WEDNESDAY, AUG 21, 2013 11:45 AM UTC
Camille Paglia (Credit: Michael Lionstar)
Camille Paglia: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance”
In Salon interview, the provocateur holds forth on Rihanna and gay porn, plus Hillary, Anthony Weiner and Benghazi
BY TRACY CLARK-FLORYTOPICS: CAMILLE PAGLIA, SEX, LOVE AND SEX, ANTHONY WEINER, RIHANNA, PORNOGRAPHY, MICHEL FOUCAULT,HILLARY CLINTON, GLITTERING IMAGES, REAL HOUSEWIVES, FEMINISM, EDITOR'S PICKS, LIFE NEWS
Camille Paglia (Credit: Michael Lionstar)I can vividly remember the first time I read Camille Paglia. I was visiting New York with my mom during college and we happened across “Vamps and Tramps” at a bookstore near our hotel. Lying in neighboring twin beds, I read passages out loud to her. Explosive things like, “Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.” I didn’t always agree with Paglia, but I enjoyed her as a challenging provocateur.
I still have that copy of the book. There are asterisks in the margins, double-underlined sentences and circled paragraphs. Reading it was a satisfying rebellion against the line-toeing women’s studies classes I was taking at the time — and at a college with an infamously anti-porn professor, no less. Since then, I have moments of genuine outrage and fury over Paglia’s writing and public commentary (see: this, this and this, for examples of why) — but she is still compelling and occasionally brilliant. The truth is that many people still want to hear what she has to say — about everything from BDSM to Lady Gaga.
The reprint this week of her book “Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt to Star Wars” — which Salon interviewed her about last year, and which is an example of Paglia at her intellectual best and an antidote to her birther moments — is a great excuse to check back in with the so-called bete noire of feminism. I spoke with Paglia by email about contemporary feminism, Anthony Weiner and the “end of men.”
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