CAMILLE PAGLIA's PLAYBOY INTERVIEW

I was turned onto this brilliant writer named Camille Paglia, and I love this interview she did for Playboy. Now ladies, don't get your panties in a bunch over what she has to say about feminism...I personally love her stance. Take ten minutes and read!

PLAYBOY: Do you support the men's movement?

PAGLIA: I think it's absolutely necessary. It's no coincidence that Tim Allen's book is vying with the Pope's for the top of the best-seller lists. He is one of the voices of men who are looking to define masculinity in this age. Robert Bly does this, too. We have allowed the sexual debate to be defined by women, and that's not right. Men must speak, and speak in their own voices, not voices coerced by feminist moralists. Warren Farrell, in The Myth of Male Power, points out how much propaganda has infiltrated the culture. For example, he says that the assertion that women earn so much less than men is bullshit. 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.

PLAYBOY: Do you think that feminism is antisexual?

PAGLIA: The problem with America is that there's too little sex, not too much. The more our instincts are repressed, the more we need sex, pornography and all that. The problem is that feminists have taken over with their attempts to inhibit sex. We have a serious testosterone problem in this country.

PLAYBOY: Caused by what?

PAGLIA: It's a mess out there. Men are suspicious of women's intentions. Feminism has crippled them. They don't know when to make a pass. If they do make a pass, they don't know if they're going to end up in court.

PLAYBOY: Is that why you've been so critical about the growing number 6f sexual harassment cases?

PAGLIA: Yes, though I believe in moderate sexual harassment guidelines. But 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. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance--women are all different. Some are very bawdy.

PLAYBOY: What, about women who are easily offended and too scared or intimidated to speak up?

PAGLIA: Too bad. You must develop the verbal tools to counter offensive language. That s life. Feminism has created a privileged, white middle class of girls who claim they're victims because they want to preserve their bourgeois decorum and passivity.

PLAYBOY: You're expecting girls to stand up for themselves in a culture that discourages them from doing just that?

PAGLIA: That's right. We must examine the degree to which we coddle middle-class girls. There is something sick about it. The girls I see on campuses are often innocuous, with completely homogenized personalities, miserable, anorexic and bulimic. The feminist movement teaches them that it's men's fault, but it isn't. These girls go out into the world as heiresses of all the affluence in the universe. They are the most pampered and most affluent girls on the globe. So stop complaining about men. You're getting all the rewards that come with the nice-girl persona you've chosen. When you get into trouble and you're batting your eyes and someone is offending you and you are too nice to deal with it, that's a choice. Assess your persona. Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke people to say lewd and pornographic things to you--sometimes to violate your niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it. Understand your part of it and learn to parry. Sex talk is a game. The girls in the Sixties loved it. If you don't want some professor to call you honey, tell him.