That powerful and obnoxious odor of bullshit you may have noticed in the air? That’s just Camille Paglia, evidently aiming for a bit of a comeback.
One of the first-generation of antifeminist feminists who came to public attention in the 1990s, Paglia is less a scholar than an intellectual entertainer, astonishingly adept at generating controversy by packaging rather conventionally reactionary ideas as bold contrarianism. And then getting everyone to talk about her rather than the issues at hand.
If Paglia was feeling a little starved for attention, the short piece she published on Time.com yesterday (donotlink version here) with the portentous title “The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil” should fix that problem in a hurry. An appalling bit of rape apologia gussied up as a bold meditation on human evil, it’s already generating applause from Men’s Rights and Red Pill Redditors, The Daily Caller, and fellow antifeminist feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.
If you removed a brief swipe at conservatism and added some incoherent references to hypergamy and “whores,” it’s a piece that would fit right in on any “dark enlightenment” blog.
Paglia’s thesis is that female college students and campus administrators alike are, by focusing on the issue of rape, obsessing over the wrong kind of human evil.
Wildly overblown claims about an epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses are obscuring the true danger to young women, too often distracted by cellphones or iPods in public places: the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder.
You might think it makes sense to focus more on rape than on “the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder” because, well, rape is appallingly common on college campuses while kidnapping and murder, horrific as they are, are rare.
Paglia answers that obvious objection by simply redefining date rape as not-rape, essentially little more than a bit of sexual awkwardness stemming from inexperience and horniness.
Despite hysterical propaganda about our “rape culture,” the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides.
Oh those blurred lines!
Having thus waved away the problem of date rape – and Time magazine’s own reporting on the subject – Paglia takes a swipe at those actually trying to do something about it:
Colleges should stick to academics and stop their infantilizing supervision of students’ dating lives, an authoritarian intrusion that borders on violation of civil liberties.
As Paglia sees it, college students, professors and administrators have simply forgotten “what evil lurks in the hearts of men,” to borrow the famous catchphrase from a radio drama popular in Paglia’s youth, instead blaming the ills of the world on “racism, sexism, and imperialism — toxins embedded in oppressive outside structures that must be smashed and remade.”
Paglia, despite her earlier snide remarks about “hookup melodramas,” is no stranger to melodrama herself, and she ends the piece with what is essentially a pretentious, extremely long-winded restatement of the old cliché “boys will be boys.”
The gender ideology dominating academe denies that sex differences are rooted in biology and sees them instead as malleable fictions that can be revised at will. The assumption is that complaints and protests, enforced by sympathetic campus bureaucrats and government regulators, can and will fundamentally alter all men.
But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. …
The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey. …
Misled by the naive optimism and “You go, girl!” boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.
So apparently, in Paglia’s mind, the only thing that can be done about this “evil that lurks in the hearts of men” is for young women to stop dressing like sluts.
In the end, it’s hard not to conclude that it is Paglia, not campus anti-rape activists, who misunderstands the nature of evil. By hand-waving away date rape and focusing attention instead on the comparatively very rare cases of strangers who stalk and murder young women – the “animal eyes glowing … in the dark,” it is Paglia who fails to see the potential for evil that lurks in the eyes of young men (and women) who look like everyone else.
One of the real accomplishments of the feminist movement of the past twenty years is that it has enabled us to see and take seriously the predatory sexual behavior – from sexual harassment to rape – that is inflicted on women (and men, and non-binary folks) by people they know and trust.
By pretending that date rape is little more than a kind of “ oafish hookup melodrama,” it’s Paglia who is not only blinding herself to human evil – but also helping to perpetuate it.
Does anyone know why Paglia is sometimes called a feminist? I’ve never understood that, since all she’s famous for is saying that rape victims have themselves to blame and besides it wasn’t rape at all.
I KNEW that there was a reason why I didn’t like her.
And beside, what IS “slutty dressing”? Some guys like breasts and thigh (for reasons no evolutionary biologist has ever figured out). Others, however, like virginal Puritan chicks. Others like ankles. Ted Bundy liked girls and women with dark hair parted in the middle. There are people all over the world-male and female-repressing powerful, maddening urges, and someday they’re going to lose the battle.
Few things are scarier than when someone who’s been fighting a fingernail fetish since the age of twelve gives in to their desires, and unless we make our dames traipse about in full suits of armour, nothing will change that. Not even Camille “someone paid me per word to write about how much I hate feminism” Paglia.
Until, of course, someone discovers that they’ve got a thing for knights.
Is this the same lady who made the argument that strippers are sexual pioneers? I have nothing against strippers and people decide to strip for different reasons. I only ask because she seems to be doing a whole lot of slut shaming here but her possible argument of strippers taking charge of their sexuality and being pioneers, seems to contradict this.
Glittering images – a journey of art from Egypt to Star Wars
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Doesn’t that sorta say everything about how superficially she sees her world?
Oh no! Camille Paglia believes that men and boys are not capable of controlling their hunting reflex since they are genetically programmed to rape. Women and girls, don’t go near men and boys since they can’t control themselves.
/sarcasm
Of course men and boys can control themselves. The article makes Ms. Paglia seem like she has low opinion of them.
Now, is it just me, or does that last bit there about the whole “boys will be boys” thing say that, deep-down, all men are horrible monsters who can’t control themselves and can’t help but rape? How is it “misandry” to say that men are not inherently rape machines and can take responsibility for their actions, but not “misandry” to say that men can’t help but rape and hurt others? How has that not occurred to these people?
Does anyone know why Paglia is sometimes called a feminist?
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Feminism is a tricky word. Not everyone agrees on what is or is not a feminist “at large”, any more than they agree what is or is not a Christian or a rationalist. It’s a bit disingenuous for a feminist to tell another self-identified feminist that “you don’t get to play in our club, cause you are an idiot – wait, i mean, cause you don’t agree with us”.
That said, you can use all the adjectives to describe her version of feminism that seems useful. “hypocritical” “self loathing” “rape apologist” etc.
Falsely assumes sex differences are either 100% cultural or they’re 100% biological. Also ignores the difference between sex and gender.
It’s weird how people who are horrible morally are also really sloppy in their thinking. I wonder if it’s stupidity, disingenuousness, or just that if they were clear and consistent they’d be forced to face what awful people they are.
Seems like the only prerequisite for being labelled a feminist is to be a woman with an opinion, no matter how contrary that opinion is to basic feminist thinking.
Two things, 1) Paglia seriously needs to stop watching Criminal Minds. Legit, it is just a tv show. 2) If you’re going to take the step of being inclusive of the sexual violence committed against men, then it would be appreciated if you’d also include trans and non-binary folks as well. They face much higher rates of sexual violence leveled at them than the cis population.
Of course men and boys can control themselves. The article makes Ms. Paglia seem like she has low opinion of them.
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Cause you know, all of us who have male significant others are constantly raped when we come out of showers all naked, or when we wear sexy little things and initiate sex but have to stop cause kids, phone, or other “life”. Cause you know, any woman working as a stripper gets raped every time they are near a man, cause men can’t control themselves. Or bikinis, or art models in school.
And yet we are to believe that women who maybe hit on a guy or wear the Sexy, deserve it, cause men are animals. umhum.
I don’t really agree, because it’s fine to label different forms of feminism, however, this person is clearly a misogynist and allowing her or others to claim the mantle of feminism just further disguises and obfuscates the issue. She’s basically trying to muddy the definition of feminism which I’m not cool with.
@ Tanya, I’m fully willing to agree that there are feminists who hold wildly different point of views from me. But words do have meanings. If you don’t agree that women are oppressed today and that’s bad and we ought to end it, I do believe that you’re not a feminist, even if you call yourself that. You can agree with the above, though, and still have loads and loads of horrible opinions.
It’s pretty fruitless to exclude everyone you disagree with by making your definition of “feminist” (or whatever) so narrow that only you and your friends fit there, but you can’t very well define a word as “everyone who says zie’s X is X” either, because in that case the word has lost all meaning. All words must have enough of a definition to allow for mistakes in attribution.
So, does Paglia really believe that women are oppressed and that’s bad and we ought to end it? Because, as I said, she seems to be mostly famous for victim blaming and rape apologia.
Yes, clearly rape is just a natural disaster, like a locust swarm, that just kind of happens because men are like locusts and can’t help their biological drive to come together in hundreds of millions and descend onto cropland to devour everything in sight. Believing that is not misandrous at all!
She compares men to animals — not just animals, but predatory ones — but we’re the misandrists?
Christina hoff sommers is called a feminist too. women getting the ‘p****’ pass?’ Men get the penis pass it’s called ‘boys will be boys’
What I also don’t understand is that Camille has said something misandric no one bats an eye. Oh wait it’s used to justify mens actions, never mind.
No one is better at misandry than misognists and George Carlin of course he might be a misognist too I don’t know.
Legitimate, actual question here: Do we know if Camille Paglia is all right? Physically, I mean, is she all right right now, physically? I’ve got an thought that this is actually a coded message she’s attempting to send out into the world because her international flight has crashed, and she’s currently stuck on an island somewhere unmentionable where several anthropologists would have a field day studying the islanders behavior of anthropophagy. That’s to say; do we know if a gang of time-displaced cannabilistic marauders have kidnapped Camille Paglia and is holding her hostage?
It’s the only way I can think of that statement making sense, if she’s in a horrible situation three seconds away from being eaten by monsters. Can we check? Do we know?
(So wrong, argh)
Thinking of men as responsible for their actions might require unpleasant reflection and change.
It’s funny how misogynists seem to be able to shift from “men are the more logical and reasonable gender and therefore should obviously be in control of the government, science, business, etc.” and “poor men are creatures bound by their instincts and cannot be expected to control their urges around slutty slutty sluts” in seconds without seeming to experience any cognitive dissonance at all.
You know, this really is the most plausible scenario.
It’s funny how misogynists seem to be able to shift from “men are the more logical and reasonable gender and therefore should obviously be in control of the government, science, business, etc.” and “poor men are creatures bound by their instincts and cannot be expected to control their urges around slutty slutty sluts” in seconds without seeming to experience any cognitive dissonance at all.
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THAT!!!!
I don’t think Paglia thinks women are oppressed… Though I have to say most of what I remember about her writings is thinking ” oh HELL no!” and not finishing them b/c they were a crock of shit.
Yeah, but it’s like the cool kind of animals, the ones that take what they want and don’t have time for feelings ‘n’ shit.
Catalpa
You heard them! They can’t control themselves around women so they can’t rule the entire world! Come ladies! We must oppress- err I mean protect the men! Matriarchy!
She seems to be suggesting that, because some men will choose not control themselves and act like civilized people, those men should for some reason get to exercise a heckler’s veto over how women conduct their lives.