Tag Archives: Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia on “The Vagina Monologues”

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In her latest Salon.Com column, Camille Paglia dismisses the “garish visibility” of Eve Ensler and “The Vagina Monologues.”

The perversion of feminism that Ensler represents — turning Valentine’s Day, the one holiday celebrating romantic harmony between the sexes, into a grisly memento mori of violence against women — has been well demonstrated by the ever-alert Christina Hoff Sommers, who gave early warning in her Feb. 11 article in the Wall Street Journal last year (as well as in her campus lectures, media appearances and an article in the Feb. 8 USA Today). That the psychological poison of Ensler’s archaic creed of victimization is being spread to impressionable women students is positively criminal.

…That in the year 2001 the group chanting of crude four-letter words for female genitalia is viewed as some sort of radical liberation implies that the real issue in the “Vagina Monologues” isn’t male oppression but bourgeois repression — the malady of the dainty, decorous professional class that was created in the first century after the Industrial Revolution.

Like Paglia I’m not quit sure how an auditorium full of people chanting “cunt” — as 18,000 people did at Madison Square Garden this month — is empowering.

Sources:

The Bush look. Camille Paglia, Salon.Com, February 28, 2001.

Clit Club. Sharon Lerner, The Village Voice, February 14-20, 2001.

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Camille Paglia on the Pro-Choice Movement

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Camille Paglia is pro-choice but, like me, she is troubled by the extremism of much of the core of the pro-choice movement. In her regular column for Salon.com, Paglia rips into groups such as Planned Parenthood which often seem more concerned with being adjuncts of the Democrat Party rather than providing reproductive health services. Paglia writes,

…As a member of Planned Parenthood, for example, I am outraged by the obscene waste of assets by abortion rights organizations whose leaders have become shills for the Democratic Party. The funds diverted to endless “emergency” ads and mailings calling for political action should directly support women’s health care instead. If all the pro-choice men and women in this country would donate their money to needy women instead of to politicians and fancy fundraisers, government support for abortion services would be less critical.

Bush’s cutoff of funding for overseas abortion counseling, virtually the first act of his presidency, hardly made a ripple in public consciousness (though the Philadelphia Inquirer tried to whip things up by making it the lead headline). If national support for choice is starting to slip, as has been reported, it’s because of the arrogant insularity of the feminist elite, who for 20 years have ridden roughshod over the legitimate ethical objections and arguments of abortion opponents. Though I firmly support unrestricted access to abortion, I feel the nation has been polarized and doctors endangered by an intolerance and extremism that began on the secular left.

Well put.

Source:

Crying wolf. Camille Paglia, Salon.Com, February 7, 2001.

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Camille Paglia on NOW’s “Flush Rush” Campaign

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Like me, Camille Paglia is apparently still receiving letters from the National Organization for Women begging for money for their “Flush Rush!” campaign. After all of these years trying to get Limbaugh off the air waves without even a modicum of success, I would have thought NOW would have long ago moved on to something more productive, but alas such is not the case.

As Paglia recounts, the rhetoric in the NOW letters borders on hilarious.

NOW believes that Rush Limbaugh is truly a dangerous man. We need the help of every progressive person to expose the hateful, divisive fanaticism of Rush Limbaugh.

As opposed to the hateful, divisive fanaticism of an organization that rejected a resolution affirming the importance of fathers in children’s lives as being far too right wing.

As Paglia notes, whatever one thinks of Limbaugh, he is successful precisely because he has tapped a broad spirit of populism.

I don’t quite agree with her positive assessment of Limbaugh — “His daily radio show is the one reliable place ordinary citizens can turn to for a different perspective in the blizzard of propaganda and disinformation from the Northeastern media establishment” — but her description of NOW is on the money,

…a group that should be impartially devoted to the advancement of women is shamelessly whoring for the Democratic Party by trying to shut down alternative political points of view.

Source:

The peevish porcupine beats the shrill rooster. Camille Paglia, Salon.Com, December 6, 2000.

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