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.
This short (science fiction!) story from 1905 seems relevant:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html
This is an old claim, and it’s known to be a false one, but it gets trotted out every other decade or so (at least). Don’t ask me why. It’s like the turning of the seasons or the falling leaves: you know it’s going to show up if you haven’t seen it for a while.
The claim goes like this: you’re in no danger from men in your own cohort or from the men you know. They are okay by definition, so no matter what they do, you can’t define it as a “rape” — trust me, you just can’t, so don’t claim they “raped” you, you silly girl, because they couldn’t have. But then those other men, the men who aren’t from your own cohort, the ones you don’t know — those are the men who are filled with the savage wildness of nature (etc.) and those are the men you’ve got to learn to hold at arm’s length. (Just incidentally, you’ll find that they’re also the men whom the men of your own cohort [the men you do know] are willing to prosecute and put away in the case of any, um, unpleasantness.)
Even on the face of it this claim makes zero sense. How are college girls going to get assaulted by the trade-school guys they never see and who never see them? Isn’t it much more likely that, if they’re going to encounter a mischance, they’re going to do it the hands of the guys they go to school with and who have access to them (as opposed to the guys who are living on the other side of town)? But the idea of the lurker under the stairway or the janitor who lingers too long in an elevator has lasted a long time, and I think it’s going to last even longer, because it’s still useful. It removes the onus from young men who continue to have expectations for their lives (even though those expectations may be dwindling) while placing it squarely on the shoulders of young women and of men outside the group. So that not only do women and male outsiders wind up in the same category, but the male group(s) deemed worthy of protection make it through the ruckus undisturbed.
So of course this canard gets repeated in times of stress. It does yeoman’s service. From a certain point of view there’s nothing about it not to love.
I’ll just throw in the late, great Molly Ivins on Paglia: “What an asshole.”
[quote]
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.[/quote]
Right?
*sigh* Those brackets should’ve been carrots.
Molly Ivins was awesome. May she rest in peace.
I went and read her piece. If she wasn’t a famous contrarian, Time would never have published it – it’s a self-contradictory rant that doesn’t have a strong central argument. That’s why she has to throw in nebulous concepts like ‘evil’. The melodrama covers up the lack of logic.
Over the years all of the antifeminists of my generation have been redefined by the corporate media as feminists. A major part of the backlash against feminism has been to redefine it.
OMG how I miss Molly!
Fibinachi, in answer to your question, yes. She is fine except for the cognitive dissonance. This is what they pay her for. She pretty much writes the same article every Fall and Spring.
@bodycrimes
I think it’s because there’s this need that people have this need to mentally separate criminals from themselves. Acquaintance rapists are people acting (incredibly) selfishly and (incredibly) stupidly, not out of some built-in malice and ill-will towards their victims, but an entirely fixable problem with not being concerned with their victims’ feelings.
The harm they do isn’t proportionate to their inherent wrongness, but the wrongness of the act. That’s different from imagined pure, unbound evil lurking in the dark of human souls.
The “It’s not rape, because it’s not pure evil” mentality is one that appeals to too many people.
Serious question/problem that I haven’t yet been able to resolve in my mind:
I have three daughters, though they’re thankfully young enough that I have some time to think about this.
As they move on to young adulthood, I plan to communicate to them that *they* have full agency over their bodies and that whether or not to engage in sexual behavior should always be firmly *their choices*.
While we’ll lay out (to the best of our ability) the possible emotional and and physical repercussions of sex, we’ll also promise to provide support and act as a sounding board should they ask for it.
We’ll make sure to communicate to them that they never, ever have to do anything that they don’t feel comfortable with (no matter how much the like a person or don’t want to make him or her feel bad), that *they* shouldn’t pressure anyone into anything that that person’s not comfortable with, and that no always means no whether it’s coming from them or someone else.
We also plan to teach them that sexual assault is never, ever the fault of the person assaulted and that they should both never be afraid to speak up if something happens to them and support those who need support.
BUT I was also young not that long ago. While I want to teach them assault is NEVER the fault of the victim and NOTHING they do, wear, say, or go EVER gives anyone the right to do anything to them against their will, I also think that it’s potentially useful to say, “With all of that in mind, getting very drunk – especially in a crowd and especially without at least one person that you trust completely around – can be very dangerous. For that matter, even letting someone get you a drink – any drink, including soda – can be dangerous at a bar, at a party, and even just hanging out. Be careful.”
[Poster’s note: When I was 17, some “nice, geeky guys” that I was just hanging out with – I thought they were my friends but I didn’t know them too terribly well – dosed a soda that one of them brought over to me with…something. They misjudged somehow, either in amount or because I seem to metabolize certain chemicals more efficiently than most, and I never completely lost track and was able to stumble to a more crowded area.]
I know that that may be considered ceding ground to the assholes and letting monsters define the parameters, but, dammit – there are assholes and monsters out there (and even otherwise sensible people who may use circumstances to excuse inexcusable actions) and it’s something about which I want them to remain cognizant.
@Proxieme: I think it’s fun to warn one’s children about the dangers of too much drink and drugs, but maybe phrase it as a more general warning? After all, people who are too drunk to know at all what they are doing are at an increased risk of having their wallets stolen, stumble out in traffic and get run over by a car, alcohol poisoning etc etc. I think the big problem with parents warning kids not to get too drunk and watch their drinks isn’t that they do it, but that it’s usually framed as “how not to get raped”-advice and particularly directed at girls.
Damn! I didn’t mean FUN – I meant FINE! I think it’s FINE to warn one’s children about the dangers etc.
Why oh WHY is there no edit button? (oh, I know the reason, otherwise the trolls would use it all the time and claim that they didn’t claim what they in fact claimed, but anyway…)
I think it is important to talk about what to do in difficult circumstances as well as what not to do.
I need a citation on the claim that slutty clothes lead to victimization from serial killers. As far as I know there’s no correlation.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong or victim shaming about teaching kids that getting drunk makes them vulnerable, both to violence in general, but also specifically to sexual attacks, because rapists prey on people who have drunk too much. Rapists are known to go out of their way to get chosen victims drunk, specifically because it makes them easier to isolate and attack.
Also, if you’ve been drinking, it’s harder to sense danger or to take evasive action like removing yourself from a threatening situation. This is whether it’s sexual violence or being mugged or not recognising when it’s getting dangerously cold.
What I don’t get is why young men aren’t warned about the dangers of drinking. Because they die from hypothermia, choked vomit and violence too.
proxieme: One thing to make sure you include in that talk is a ‘worst-case scenario’ discussion. “Yes, I am hoping that nothing bad ever happens to you, and certainly nothing like this. However, I also know that there are people in the world who will do bad things. So, I want you to know some ‘what if’ notions.” (I’d include some suggestions, but honestly, you’re better off doing your own research. “Go straight home to us, or to a hospital ER if you can, call us on your way,” is probably a good one, though.) In addition to giving them some grounding on how to cope with an assault, it helps to remove the notion that it was in any way their fault, because if it was something they could avoid completely, they wouldn’t need to hear about it.
Also talk about how they need to apply that same line of reasoning to other girls. “I don’t care if she was naked and blacked-out drunk; that’s not consent, and you should never tell someone else they deserved it, no matter what they did beforehand.” Again, perceiving it as a universal rule will help them apply it to themselves in the particular.
What a lot of words that was.
As opposed to the past, when women were never ever raped or murdered or abducted.
Angels vs Demons is a great trope for art and fantasy, but real life is much more messy. Those “oppressive outside structures” you so casually dismiss? They explain that complexity. If you think every conflict can be boiled down to good guys vs bad guys, then you don’t understand human nature.
Yeah, those silly politicians labeling “good guys” and “bad guys” as if real life were a movie. Don’t they know that you should be labeling them “demons” and “angels” as if real life were a painting?
Blegh… There’s only so many times you can say “that’s not true” in a criticism. Camille takes an exceedingly narrow set of crimes and blows them up as if they are the only crimes that occur, and that they occur in a vacuum. No talk of policing and locking criminals up, no talk about public policy towards these irredeemable monsters, no discussion of support structures for women. Everything apparently boils down to encounters in a dark alleyway without a cell phone.
This is what you get when you dismiss talk of social pressure and shaping; a myopic view of a relatively rare crime with no structure to discuss how to deal with or prevent it.
Because “misandry,” to them, isn’t saying negative things about men so much as it is saying that men should ever be prevented or constrained from doing exactly what they want to at any given moment. “Men can’t help but rape” implies “and therefore we should let them, the poor dears.” It’s a handy excuse for abhorrent behavior.
Oh, and stress that the ‘prevention’ advice is mainly because you care more about them than other girls–essentially, rapists are predators, seeking the easiest target. If everyone present is doing basic defense, the rapist will simply adapt his approach to try and get what he wants.
Feminism is a big tent, but not big enough to hold people who think that feminism is 100% terrible and shouldn’t exist. I’d also argue that people who believe that if women are raped it’s usually their own fault have no place in that tent, especially if they’ve spent most of their career attempting to slash holes in the tent and set fire to the tent pegs.
Paglia’s writing has always been like this, a lot of sound and fury attempting to conceal how little logic or meaning there is underneath. The fact that the idea of men as savage and yet somehow noble beasts full of uncontrollable urges seems to make her happy in her pants doesn’t help, and is awkward to observe.
@Dvär: It’s a good idea to place in those concerns in the constellation of “bad things that can happen ESPECIALLY given x, y, or z circumstances”, but it almost seems like sexual assault ends up with its own gravitational pull of for no other reason than that there’s generally not shame and self-doubt attached to a mugging or a straight-up physical assault while they’re often part and parcel to a sexual assault or rape.
They seem like they need special attention if for no other reason than all of the societal baggage (at least in the US) attached – not to say to my daughters “here are the ways to not get raped” (or “don’t get raped”) but more, “There are people out there who think that they’re entitled to your body. They’re more likely to attempt an assault under these circumstances. It’s not right that engaging in protective measures has to be a concern, but it is.” Though you’re right that that statement could be broadly applied.
[Note: by “societal baggage I mean tendency to victim blame and excuse the behavior of assailants.]
It’s just that if I had son, I and my husband would tell him (in addition to most of the stuff we plan to say to our daughters), “This is what defines rape and sexual assault. Don’t rape. Don’t sexually assault. And make it clear to your friends that you don’t tolerate those behaviors. Don’t enable.”
We probably wouldn’t (we haven’t with our daughters) feel the need to explore my say the same about robbery or physical assault.
Society makes t clear that those aren’t acceptable behaviors while it’s, at best, ambivalent on sexual assault and rape until you run into “beaten/abducted and raped” territory…and even then so many seem ready and willing to sweep it under the rug if the girl or woman was intoxicated or if there was prior consent.
*squints*
Though I suspect that we will/would directly address cheating, lying to get ahead, and direct and cyber-bullying – all other behaviors that usually have “mixed reviews” in some peer groups.
This has been useful to me.
Thanks for engaging and I apologize for any diarrhea of the keyboard (sooo much to do that I didn’t get done while pecking away at my phone).
On that, I’m also sorry for any glaring typos – tiny screen.
@freemage: proxieme: One thing to make sure you include in that talk is a ‘worst-case scenario’ discussion. “Yes, I am hoping that nothing bad ever happens to you, and certainly nothing like this. However, I also know that there are people in the world who will do bad things. So, I want you to know some ‘what if’ notions.” (I’d include some suggestions, but honestly, you’re better off doing your own research. “Go straight home to us, or to a hospital ER if you can, call us on your way,” is probably a good one, though.) In addition to giving them some grounding on how to cope with an assault, it helps to remove the notion that it was in any way their fault, because if it was something they could avoid completely, they wouldn’t need to hear about it.
Also talk about how they need to apply that same line of reasoning to other girls. “I don’t care if she was naked and blacked-out drunk; that’s not consent, and you should never tell someone else they deserved it, no matter what they did beforehand.” Again, perceiving it as a universal rule will help them apply it to themselves in the particular.
—
[pretend your other post is here – my phone won’t let sect that text for some reason]
That’s excellent advice and helps to further couch it in a general discussion of worst case scenarios rather than making it a “don’t get raped” lecture.
Thanks!
I think rape has special baggage in all western cultures, so it does make sense in a way, as you say, to talk particularly about rape. Although I was nearly run over by a car once when being way to drunk, and a friend of my sister got alcohol-poisoned, so I would still include the general risk of having something terrible happen to you when you’re super drunk. 😉
But I guess the most important thing is to stress that they have the right to set boundaries regarding their own bodies. I think what most parents do wrong when talking about rape is that they only teach stranger danger, and perpetuate the myth that you can’t be raped by a friend or boyfriend. I guess one reason for that is that it seems weirdly paranoid to tell one’s kids that any of their friends or dates might suddenly rape them. Perhaps talking in terms of boundaries, you’re entitled to respect and you’re entitled to set boundaries, if someone tries to push your boundaries that’s wrong and so on is a way to get around that.