From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: Paglia on Feminism
Organization: Clark University
Date: 8 JAN 93 21:35:57 GMT

I finally got _Sex, Art and American Culture_ back, and found the
section in which Paglia is most direct about her views on feminism.
In the lecture she gave at MIT (which has more of the feel of an
extemporaneous talk), she goes into detail about precisely what she
objects to in modern feminism.  I suggest that it's required reading
for anyone who wants to pass judgment on Paglia's views of the role
of women in society.  Here are a few passages from the lecture
transcript that touch on the subjects we've been discussing:


     Now, speaking here at MIT confronted me with a dilemma.  I
     asked myself, should I try to act like a lady?  I can do it.  It's
     hard, it takes a lot out of me, I can do it for a few hours.  But
     then I thought, *naw*.  These people, both my friends and my
     *enemies* who are here, aren't coming to see me act like a
     lady.  So I thought I'd just be myself -- which is, you know,
     abrasive, strident, and obnoxious.  So then you all can go
     outside and say, "What a bitch!"
     ...
     I consider myself a feminist.  I began my revolt when I was
     just a little child.  I was born in the late Forties.  And I
     absolutely could not *stand* the way the culture demanded that
     women be feminine.  I did not relate to my sex role *at all*.  I
     have been a totally alienated sexual being since I was a tiny
     child.  And it began with dolls -- this was the thing -- *dolls*!
     My parents learned soon enough not to give me dolls -- they
     knew I didn't want them.  But I think my first experiences of
     social alienation would have been when we would go visiting or
     something, and people would say, "Oh, a cute little girl is
     coming.  We'll get a cute little doll for the cute little girl."
     And so my parents wanted me to be polite, you know, they trained
     me to be polite, and so these horrible surreal scenes would
     happen, where I would be surrounded by all these, like,
     glowing, smiling, ten adult faces smiling at me and handing
     me this lump of humanoid rubber and expecting me to be glad
     about it, and I would just think, "*What* am I going to do with
     *this*? --UGH!"  And meanwhile I have to smile -- and this is
     when I knew I didn't fit in, okay?

     ...From my earliest years I had this burning desire to *do*
     something for women, to do something *so massive* for
     women, to demonstrate that women should be taken seriously.

     ...For three years [as a teenager] ... I did this Amelia Earhart
     research.  The biographer of Amelia Earhart told me I had
     done more research in the primary sources than *he* had! ...
     Amelia Earhart to me was an image of everything a woman
     should be.  It remains that for me.  Amelia Earhart, my
     obsession.  She is woman alone.  Not woman hand-holding in a
     group and whining about men.  Woman *alone*!  Okay, all
     right?  Woman goes up in the plane.  If she crashes, she
     doesn't go, "You *men* did this to me!"  She knows that *she*
     is responsible.  It's *her* skill, *her* preparation.
      ...
     Feminism is 200 years old.  Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft
     wrote that manifesto in 1790.  It's 200 years old.  It's had many
     phases.  We can criticize the present phase without necessarily
     criticizing feminism.  I want to save feminism from the
     feminists.  What I identify with is the pre-war feminism of
     Amelia Earhart, of Katharine Hepburn -- who had an
     enormous impact on me -- that period of women where you had
     independence, self-reliance, personal responsibility, and not
     blaming other people for your problems.  I want to bring that
     back.  And my life has been a good example of it.  Because my
     career was a disaster, but I did not blame it on anyone.  I took
     personal responsibility for my own work.  If I could not be
     published in my own lifetime, I would leave it beyond the grave,
     as Emily Dickinson did, and torture people in the next life!

* * *

Myself. I always had GI Joes, with Kung Fu Grip.  Barbie was
useless.

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books