueen]

14. Quoting the "feminist" who called the Spur Posse date-rape gang "beautiful"?

Seriously?

[redqueen]

17. LOL OMG thank you for reminding me of this though

http://wonkette.com/537125/gay-thought-leader-camille-paglia-weighs-in-on-duck-dynasty-and-all-other-gays-can-shut-up-now-we-guess

It's good to laugh

[Gravitycollapse]

18. ...

[NuclearDem]

23. Defending stupid gender stereotypes and calling oneself a feminist?

Cognitive dissonance 101.

[rrneck]

28. I haven't thought of her for years.

Her tendency toward pugnacity as an affectation annoyed me then and it annoys me now. She's just breaking new ground in a sand dune.

[madinmaryland]

29. Ahh. From the Murdoch Street Urinal. nt

[theHandpuppet]

30. You've GOT to be kidding

Putting the words "Paglia" and "feminist" in the same sentence. What a bunch of flamebait. Sorry, not playing.

[LeftyMom]

31. Camille Paglia has either made a profession of trolling or is painfully stupid.

At times I'm not entirely sure which I suspect is more likely.

[Douglas Carpenter]

32. Camille Paglia also thought Sarah Palin was really smart and Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty should

be defended. She also thinks the entire media is controlled by liberal elites. Now, okay she will sometimes says things that are iconoclastic that carry a ring of truth. Anyone who says enough crazy stuff all the time is bound to do that every once in awhile.

[Ken Burch]

34. Could you please put "feminist" in quotation marks there?

Mary Magdalene on a crutch!

[7962]

35. I've been scolded in the past for even having different capitalization in the headline!

So after that, I just copy/paste so no one gets antsy.