Episode 16 reading list

Stop blaming men! Mother Nature lays the heaviest burdens on woman.

If you haven’t yet heard of Camille Paglia, then it’s my honor to introduce you. It’s not everyday that a pastor’s daughter recommends reading a pro-porn, Freudian, black-leather-loving leftist lesbian atheist who believes in astrology, but hey! — Paglia is not your average feminist (and prior agreement should never be a prerequisite for reading). Paglia earned her PhD at Yale with a thesis entitled Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, and was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for decades (where she survived cancellation attempts for her un-P.C. views and unapologetic big mouth).

Everything about Camille Paglia is explosive. She speaks with the rapid-fire speed of Ben Shapiro and the ballsy nonchalance of Trump, punctuating every sentence with an arched brow, Italian hand gestures, and a nasally “Hoh-kay??” that brooks no dissent. Her brain is bursting at the seams, as is her contempt for progressive niceties, despite being solidly on the left (she complains about not being able to find any real muscular Marxists these days). She’s an “anti-feminist feminist” who deeply appreciates men, respects their achievements, and sings their praises. “Stop blaming men!” is her constant refrain.

Never having birthed a child herself, she criticizes feminists for failing to truly come to terms with both motherhood and the darkness of chthonian Nature (which she believes are the same thing). As a lesbian, she speaks more honestly about the dynamics of heterosexual sex than many a straight woman is willing to do. She’s an atheist who believes the study of world religions and ancient myths is the foundation of a liberal education, and she respects the Catholicism of her upbringing (it clearly biases her towards an appreciation for all things symbolic/iconic).

She considers herself “transgender” but not in the current sense of hormone and surgery-laden identity that demands special protections from society. Paglia was gender dysphoric as a child, and has admitted, “Never once in my life have I felt female” (when you hear her speak, you’ll believe her), and yet she persists in being a woman and in being fully herself:

“My dissident brand of feminism is grounded in my own childhood experience as a fractious rebel against the suffocating conformism of the 1950s, when Americans, exhausted by two decades of economic instability and war, reverted to a Victorian cult of domesticity that limited young girls’ aspirations and confined them (in my jaundiced view) to a simpering, saccharine femininity.”

She believes deep down that most (all?) men are actually afraid of women, and that when it comes to the paradigm of “Schroedinger’s Feminist” (see episode 15) we should all presume and act in accordance with the power we already possess, rather than presume we are victims of “the patriarchy.” She is relentless in her demand that women take responsibility for their choices and experiences. And above all, don’t whine.

Camille is brilliant and befuddling, infuriating and endearing, bold, sassy, and hilarious. I don’t agree with her about everything, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing that I had the cojones to speak my mind with the wit, relish, and freedom she clearly does.

Your homework assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to read Paglia’s Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism, a book of 36 essays that sets out her vision of “an enlightened feminism, animated by a courageous code of personal responsibility” and commitment to unfettered free speech, a feminism that “can only be built upon a wary alliance of strong women and strong men.”

My favorite chapters were 1 (Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art), 17 (The Modern Battle of the Sexes), and 35 (On Abortion), so that’s probably where we’ll start the discussion (each essay is a pearl on a string and can stand alone).

“We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim... Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.” (Camille Paglia)