Camille Paglia

[[File:Camille Paglia.jpg|right|thumb|165px|Camille Paglia in 2017.]]
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'''Camille Paglia''' {{lived|1947|}} is an [[United States|American]] second-wave feminist and academic specializing in [[literature]] and culture, particularly topics around [[gender]], [[sex]], and [[sexuality]]. She has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984 but is better known for her books and journalism. In 2005, she was voted #20 on a list of top public intellectuals by ''Prospect'' and ''Foreign Policy'' magazines.<ref name=wp>{{wpa|Camille Paglia}}</ref>

She is known for her extreme and colourful views on gender and sexuality and their centrality to [[Western culture]] and her even more colourful way of expressing herself. Her 1990 book ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' catapulted her to fame in literary circles and was followed by books of essays ''Sex, Art, and American Culture'' (1992) and ''Vamps and Tramps'' (1994). More recent work includes a poetry anthology with commentary ''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005)<ref name=smh>[http://www.smh.com.au/news/Julia-Baird/Hark-a-libertarian-looks-to-her-right/2005/04/18/1113676702351.html Hark, a libertarian looks to her right], Sydney Morning Herald, 2005</ref> and ''Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars'' (2012).

==Early life==
Paglia was born in 1947 in Endicott, [[New York]], to two [[Italian]] immigrants. She studied at Yale under {{wpl|Harold Bloom||,}} known for his [[Freudian]] approach and interest in the Western canon (something allegedly very unfashionable among liberals and those standing outside the white, [[Christian]], European mainstream). In many ways, her work follows on from Bloom, but much more loudly.

==Politics and philosophy==
Paglia is approximately a [[libertarian]],<ref name=smh/> opposed to restrictions on private behaviour including [[drug]]s, [[abortion]], and [[pornography]], although she's more liberal than is common among [[Libertarian Party|American libertarians]] and doesn't seem so hung up on private property/[[gun]]s/compounds. In recent US presidential elections, she has supported [[Green Party|Green]] and [[Democratic Party]] candidates, but she is bitterly opposed to [[Hillary Clinton]].<ref name=wp/>

She opposes much feminism as "self-pity". "We are rocketing backwards here to the Victorian period with this belief that women are not capable of making decisions on their own. This is not feminism &mdash; which is to achieve independent thought and action. There will never be equality of the sexes if we think that women are so handicapped they can't look after themselves."<ref name=hill/> She blames much of this on American universities and women's studies departments.<ref name=hill/>

In opposition to much of second-wave feminism but more consonant with younger feminists, she believes in glamor and makeup and that "everybody has the right to view his or her body as a palette".<ref  name=indy2012/> She adores Madonna (singer, not saint) and calls female beauty "an eternal human value".<ref name=readingeagle>[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DKwkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=U6IFAAAAIBAJ&dq=sexual%20personae%20paglia&pg=5977%2C2051846 Paglia attacks political correctness], Reading Eagle - Dec 20, 1992</ref> Paglia claims that her side won the feminist cultural wars with the death of Andrea Dworkin and the renewed popularity of lipstick and body-waxing.<ref name=indy2012/>

To her fans, Paglia is a very entertaining, erudite, and provocative writer who celebrates sex and sexuality, including female sexuality, and acts as a counterpoint to po-faced anti-sex second-wave feminists like [[Andrea Dworkin]]. She covers an enormous range of cultural reference points from very high to low, showing considerable learning, while being much more fun than other academic superstars (e.g. Judith Butler).

To her enemies, she legitimises all kinds of abuse of women and prefers provocation to reason. Her support for [[pornography]] is unpopular with many feminists. She dislikes [[postmodernism]] and celebrates Western culture.<ref name=indy2012/> She annoys [[liberals]] with other standpoints such as her opposition to [[affirmative action]], [[cultural relativism]], "[[political correctness]]",<ref name=readingeagle/> much [[feminism]], and the [[Bill Clinton|Clintons]]. In particular, she is not in favour of Hillary, whom she baselessly calls "a woman without accomplishment" and "a disaster".<ref name=hill>[http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/the-woman-is-a-disaster-camille-paglia-on-hillary-clinton/ ‘The woman is a disaster!’: Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton], Emily Hill, The Spectator, 20 Oct 2016</ref>

Paglia is, among other things, a [[global warming]] [[denialism|denialist]], having called global warming ''"a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence"''.<ref>Jonathan V. Last, [https://archive.is/HDGl4 Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror]. Archived from ''The Weekly Standard'', 15 June 2017.</ref> She writes: ''"virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved"'', painting the theory as a political agenda. ''"I detest [[dogma]] in any area"'', she explains.<ref>http://www.mazeministry.com/frontpage/jimsjournal/paglia/paglia.htm</ref> Ironically, Paglia dogmatically subscribes to many old-fashioned, outdated theories, including her underlying [[Freud]]ianism, having stated, for example, that:

{{quotebox|Any person, male or female, who [[homosexuality|cannot feel the sexual allure of the opposite sex]] has been traumatized by some early combination of social circumstances.<ref>[https://archive.ph/m2DzS Ask Camille]. Archived from ''Salon'', 15 April 1997.</ref>}}

As a sign of the fount of wisdom she is, in a March 20, 2017 talk at the Seattle Public Library about her newly published book "Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism",<ref>''Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism'' by Camille Paglia (2017)  Pantheon. ISBN 0375424776.</ref> she stated in a humorous and generalizing manner that men and women are different because boys have to learn to aim when they pee, girls don't: 

{{quotebox|...boys have to learn, because of their genital anatomy, how to aim.  If they don't learn how to aim, when they try to urinate, they will soil themselves and the wall and everything else.  They must learn to aim. And eventually, that carries over into the sex act....[[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] talks about how primitive man preened himself on his ability to put out a fire with a stream of urine. And I say that's a strange thing to be proud of, but beyond the scope of any woman.<ref>http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/03/22/25032043/whos-worse-camille-paglia-sanctimonious-liberals-or-my-sniveling-self</ref><ref>https://www.c-span.org/video/?425137-2/camille-paglia-discusses-free-women-free-men C-SPAN: Free Women, Free Men (see video timestamp approx. 57:30)</ref>}}

=== "Camille Paglia Destroys Modern Era Feminism" ===
Paglia's essentially conservative nature and misogyny were made manifest by her friendship with boorish, racist, misogynist [[Rush Limbaugh]]. She defended him for decades<ref>[https://reason.com/1995/08/01/interview-with-the-vamp/] </ref> to the delight of the American far right, and appeared on his show<ref>[https://archive.ph/UeQgH The Great Camille Paglia Agrees with Me on the Male-Female Relationship] (October 3, 2017) ''The Rush Limbaugh Show'' (retrieved March 14, 2025 </ref>, in one case her appearance was placed on the Rush Limbaugh website under the title "Camille Paglia Destroys Modern Era Feminism." Paglia is quoted in the transcript there:
{{cquote|Human beings need religion. They need a religious perspective, a cosmic perspective, and getting rid of the orthodox religions — because they were too conservative — has simply led to the new religion of political correctness. All right? It’s the same kind of fanaticism. I mean, I’ve found that the second-wave feminists, it’s like the Spanish Inquisition. I’m not kidding. Like anything with any form of dissent, even within feminism, is treated as heresy, okay, and they actually try to destroy you.<ref>[https://archive.ph/anvfh Camille Paglia Destroys Modern-Era Feminism] (October 11, 2018) ''The Rush Limbaugh Show'' (Retrieved March 14, 2025)</ref>}}

Because of her contempt for not only feminists, but all women as a group, the American far right adores Paglia, and likes to quote her attacks on women, as when the [[Manhattan Institute]]'s City Journal published a glowing tribute to her featuring Paglia's possibly most contemptuous, unsupported claim against women: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts."<ref>[https://archive.ph/lWRdU The Provocations of Camille Paglia] (Summer 2019) ''City Journal'' (Retrieved March 14, 2025)</ref>

==''Sexual Personae''==
Published in 1990, ''Sexual Personae'' is probably still her best-known and most important book. It acts as a defence of the western cultural canon, taking like [[Nietzsche]] a view of Western intellectual history as a constant struggle between the Apollonian ([[rational]], [[enlightenment]]) and Dionysian (wild, passionate, romantic, decadent, chthonic). She elucidates this as a struggle between rigid phallic Christian [[morality]] and a [[Romanticism]] which rapidly slides into decadence; this is explored through "sexual personae" such as the female vampire (e.g. in Coleridge), the beautiful boy (Dorian Gray), and the passive male sufferer. It is obvious her sympathies lie with the catalog of libertines and decadents she discusses (the Marquis de Sade, Shelley, Gautier, Huysmans, to name just a few); although her work covers art from the earliest days of European culture, the 19<sup>th</sup> century is her chief focus.<ref name=wpsp>{{wpa|Sexual Personae}}</ref> Or, if you want her whole approach summarized in a single paragraph: 
{{quotebox|Our focus on the pretty is an Apollonian strategy. The leaves and flowers, the birds, the hills are a patchwork pattern by which we map the known. What the West represses in its view of nature is '''the chthonian, which means "of the earth"—but earth's bowels, not its surface.''' Jane Harrison uses the term for pre-Olympian Greek religion, and I adopt it as a substitute for Dionysian, which has become contaminated with vulgar pleasantries. '''The Dionysian is no picnic.''' It is the chthonian realities which Apollo evades, the blind grinding of subterranean force..., the dehumanizing brutality of biology and geology, the Darwinian waste and bloodshed, the squalor and rot we must block from consciousness to retain our Apollonian integrity as persons. Western science and aesthetics are attempts to revise this horror into imaginatively palatable form.<ref>SP, 1990 Ed., p. 6</ref>}}

As is inevitable for such a wide-ranging work that attempts to reduce all literary history to one thing, it attracted widespread criticism.<ref name=wpsp/>

==Criticism and controversy==
Paglia's views on [[rape]] differ from the feminist mainstream in suggesting that women need to defend themselves,<ref group=note>A sentiment that most feminists seem to actually agree with.</ref> and making claims like "sometimes 'no' means 'not yet'".<ref group=note>Which is actually pretty disgusting.</ref><ref name=hill/> She sometimes seems to devote more energy to attacking feminists than actual [[misogyny]]. Despite this, Paglia is a fierce defender of some rights such as abortion, even if she thinks feminists and Democrats get it all wrong.<ref name=salon>[http://www.salon.com/2016/04/07/camille_paglia_feminists_have_abortion_wrong_trump_and_hillary_miscues_highlight_a_frozen_national_debate/ Camille Paglia: Feminists have abortion wrong, Trump and Hillary miscues highlight a frozen national debate], Camille Paglia, The Salon, Apr 7, 2016</ref>

===Former Support of NAMBLA===
:See also: [[Michel  Foucault#His personal political views]]

In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting [[North American Man/Boy Love Association|NAMBLA]], a pederasty and pedophilia advocacy organization.<ref>{{cite news | last = Paglia | first = Camille | title = The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime | url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100261734/allen-ginsberg-camille-paglia-and-the-literary-champions-of-paedophilia/ | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140306014809/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100261734/allen-ginsberg-camille-paglia-and-the-literary-champions-of-paedophilia/ | work = [[The_Daily_Telegraph|The Telegraph]] | date = March 1, 2014 | url-status = dead | archive-date=March 6, 2014}}</ref><ref name="salonissue">{{cite news | title = Camille Paglia's online advice for the culturally disgruntled | magazine = ''Salon'' | publisher = Salon Media Group Inc. | location = San Francisco | date = April 15, 1997 | url = http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | archive-url = http://web.archive.org/web/20000510042252/http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | accessdate = September 7, 2019 | url-status = dead | archive-date=May 10, 2000}}</ref> In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to fourteen. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette, "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age."<ref>{{cite book | last = Paglia | first = Camille | editor = Random House | title = Vamps and Tramps: New Essays | pages = 90-91 | publisher = Vintage Books | location = New York, New York | year = 1992 | isbn = 9780679751205 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Camille|last=Paglia|url=http://archive.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=E6B2CF78-031D-11D4-AD990050DA7E046B|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110711133353/http://archive.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=E6B2CF78-031D-11D4-AD990050DA7E046B|title=Has the gay movement turned down the wrong path?|website=The Guide|publisher=Bill Andriette|location=Montreal, Canada|date=August 1995|access-date=September 7, 2019 | url-status = dead| archive-date=July 7, 2011}}</ref> In a 1997 <i>Salon</i> column, Paglia expressed the view that male pedophilia correlates with the heights of a civilization, stating "I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In <i>Sexual Personae</i>, I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization."<ref name="salonissue">{{cite news | title = Camille Paglia's online advice for the culturally disgruntled | magazine = ''Salon'' | publisher = Salon Media Group Inc. | location = San Francisco | date = April 15, 1997 | url = http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | archive-url = http://web.archive.org/web/20000510042252/http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | accessdate = September 7, 2019 | url-status = dead | archive-date=May 10, 2000}}</ref> Paglia noted in several interviews, as well as ''Sexual Personae'', that she supports the legalization of certain forms of child pornography.<ref name="timeinterview">{{cite news | title = The Bete Noire of Feminism: CAMILLE PAGLIA | magazine = ''Time'' | publisher = Time | location = New York City | date = January 13, 1992 | url = http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974660,00.html | accessdate = September 7, 2019 | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Camille|last=Paglia|url=http://gos.sbc.edu/p/paglia.html|title=Crisis In The American Universities|website=Sweet Briar College|publisher=Gift of Speech (Sweet Briar College)|location=Sweet Briar, Virginia|date=September 19, 1991|access-date=September 7, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Paglia | first = Camille | editor = Random House | title = Vamps and Tramps: New Essays | pages = 90-91 | publisher = Vintage Books | location = New York, New York | year = 1992 | isbn = 9780679751205 }}</ref> Importantly, she has changed her stance on pedophilia throughout more recent interviews.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Paglia |first1=Camille |title=Camille Paglia — Free Women, Free Men |url=https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018642586/camille-paglia-free-women-free-men |website=RNZ (Radio New Zealand) |access-date=August 22, 2020 |location=Wellington (NZ) |pages=44:29 (starting time of quoted passage) |date=April 22, 2018}}</ref>

===Paglia vs Jews ===
In her article about the art show "Sensation" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, ''[[Nation]]'' columnist Katha Pollitt wrote about Paglia's insinuation about Jews and Catholic-bashing:

{{quotebox|''"Why are a Jewish collector and a Jewish museum director promoting anti-Catholic art?”'' asked Camille Paglia in a subhead since deleted from her Salon column, adding a Nixonian touch to her usual insinuating boorishness. Um, I don’t know, Camille. Because they killed Christ? Because they think they’re so smart? Because they want to make a fast buck? Like most pundits who’ve inveighed against “Catholic-bashing” art in the show–Peggy Steinfels on the New York Times Op-Ed page, Terry Golway in the New York Observer, Cokie Roberts (“it’s yucky”), George Will, not to mention John Cardinal O’Connor, William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the Mayor himself–Paglia hasn’t bothered to make the trip to Brooklyn, but she knows “Catholic bashing” when she reads a one-sentence description of a painting in a newspaper. Besides, she saw Lehman on TV and found him to be a “whiny slug.”<ref>[https://archive.ph/Os1ed Catholic Bashing?](October 14, 1999) Katha Pollitt ''Nation'' (Retrieved February 8, 2025)</ref>}}

===Camille Paglia vs Nannerl Mozart===

She is controversial for her view on female creativity and achievement, expressed in the statement that maybe there is {{wpl|Variability hypothesis|"no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper"|.}}<ref group=note>What about {{wpl|Aileen Wuornos}} and {{wpl|Fanny Mendelssohn}} – or, as a contemporary example, {{wpl|Alma Deutscher||?}}</ref> Drawing on Freud, she sees male creativity as linked with male lusts and desires and violent urges. In contrast, most feminists point to the many institutional barriers preventing women from artistic achievement as an explanation for the historic lack of a female Mozart.<ref>[http://www.artnews.com/2015/05/30/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists/ "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"], Linda Nochlin, 1971</ref> 

The absurdity of Paglia's belief that the only thing preventing women from creative achievement compared to men is their innate loser-dom is simply and effectively countered by the life of Mozart's sister {{wpl|Maria Anna Mozart}}, nicknamed "Nannerl":
{{quotebox|Maria Anna Mozart was a musical prodigy just like her younger brother Wolfgang. Although the children toured Europe together, once Maria Anna came of age, she was left behind while her brother became a star. But controversial new evidence suggests she may have contributed to her brother’s earliest works while a global search for her compositions continues.<ref>[https://archive.ph/a0HkC Secrets of the Dead: Mozart's Sister] (October 9, 2024)  Media Stockade and The WNET Group, in association with Minderoo Pictures and Evolution Post (Retrieved February 16, 2025) </ref>}}

Wolfgang Amadeus testified to her talent, writing “My dear sister! I am in awe that you can compose so well, in a word, the song you wrote is beautiful.”<ref>[https://archive.ph/gkIIC Was Mozart’s sister actually the most talented musician in the family?] (October 8, 2024) Kyle Macdonald ''Classic FM'' (Retrieved February 16, 2025)</ref>

None of Nannerl Mozart's compositions or manuscripts have been found.

{{wpl|Fanny Mendelssohn}}, the sister of Felix Mendelssohn, and {{wpl|Clara Schumann}} the wife of Robert, a half-century later, suffered only slightly less from gender-based limitations: 

{{quotebox|Both Fanny and Clara were conditioned by social pressures of the time to not believe in their own abilities to compose, and yet they both turned to the piano trio. And by the way, they are both wonderful pieces.<ref>[https://archive.ph/WxzqG Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel finally moves out of her brother’s shadow](April 14, 2021) Kyle MacMillan ''Chicago Symphony Orchestra'' (Retrieved February 16, 2025)</ref>}}

Paglia's belief in the innate inferiority of female creativity says more about her own internalized misogyny and hereditarianism than the reality of the well-documented and all-pervasive blight of misogyny and cultural restrictions on women artists.

==Provocative or ridiculous?==

Some of her remarks sit uneasily on the dividing line between provocative and ridiculous: "[[homosexuality]] is not a violation of natural law but its fulfillment, when history wills it".<ref name=salon/>

She also has a history of storming out of interviews and public appearances.<ref name=indy2012>[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/camille-paglia-i-dont-get-along-with-lesbians-at-all-they-dont-like-me-and-i-dont-like-them-8076611.html Camille Paglia &mdash; 'I don't get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them'], Christina Patterson, The Independent, 2012</ref>

==See also==
*[[Apollonian and Dionysian]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2|80%}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paglia, Camille}}
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[[Category:Paedophilia]]

Categories: Authors, Feminists, Global warming denialists, LGBTQ people, Living people, New York, Paedophilia