Instapundit linked to this Playboy with Camille Paglia yesterday. Even though it’s over 20 years old, her bracing assaults on victimhood feminism and political correctness are still pungently quotable:
“My critics are irrelevant, though. It tells how much I’m getting to them by how vitriolic they are. They refuse to deal with the ideas.”
On Clarence Thomas: “Any man with five years Of Playboy in his kitchen should be placed on the Supreme Court immediately!”
The reason women earn less than men is that women don’t want the dirty jobs. They aren’t picking up the garbage, taking the janitorial jobs and so on. They aren’t taking the sales commission jobs that require you to work all night and on weekends. Most women like clean, safe offices, which is why they are still secretaries. They don’t want to get too dirty. Also, women want offices to be nice, happy places. What bullshit. The women’s movement is rooted in the belief that we don’t even need men. All it will take is one natural disaster to prove how wrong that is. Then, the only thing holding this culture together will be masculine men of the working class. The cultural elite–women and men–will be pleading for the plumbers and the construction workers. We are such a parasitic class.
I began to realize this in the Seventies when I thought women could do it on their own. But then something would go wrong with my car and I’d have to go to the men. Men would stop, men would lift up the hood, more men would come with a truck and take the car to a place where there were other men who would call other men who would arrive with parts. I saw how feminism was completely removed from this reality.
I also learned something from the men at the garage. At Bennington, I would go to a faculty meeting and be aware that everyone hated me. The men were appalled by a strong, loud woman. But I went to this auto shop and the men there thought I was cute. “Oh, there’s that Professor Paglia from the college.” The real men, men who work on cars, find me cute. They are not frightened by me, no matter how loud I am. But the men at the college were terrified because they are eunuchs, and I threatened every goddamned one of them.
More:
You can’t the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man’s reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment–by a man or a woman–if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, “You must do this or I’m going to do that”–for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free.
And how’s this for an obvious truthful heresy? “No one gives a fuck about women’s group sports–it embarrasses me to see women’s basketball.”
As with any Paglia interview, there’s plenty for people on any side of the political spectrum, but her takes on various PC shibboleths are so orthogonal to the mainstream that they’re always worth a look. Read the whole thing.
Tags: Camille Paglia, Democrats, feminism, interview, Political Correctness, Social Justice Warriors