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Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism
From the fiery intellectual provocateur - and one of our most fearless advocates of gender equality - a brilliant, urgent essay collection that both celebrates modern feminism and affirms the power of men and women and what we can accomplish together.
352 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2017
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5701 people want to read
About the author
Camille Paglia
29 books1,210 followersCamille Anna Paglia is an American social critic, author and teacher. Her book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, published in 1990, became a bestseller. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist," one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by the UK's Prospect Magazine, and by her own description "a feminist bisexual egomaniac."
She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist," one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by the UK's Prospect Magazine, and by her own description "a feminist bisexual egomaniac."
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September 12, 2021
Camille Paglia is one of the most prominent, original and interesting thinkers of our time, whether you agree with her strong standpoints or not. I'm certainly not on board with all of her opinions but I love the core of her principles. Paglia is most famous for the critique of today's feminism and poststructuralism as well as modern college education. This is a brilliant, sharp, intelligent woman that is deeply grounded in the western canon, and has profound knowledge of literature, history, art, sociology and psychology. She is standing on the shoulders of giant thinkers of the past while retaining her own distinctive and passionate voice that reflects on the world and social changes, which makes her for me, very inspiring.
That being said, this collection of essays is quite uneven, and at times repetitive, even more for me having seen most of her speeches. By far the best part of the book is the first part, excepts from Sexual Persona, her capital work that I've been meaning to read for quite some time. In my opinion, this is Paglia at her peak, in full display of her brilliancy.
Her view and analysis of sexuality are the most fascinating. “Sexuality and eroticism are the intricate intersection of nature and culture.”
Paglia rejects Rousseau's ideas in the spirit of Locke, of non-existent original sin and man's innate goodness that is corrupted by society, that assumes that aggression, violence, crime and other distorted behavior come from social deprivation, and takes the point of view of Sade influenced by Hobbes, that aggression comes from nature, as rape and sadism have been evident throughout history and in all cultures. Society does not create criminals, society is the force that keeps crime in check, our fair barrier that protects weak against human nature, often vile and destructive. When social controls weaken, man’s innate cruelty bursts forth.
"Rape is the sexual expression of the will-to-power, which nature plants in all of us and which civilization rose to contain. Therefore the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. Worldwide evidence is overwhelming that whenever social controls are weakened, as in war or mob rule, even civilized men behave in uncivilized ways, among which is the barbarity of rape."
Rape has always been and always will be condemned by honorable men, it goes all the way back through history, and punishment for rape was often death.
Society is one that keeps the dark forces of sexuality at bay. Paglia stands with Freud, Nietzsche and Sade and their views of the amorality of instinctual life, mirrored in aggression and eroticism deeply intertwined.
“Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted. Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible. But sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted.“
Paglia is also a passionate defender of pornography. Every attempt of oppression of sexual drive is setting oneself against nature.
"The imagination cannot and must not be policed. Pornography shows us nature’s daemonic heart, those eternal forces at work beneath and beyond social convention. Pornography cannot be separated from art; the two interpenetrate each other, far more than humanistic criticism has admitted. Geoffrey Hartman rightly says, “Great art is always flanked by its dark sisters, blasphemy and pornography.”
She has especially interesting thoughts regarding individualism, identity and freedom in relation to sex. In the vein of Nietzche's will-to-power and Freud's notion that identity is conflict, Paglia reaffirms that is impossible to drive power relations from sex. Sex is by nature a power play and we are creatures of hierarchy. "Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first." There never was and never will be sexual harmony. So in times of greater sexual freedoms and sexual liberation, practices like sadomasochism will rise, a punitive hierarchical structure that can be symbolically seen as religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Men are more free, but find freedom intolerable and always seek new ways to enslave themselves, through technology, money or drugs.
Paglia also points out the hypocrisy of modern liberalism, in condemning the social orders as oppressive, but at the same time, expecting from government greater protection and provision of goods for all, a feat manageable only by the expansion of state authority. "...liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother."
She also has a problem with second-wave feminism in male-bashing and victim mentality that promotes women's damsel-in-distress fragility and requires special protection of women. By putting a burden on the government or institutions to create a hypothetical utopia that will be magically free from offense and hurt is to paradoxically strengthen the intrusion of paternalistic authority figures.
Paglia is more prone to idealizing the high achieving bold personalities of 1920 feminism - like Katharine Hepburn, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Hellman... Women of independence, self-reliance and unapologetic ambition who were demanding a fair chance to prove that women could accomplish as much as men or surpass it. But every woman with ambition, who is striving to achieve something notable will admire the greats among her male peers. Self-awareness and personal responsibility are qualities a strong woman should have.
Paglia is also adamant that men have a right to claim credit for vast achievement in conceiving and constructing the framework of civilization. Modern women should be strong enough to give credit where credit is due. Rightfully, she defends the large groups of men that are impugned by moderns feminists, that stoically go and do the most dangerous, dirty and thankless work in modern society.
In the modern world, where women and men work side by side, mutual incompatibility and creative tension may have to be tolerated. But, women and society do not gain by weakening men.
"An enlightened feminism, animated by a courageous code of personal responsibility, can only be built upon a wary alliance of strong women and strong men."
As a great admirer of men's thoughts, legacy and accomplishments I could not agree more. Men are the crucial element in both the social and psychological progress of women and vice versa.
Paglia identifies as a libertarian feminist, which takes the best from liberalism and conservatism but decidedly neither, put places the freedom of thought and speech above all ideology. She is a passionate truth-seeker.
"This is what I stand for: “The mind’s true liberation.”
To finish off with Paglia's words;
"You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your IQ, okay, they open up brain cells you didn’t even know you have."
That being said, this collection of essays is quite uneven, and at times repetitive, even more for me having seen most of her speeches. By far the best part of the book is the first part, excepts from Sexual Persona, her capital work that I've been meaning to read for quite some time. In my opinion, this is Paglia at her peak, in full display of her brilliancy.
Her view and analysis of sexuality are the most fascinating. “Sexuality and eroticism are the intricate intersection of nature and culture.”
Paglia rejects Rousseau's ideas in the spirit of Locke, of non-existent original sin and man's innate goodness that is corrupted by society, that assumes that aggression, violence, crime and other distorted behavior come from social deprivation, and takes the point of view of Sade influenced by Hobbes, that aggression comes from nature, as rape and sadism have been evident throughout history and in all cultures. Society does not create criminals, society is the force that keeps crime in check, our fair barrier that protects weak against human nature, often vile and destructive. When social controls weaken, man’s innate cruelty bursts forth.
"Rape is the sexual expression of the will-to-power, which nature plants in all of us and which civilization rose to contain. Therefore the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. Worldwide evidence is overwhelming that whenever social controls are weakened, as in war or mob rule, even civilized men behave in uncivilized ways, among which is the barbarity of rape."
Rape has always been and always will be condemned by honorable men, it goes all the way back through history, and punishment for rape was often death.
Society is one that keeps the dark forces of sexuality at bay. Paglia stands with Freud, Nietzsche and Sade and their views of the amorality of instinctual life, mirrored in aggression and eroticism deeply intertwined.
“Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted. Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible. But sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted.“
Paglia is also a passionate defender of pornography. Every attempt of oppression of sexual drive is setting oneself against nature.
"The imagination cannot and must not be policed. Pornography shows us nature’s daemonic heart, those eternal forces at work beneath and beyond social convention. Pornography cannot be separated from art; the two interpenetrate each other, far more than humanistic criticism has admitted. Geoffrey Hartman rightly says, “Great art is always flanked by its dark sisters, blasphemy and pornography.”
She has especially interesting thoughts regarding individualism, identity and freedom in relation to sex. In the vein of Nietzche's will-to-power and Freud's notion that identity is conflict, Paglia reaffirms that is impossible to drive power relations from sex. Sex is by nature a power play and we are creatures of hierarchy. "Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first." There never was and never will be sexual harmony. So in times of greater sexual freedoms and sexual liberation, practices like sadomasochism will rise, a punitive hierarchical structure that can be symbolically seen as religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Men are more free, but find freedom intolerable and always seek new ways to enslave themselves, through technology, money or drugs.
Paglia also points out the hypocrisy of modern liberalism, in condemning the social orders as oppressive, but at the same time, expecting from government greater protection and provision of goods for all, a feat manageable only by the expansion of state authority. "...liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother."
She also has a problem with second-wave feminism in male-bashing and victim mentality that promotes women's damsel-in-distress fragility and requires special protection of women. By putting a burden on the government or institutions to create a hypothetical utopia that will be magically free from offense and hurt is to paradoxically strengthen the intrusion of paternalistic authority figures.
Paglia is more prone to idealizing the high achieving bold personalities of 1920 feminism - like Katharine Hepburn, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Hellman... Women of independence, self-reliance and unapologetic ambition who were demanding a fair chance to prove that women could accomplish as much as men or surpass it. But every woman with ambition, who is striving to achieve something notable will admire the greats among her male peers. Self-awareness and personal responsibility are qualities a strong woman should have.
Paglia is also adamant that men have a right to claim credit for vast achievement in conceiving and constructing the framework of civilization. Modern women should be strong enough to give credit where credit is due. Rightfully, she defends the large groups of men that are impugned by moderns feminists, that stoically go and do the most dangerous, dirty and thankless work in modern society.
In the modern world, where women and men work side by side, mutual incompatibility and creative tension may have to be tolerated. But, women and society do not gain by weakening men.
"An enlightened feminism, animated by a courageous code of personal responsibility, can only be built upon a wary alliance of strong women and strong men."
As a great admirer of men's thoughts, legacy and accomplishments I could not agree more. Men are the crucial element in both the social and psychological progress of women and vice versa.
Paglia identifies as a libertarian feminist, which takes the best from liberalism and conservatism but decidedly neither, put places the freedom of thought and speech above all ideology. She is a passionate truth-seeker.
"This is what I stand for: “The mind’s true liberation.”
To finish off with Paglia's words;
"You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your IQ, okay, they open up brain cells you didn’t even know you have."
July 19, 2017
Good lord, no. The worst of white feminism and plain old misogyny combined. Her views on rape and women who aren't like her are simply unbearable.
June 24, 2019
Free Women, Free Men is a collection of Camille Paglia's articles, lectures and interviews on feminism and gender from 1990 through 2016. A significant portion of the content consists of criticisms of modern feminism, for its pervasive misandry, its collective victimhood complex, its denial of biology, and its historical revisionism. She particularly focuses on campus feminism, with its policing of speech and dependence on institutional authorities to monitor private interactions between young men and women, and laments the rise of "gender studies" (or "women's studies") courses, which merely function as echo chambers that reinforce an ideological and delusional world-view, lacking any awareness of history.
I've been dimly aware of Paglia, if only by name, since her first book was published in 1990, but have only begun listening to her recently, via online videos, and now this book. What a tremendous oversight! I think I had disregarded her from the start because of the dreaded f-word, but Paglia is a feminist of her own stripe. She describes herself as an equity feminist, and believes that women should have the same opportunities as men, but no special considerations or protections. And she has a deep appreciation for men and all they've done and accomplished throughout history, which is very heartening in these days of socially-acceptable male-bashing. I can't think of anyone else like her, except perhaps Christina Hoff Sommers*, whom I have also seen speak but want to read as well.
My only problem with the book is that there is a lot of repetition. With the essays, speeches given, etc. on related topics for diverse sources over the course of 25 years (and not much has changed about feminism over that time, except perhaps for the internet making it even more virulent) she is bound to use the same references, but collected all together and read in one go, it does seem like she harps on the same points over and over. It might be better to dip into it now and again, but Paglia is such a lively and fun speaker/writer that I couldn't put it down. I'd love to read an entirely new, unified work from her. Oh, how I wish she'd been one of my college professors! She teaches in Philadelphia, so perhaps I may yet have a chance to see her. Thank you, Dr. Paglia.
*Edit: Janice Fiamengo and Bettina Arndt are some others I've discovered. They seem to be gradually coming out of the woodwork, which is heartening.
I've been dimly aware of Paglia, if only by name, since her first book was published in 1990, but have only begun listening to her recently, via online videos, and now this book. What a tremendous oversight! I think I had disregarded her from the start because of the dreaded f-word, but Paglia is a feminist of her own stripe. She describes herself as an equity feminist, and believes that women should have the same opportunities as men, but no special considerations or protections. And she has a deep appreciation for men and all they've done and accomplished throughout history, which is very heartening in these days of socially-acceptable male-bashing. I can't think of anyone else like her, except perhaps Christina Hoff Sommers*, whom I have also seen speak but want to read as well.
My only problem with the book is that there is a lot of repetition. With the essays, speeches given, etc. on related topics for diverse sources over the course of 25 years (and not much has changed about feminism over that time, except perhaps for the internet making it even more virulent) she is bound to use the same references, but collected all together and read in one go, it does seem like she harps on the same points over and over. It might be better to dip into it now and again, but Paglia is such a lively and fun speaker/writer that I couldn't put it down. I'd love to read an entirely new, unified work from her. Oh, how I wish she'd been one of my college professors! She teaches in Philadelphia, so perhaps I may yet have a chance to see her. Thank you, Dr. Paglia.
*Edit: Janice Fiamengo and Bettina Arndt are some others I've discovered. They seem to be gradually coming out of the woodwork, which is heartening.
May 5, 2017
Would rather give it 3.5. I really liked parts of it. In a departure from Goodreads convention, I've actually read this book.
Paglia is an unrepentant weirdo. Some of her views are ridiculous, many of her insights are cutting. Her critique of poststructuralism is a breath of fresh air. Her view on the abortion debate are whacky (she accuses 'liberals' of being inconsistent in opposing the death penalty but supporting access to abortion — an interesting reversal of conventional thinking but one that doesn't hold a lot of water).
Paglia is proud and defiant about the fact that she hasn't changed her mind about anything since the 1950s. Well, it certainly shows at times, and sometimes it's good to let one's thoughts progress with the passing decades. She constantly excoriates feminists for neglecting empiricism and science, and yet when it comes to defending her own worldview she relies heavily on personal anecdotes like the time she met Aunt Jemimma as a child and on endlessly repetitive references to how Emilia Earhart and Katherine Hepburn made her feel as an adolescent.
She has some pretty questionable statements in this collection, which is mostly op-eds she has written for various magazines. Prominent among these is the suggestion that Americans should stop taking anti-depressants and simply drink more alcohol, or her tendency to conflate capitalism (a socioeconomic system) with science/technology/industry, like when she credits capitalism with contributing towards the emancipation of women by providing them with laundry machines.
But, really, you probably aren't interested in Paglia for her own theories. She's interesting because of her criticisms. I personally found the first chapter of the book, an excerpt from her apparently voluminous thesis-turned-first-book Sexual Pesonae to be virtually unintelligible. I'm not interested in literary or art criticism, and I don't care at all about the dimensions of Nefrititi's hat. But it's her criticisms of the authoritarian streak in feminism, from the tolerance movement to Dworkin to contemporary anti-oppression and PC identity politics, that make her voice important.
Similarly her attacks on post-modern gender theory and identity politics for attempting to theorize about gender without any reference to biology are powerful and refreshing. Her seething disdain for Lacan-inspired theorizing and the unapproachable, undecipherable language games of postmodern "Theory" is beautiful justice.
A champion of free speech, a cage-rattling voice of dissent, and an oddball with an attitude, Paglia should be required reading for all feminists. She won't change her mind about anything ever, and that's part of her idiosyncratic charm. Unencumbered by ossified Left-Right partitioning, Paglia will help make you aware of your ideological blind spots.
Paglia is an unrepentant weirdo. Some of her views are ridiculous, many of her insights are cutting. Her critique of poststructuralism is a breath of fresh air. Her view on the abortion debate are whacky (she accuses 'liberals' of being inconsistent in opposing the death penalty but supporting access to abortion — an interesting reversal of conventional thinking but one that doesn't hold a lot of water).
Paglia is proud and defiant about the fact that she hasn't changed her mind about anything since the 1950s. Well, it certainly shows at times, and sometimes it's good to let one's thoughts progress with the passing decades. She constantly excoriates feminists for neglecting empiricism and science, and yet when it comes to defending her own worldview she relies heavily on personal anecdotes like the time she met Aunt Jemimma as a child and on endlessly repetitive references to how Emilia Earhart and Katherine Hepburn made her feel as an adolescent.
She has some pretty questionable statements in this collection, which is mostly op-eds she has written for various magazines. Prominent among these is the suggestion that Americans should stop taking anti-depressants and simply drink more alcohol, or her tendency to conflate capitalism (a socioeconomic system) with science/technology/industry, like when she credits capitalism with contributing towards the emancipation of women by providing them with laundry machines.
But, really, you probably aren't interested in Paglia for her own theories. She's interesting because of her criticisms. I personally found the first chapter of the book, an excerpt from her apparently voluminous thesis-turned-first-book Sexual Pesonae to be virtually unintelligible. I'm not interested in literary or art criticism, and I don't care at all about the dimensions of Nefrititi's hat. But it's her criticisms of the authoritarian streak in feminism, from the tolerance movement to Dworkin to contemporary anti-oppression and PC identity politics, that make her voice important.
Similarly her attacks on post-modern gender theory and identity politics for attempting to theorize about gender without any reference to biology are powerful and refreshing. Her seething disdain for Lacan-inspired theorizing and the unapproachable, undecipherable language games of postmodern "Theory" is beautiful justice.
A champion of free speech, a cage-rattling voice of dissent, and an oddball with an attitude, Paglia should be required reading for all feminists. She won't change her mind about anything ever, and that's part of her idiosyncratic charm. Unencumbered by ossified Left-Right partitioning, Paglia will help make you aware of your ideological blind spots.
September 3, 2018
Camille Paglia is the best, most smartest feminist ever. Just ask her she’ll tell you. I wish I had marked all the times she describes her own writing as prophetic.
She has such an interesting voice. She considers herself a libertarian feminist, taking the best from both the liberal and conservative sides. In addition to what you might expect, she is also very anti-PC language, suggesting the policing of language doesn’t belong on college campuses. She also seems to be pointing fingers at feminists that want to weaken men. I still think that’s a bit overblown by conservatives. But she wants to give a voice to all women - I’ve just never seen intersectionality in feminism include conservatism. I don’t know what to think about all that. She also takes on a more assertive voice, which I think makes sense, after seeing the silencing of women in the 50s. Plus there’s that saying of always have the confidence of a mediocre man. Which I think applies.
However.
This book slowly descends into madness.
Sex is violence
This is interesting - but you don’t realize the extent to which she believes this:
Civilized man conceals from himself the extent of his subordination to nature.
Okay. I thought about this and it made my wonder, could this be why some people fight against renewable energy? Because they feel like they have to submit to nature and they can’t be the one to control it?
But, wait - she really goes crazy on the nature/nurture debate.
And holy crap! She is so goddamn cynical. (Though to be fair she did call the first essay “Wagnerian” and said that going from the first essay to the second was going to be like the sun rising.)
Back to the nature/nurture debate - she seems to be all nature and no nurture. Violence and aggression are just part of who we are, and the function of society is to hold that back. In her view, violence natural. I guess she would probably say she is not cynical. Violence and power is man’s natural state. And society is the fight to keep that back.
And sex is that intersection of the society and nature that we will never be rid of. Sex can never be wholly pure and beautiful, because it is natural, and by definition will always contain a dark side. This is why, in her view, whenever you see a period of sexual freedom, it is always followed by a period of a wave of S&M. Okay…
But she flips this idea with sexual orientation — in her view, the idea that someone might be innately gay is completely ludicrous. She suggests that orientation is purely an adaptation. So, in her view gender has all basis in biology, but sexual orientation has all basis in environment?
Some quotes to see where she starts to go off the rails…
On how all sex is violent: A perfectly humane eroticism may be impossible.
Children are monsters of unbridled egotism and will, for they spring directly from nature, hostile intimations of immorality.
In western culture there can never be a purely physical or anxiety-free sexual encounter. Every attraction, every pattern of touch, every orgasm is shaped by psychic shadows. The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure and sex compulsion and ancient necessity rule.
Interesting, I think she believes that instead of women having penis envy, men have uterus envy, and all of our tension (between the sexes) is because women get to procreate, but men cannot.
And men’s violence against women, in a super Oedipal way, has to do with them being scared of their mothers.
Psycho was popular because “it was about the vampiric maternal domination of a sons psyche.” This literally made me laugh out loud. It was one of the funniest lines in the book.
She goes on to say, "I view many cases of rape as attack on mother-power."
Men are the weaker sex. This is why they attack women. We should be encouraging meant to be stronger, because when we act like we don’t want them stronger they will be more likely to attack women. But here she is a contradiction, because she suggests that historically men have always rightly protected women and children.
This starts to sound so much like my fundamentalist upbringing. “Sex is innately bad.” I fought for so many years to come out of this, so weird to see a feminist arguing for it.
And she is so deterministic. There is no free will. She is very Freudian.
And her diatribe on the femme fatale and women’s power in sex is some throwback Freudian fantasy and comes across like crazy MRA bullshit.
WHAT??
All of our attempts at social progress - more individual freedom - will end up in violence. Or as the author says “every road from Russo leads to Sade.”
We are instinctually immoral.
Oddly enough, as a feminist, her primary criticism of Christianity seems to be its introduction of the ideas of love and peace which she deems impossible.
Some of the crazier ideas espoused by Paglia:
Why have man created more art than women? It’s not because men have oppressed or suppressed women. It’s because women don’t need to create art. But men need to create art because they have a penis. WTF?
Also being able to pee anywhere has led to a disassociation of sex and emotion. This is why gay men have sex in bathrooms. What the hell are you talking about?
She suggests that the domination of man over woman is NOT a product of our society. It’s a part of our nature. We cannot fight this by attacking patriarchy as a societal construct.
If I was interested in what she was saying, I might like the flowery and poetic language. But because the content is just so crazy, it just comes across as annoying and self-aggrandizing. Here’s an example, and it doesn’t matter if it’s out of context, it represents her writing.
Sex, I said, is a descent to the nether realms. A daily syncing from sky cult to earth cult. It is abdominal, abominable, daemonic.
It’s really fucked up - rape is inevitable without society set up to protect women against men. Men can’t help it. This is a dangerous way to think. I do love her emphasis women being strong, but I think she dangerously overexpresses this. Especially when she uses it to decry feminism, and at the same time suggest that sexual tension is women’s fault.
Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power. To understand rape, you must study the past. There never was, and never will be sexual harmony. Every woman must take personal responsibility for her sexuality, which is nature’s red flame. She must be prudent and cautious where she goes and with whom.
And she is so sure that she is so right.
It’s funny, because she exhibits all the worst characteristics of men — those characteristics which make me hate the way men are. She has so much ego about her opinions — everyone who is intelligent must see the obvious wisdom and truth in everything she says. I don’t think the solution for women’s equality is for them to take the worst male characteristics and adopt them.
American feminists are complete morons who are destroying our society
She loves to attack feminists. She blames feminists for prohibition and hates the anti-porn feminists of the latter 20th century. I get when she attacks feminists for not being inclusive of all women. But (for a feminist) she seems so be overly obsessed with the flaws of feminists.
She suggests that popular culture in Hollywood has done so much more for women than feminists have. That the commodification of women by Hollywood is a bunch of hogwash. And she and Madonna and their feminism and their Mediterranean sensibilities, with their pro sex-views, are saving feminism from the Anglo-American feminists.
She thinks the patriarchy does not exist. She suggests that the idea of workplaces being possibly hostile toward women actually makes women weak.
At some level she seems to raise up the same man-hating feminist straw man that conservatives like to suggest.
[Feminist ideology’s] portrayal of history as male oppression and female victimage is a gross distortion of the facts.
In the matters of history and men taking care of the family: “feminist theory has been grotesquely unfair to man,” “ feminism has been very small-minded in the way it has treated male history,” “ feminism cannot continue with this poisoned rhetoric.”
She would be right at home at a fundamentalist church service or a an MRA convention.
I find this really interesting. What is the cause of eating disorders so rampant on college campuses? It is definitely not the unreachable standards that the media and society display for women to reach. It’s really the fault of ambitious feminists that try to force women to stay in school when they really want to become housewives and raise children.
Plus, American feminism is effectively castrating man and making them undesirable to women. What?
Feminism can only move forward when we accept that our differences are pretty much all nature and that we must use society to fight against that.
Also, Sigmund Freud is “the seminal theorist of the 20th century and a another male genius who callow feminists have sought to overthrow.”
As she describes the pictures in the back of the book, she suggests that feminists like Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolfe don’t have the “intellectual wherewithal” to even read her books. Wow, the ego.
I can’t even — this is crazy.
She has such an interesting voice. She considers herself a libertarian feminist, taking the best from both the liberal and conservative sides. In addition to what you might expect, she is also very anti-PC language, suggesting the policing of language doesn’t belong on college campuses. She also seems to be pointing fingers at feminists that want to weaken men. I still think that’s a bit overblown by conservatives. But she wants to give a voice to all women - I’ve just never seen intersectionality in feminism include conservatism. I don’t know what to think about all that. She also takes on a more assertive voice, which I think makes sense, after seeing the silencing of women in the 50s. Plus there’s that saying of always have the confidence of a mediocre man. Which I think applies.
However.
This book slowly descends into madness.
Sex is violence
This is interesting - but you don’t realize the extent to which she believes this:
Civilized man conceals from himself the extent of his subordination to nature.
Okay. I thought about this and it made my wonder, could this be why some people fight against renewable energy? Because they feel like they have to submit to nature and they can’t be the one to control it?
But, wait - she really goes crazy on the nature/nurture debate.
And holy crap! She is so goddamn cynical. (Though to be fair she did call the first essay “Wagnerian” and said that going from the first essay to the second was going to be like the sun rising.)
Back to the nature/nurture debate - she seems to be all nature and no nurture. Violence and aggression are just part of who we are, and the function of society is to hold that back. In her view, violence natural. I guess she would probably say she is not cynical. Violence and power is man’s natural state. And society is the fight to keep that back.
And sex is that intersection of the society and nature that we will never be rid of. Sex can never be wholly pure and beautiful, because it is natural, and by definition will always contain a dark side. This is why, in her view, whenever you see a period of sexual freedom, it is always followed by a period of a wave of S&M. Okay…
But she flips this idea with sexual orientation — in her view, the idea that someone might be innately gay is completely ludicrous. She suggests that orientation is purely an adaptation. So, in her view gender has all basis in biology, but sexual orientation has all basis in environment?
Some quotes to see where she starts to go off the rails…
On how all sex is violent: A perfectly humane eroticism may be impossible.
Children are monsters of unbridled egotism and will, for they spring directly from nature, hostile intimations of immorality.
In western culture there can never be a purely physical or anxiety-free sexual encounter. Every attraction, every pattern of touch, every orgasm is shaped by psychic shadows. The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure and sex compulsion and ancient necessity rule.
Interesting, I think she believes that instead of women having penis envy, men have uterus envy, and all of our tension (between the sexes) is because women get to procreate, but men cannot.
And men’s violence against women, in a super Oedipal way, has to do with them being scared of their mothers.
Psycho was popular because “it was about the vampiric maternal domination of a sons psyche.” This literally made me laugh out loud. It was one of the funniest lines in the book.
She goes on to say, "I view many cases of rape as attack on mother-power."
Men are the weaker sex. This is why they attack women. We should be encouraging meant to be stronger, because when we act like we don’t want them stronger they will be more likely to attack women. But here she is a contradiction, because she suggests that historically men have always rightly protected women and children.
This starts to sound so much like my fundamentalist upbringing. “Sex is innately bad.” I fought for so many years to come out of this, so weird to see a feminist arguing for it.
And she is so deterministic. There is no free will. She is very Freudian.
And her diatribe on the femme fatale and women’s power in sex is some throwback Freudian fantasy and comes across like crazy MRA bullshit.
The femme fatale is one of the most mesmerizing of sexual personae. She is not a fiction but an extrapolation of biologic realities in women that remain constant. The North American Indian myth of the toothed vagina, vagina dentata, is a gruesomely direct transcription of female power and male fear. Metaphorically, every vagina has secret teeth, for the male exits as less than when he entered. The basic mechanics of conception require action in the male but nothing more than passive receptivity the female. Sex as a natural rather than social transaction, therefore, really is a kind of drain of male energy by female fullness. Physical and spiritual castration is the danger every man runs in intercourse with a woman. Love is the spell by which he puts his sexual fear to sleep.
WHAT??
Women’s latent vampirism is not a social aberration, but a development of her maternal function for which nature has equipped her with tiresome thoroughness. For the male, every act of intercourse is a return to the mother and a capitulation to her. For men, sex is a struggle for identity. In sex, the male is consumed and release again by the toothed power that bore him: the female dragon of nature.
All of our attempts at social progress - more individual freedom - will end up in violence. Or as the author says “every road from Russo leads to Sade.”
We are instinctually immoral.
Oddly enough, as a feminist, her primary criticism of Christianity seems to be its introduction of the ideas of love and peace which she deems impossible.
Some of the crazier ideas espoused by Paglia:
Why have man created more art than women? It’s not because men have oppressed or suppressed women. It’s because women don’t need to create art. But men need to create art because they have a penis. WTF?
Also being able to pee anywhere has led to a disassociation of sex and emotion. This is why gay men have sex in bathrooms. What the hell are you talking about?
She suggests that the domination of man over woman is NOT a product of our society. It’s a part of our nature. We cannot fight this by attacking patriarchy as a societal construct.
If I was interested in what she was saying, I might like the flowery and poetic language. But because the content is just so crazy, it just comes across as annoying and self-aggrandizing. Here’s an example, and it doesn’t matter if it’s out of context, it represents her writing.
Sex, I said, is a descent to the nether realms. A daily syncing from sky cult to earth cult. It is abdominal, abominable, daemonic.
It’s really fucked up - rape is inevitable without society set up to protect women against men. Men can’t help it. This is a dangerous way to think. I do love her emphasis women being strong, but I think she dangerously overexpresses this. Especially when she uses it to decry feminism, and at the same time suggest that sexual tension is women’s fault.
Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power. To understand rape, you must study the past. There never was, and never will be sexual harmony. Every woman must take personal responsibility for her sexuality, which is nature’s red flame. She must be prudent and cautious where she goes and with whom.
And she is so sure that she is so right.
It’s funny, because she exhibits all the worst characteristics of men — those characteristics which make me hate the way men are. She has so much ego about her opinions — everyone who is intelligent must see the obvious wisdom and truth in everything she says. I don’t think the solution for women’s equality is for them to take the worst male characteristics and adopt them.
American feminists are complete morons who are destroying our society
She loves to attack feminists. She blames feminists for prohibition and hates the anti-porn feminists of the latter 20th century. I get when she attacks feminists for not being inclusive of all women. But (for a feminist) she seems so be overly obsessed with the flaws of feminists.
She suggests that popular culture in Hollywood has done so much more for women than feminists have. That the commodification of women by Hollywood is a bunch of hogwash. And she and Madonna and their feminism and their Mediterranean sensibilities, with their pro sex-views, are saving feminism from the Anglo-American feminists.
She thinks the patriarchy does not exist. She suggests that the idea of workplaces being possibly hostile toward women actually makes women weak.
At some level she seems to raise up the same man-hating feminist straw man that conservatives like to suggest.
[Feminist ideology’s] portrayal of history as male oppression and female victimage is a gross distortion of the facts.
In the matters of history and men taking care of the family: “feminist theory has been grotesquely unfair to man,” “ feminism has been very small-minded in the way it has treated male history,” “ feminism cannot continue with this poisoned rhetoric.”
She would be right at home at a fundamentalist church service or a an MRA convention.
I find this really interesting. What is the cause of eating disorders so rampant on college campuses? It is definitely not the unreachable standards that the media and society display for women to reach. It’s really the fault of ambitious feminists that try to force women to stay in school when they really want to become housewives and raise children.
Plus, American feminism is effectively castrating man and making them undesirable to women. What?
Feminism can only move forward when we accept that our differences are pretty much all nature and that we must use society to fight against that.
Also, Sigmund Freud is “the seminal theorist of the 20th century and a another male genius who callow feminists have sought to overthrow.”
As she describes the pictures in the back of the book, she suggests that feminists like Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolfe don’t have the “intellectual wherewithal” to even read her books. Wow, the ego.
I can’t even — this is crazy.
June 24, 2018
I don't even know where to begin with this book. Maybe by saying that Paglia is a libertarian and thus everything in the book comes from that perspective. She's against campuses getting involved in handling Title IX cases and feels that free speech is honored above all. She's entirely unsympathetic to people who feel threatened by hate speech and simply wants them to toughen up, without ever specifying how this should happen. Maybe we do need to toughen up, but we also need to learn how to be kind, understanding, and courteous, and Paglia discounts that entirely. It's a book with a lot of assertions and almost no practical solutions whatsoever.
One of my main problems with this book, aside from a lot of Paglia's ideology, is how intensely repetitive it is. Yes, it's a collection of previously written essays. Some repetition is to be expected. But this went above and beyond. There were certain phrases and ideas that were repeated constantly. By the end, I could predict exactly how a sentence about women's careers in politics, women's ability to have children, etc. would end (almost word for word). I wish some of the repetitiveness had been cut out or at least shortened. I would've been a lot less annoyed.
I was also disgusted by some of Paglia's personal attacks on women. It's fine to disagree with other people's views. That's allowed. But she spends pages upon pages personally attacking Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. Paglia heavily disagrees with their strict views on pornography. But she spends the essay complaining about Dworkin being a "pudgy, clumsy, whiny child" and MacKinnon possessing "cold, inflexible, and fundamentally unscholarly mind." What a perfect opportunity to offer a thoughtful critique of their views. Instead Paglia wastes it with personal attacks that accomplish absolutely nothing of value.
Everything is also a bit dated. She criticizes how feminism doesn't allow women the freedom to choose to have children. But the feminists I know (both in real life and online) would never condemn a woman for wanting to have children rather than work, or do both, or do neither. It's an incredibly dated view on feminism for being published so recently. Perhaps feminism was like this in the 1980s - I won't deny that - but to imply that it continues to perceive motherhood this way is completely misguided.
Her views about sexual assault are also pretty crude. I'm a firm believer that women should be smart and aware of their surroundings and know how to defend themselves. We are strong and capable. But I also think that male aggressors should be held responsible for assault. She seems to think that if a woman says no to a man firmly enough, the man will back off every single time. Of course a good man would do so, but there are way too many men, and I've encountered some of them, who don't hear a "no" regardless of how firmly it's communicated and continue to pursue a woman who is uninterested. It feels like there should be a balance in who holds responsibility and how assault cases are handled, and Paglia misses that entirely.
Paglia does have some good points. Her incorporation of art into feminism is fascinating. I enjoyed her critique of books exploring sex. She rightly points out that humanities disciplines, like women's studies, shouldn't exclude scientific research from their positions. Science can inform philosophy, and I believe this strongly. Although I disagree with her claim that women's and gender studies programs entirely ignore biology and science. This hasn't been my experience in reading modern feminist works and in studying at my university.
I mostly enjoyed reading this as an intellectual exercise. I'm a philosophy major and I firmly believe that you have to read and study (and be charitable towards) dissenting opinions, both to understand other people and strengthen (or modify!) your own positions. It was good to see the ways in which we could agree and disagree on the same issue. It helped me to solidify my own views and to understand Paglia's perspective. I'm definitely glad that I read it even though I disagree with her on most major issues in feminism. I recommend this if you want to challenge yourself and learn something new from someone whose views can be appalling in some cases.
One of my main problems with this book, aside from a lot of Paglia's ideology, is how intensely repetitive it is. Yes, it's a collection of previously written essays. Some repetition is to be expected. But this went above and beyond. There were certain phrases and ideas that were repeated constantly. By the end, I could predict exactly how a sentence about women's careers in politics, women's ability to have children, etc. would end (almost word for word). I wish some of the repetitiveness had been cut out or at least shortened. I would've been a lot less annoyed.
I was also disgusted by some of Paglia's personal attacks on women. It's fine to disagree with other people's views. That's allowed. But she spends pages upon pages personally attacking Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. Paglia heavily disagrees with their strict views on pornography. But she spends the essay complaining about Dworkin being a "pudgy, clumsy, whiny child" and MacKinnon possessing "cold, inflexible, and fundamentally unscholarly mind." What a perfect opportunity to offer a thoughtful critique of their views. Instead Paglia wastes it with personal attacks that accomplish absolutely nothing of value.
Everything is also a bit dated. She criticizes how feminism doesn't allow women the freedom to choose to have children. But the feminists I know (both in real life and online) would never condemn a woman for wanting to have children rather than work, or do both, or do neither. It's an incredibly dated view on feminism for being published so recently. Perhaps feminism was like this in the 1980s - I won't deny that - but to imply that it continues to perceive motherhood this way is completely misguided.
Her views about sexual assault are also pretty crude. I'm a firm believer that women should be smart and aware of their surroundings and know how to defend themselves. We are strong and capable. But I also think that male aggressors should be held responsible for assault. She seems to think that if a woman says no to a man firmly enough, the man will back off every single time. Of course a good man would do so, but there are way too many men, and I've encountered some of them, who don't hear a "no" regardless of how firmly it's communicated and continue to pursue a woman who is uninterested. It feels like there should be a balance in who holds responsibility and how assault cases are handled, and Paglia misses that entirely.
Paglia does have some good points. Her incorporation of art into feminism is fascinating. I enjoyed her critique of books exploring sex. She rightly points out that humanities disciplines, like women's studies, shouldn't exclude scientific research from their positions. Science can inform philosophy, and I believe this strongly. Although I disagree with her claim that women's and gender studies programs entirely ignore biology and science. This hasn't been my experience in reading modern feminist works and in studying at my university.
I mostly enjoyed reading this as an intellectual exercise. I'm a philosophy major and I firmly believe that you have to read and study (and be charitable towards) dissenting opinions, both to understand other people and strengthen (or modify!) your own positions. It was good to see the ways in which we could agree and disagree on the same issue. It helped me to solidify my own views and to understand Paglia's perspective. I'm definitely glad that I read it even though I disagree with her on most major issues in feminism. I recommend this if you want to challenge yourself and learn something new from someone whose views can be appalling in some cases.
April 3, 2017
Lesbian tells straight women to be less whiney about rape and dress sexier, feels victimized.
August 21, 2018
It’s kinda spooky how Camille Paglia called a lot of what would happen today...
Read
March 23, 2017Cultural battles whose ideological roots were planted in the 1970s by American academics under the influence of French post-structuralism, and which percolated in various forms throughout the 1980s, came to a crushing head by the beginning of the 1990s. What emerged was a new intellectual orthodoxy, characterized by a stance of permanent victimhood applicable to any group felt to fall outside of the privileged position occupied by white western males; widespread suspicion of, if not outright hostility to, the heights of the great Western cultural traditions and its makers; and rejection of a biological human nature. Social and linguistic constructivism, accompanied by global relativism regarding truth and knowledge, replaced them. Mired in the shallow puddles of linguistic puzzles and affecting chic political postures, the new dogma rigidly circumscribed the range of acceptable inquiry within its ideological constraints. Deviations from doctrine routinely resulted in condemnation for perpetuating past systems of oppression. Indeed the value of free inquiry and free expression came under fire from these quarters, on the grounds that they aided injustices. The result was an enforced intellectual conformity, severely straightening the bounds of free thought and talk—the very value of which began to look suspect from such angles.
Against this broad background, Camille Paglia first burst onto the scene in 1990 with the publication of her magnum opus, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a peerless study of perennial themes in Western art and literature. Her pro-sex, pro-freedom provocations against the prevailing PC culture helped stem the tide. As the 1990s unfolded, the stridency and stranglehold of that culture seemed to subside. During the last decade, too, these totalitarian tendencies appeared to have at least lain dormant. While the wider culture was otherwise concerned with war, terrorism, the development of a dominant digital age, and other Bush-era preoccupations, its agenda receded from prominence in the public consciousness. The present decade, by contrast, bears witness to the return of the repressed, as this familiar Kulturkampf from the recent past has re-emerged with a vengeance. Just so, it is within this current cultural context that Paglia now presents her new book, Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism.
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Against this broad background, Camille Paglia first burst onto the scene in 1990 with the publication of her magnum opus, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a peerless study of perennial themes in Western art and literature. Her pro-sex, pro-freedom provocations against the prevailing PC culture helped stem the tide. As the 1990s unfolded, the stridency and stranglehold of that culture seemed to subside. During the last decade, too, these totalitarian tendencies appeared to have at least lain dormant. While the wider culture was otherwise concerned with war, terrorism, the development of a dominant digital age, and other Bush-era preoccupations, its agenda receded from prominence in the public consciousness. The present decade, by contrast, bears witness to the return of the repressed, as this familiar Kulturkampf from the recent past has re-emerged with a vengeance. Just so, it is within this current cultural context that Paglia now presents her new book, Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism.
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
November 6, 2017
I really wanted to enjoy this book. Written by a fiery unrepentant feminist who questions the gender binary, I thought there would be much to learn. Paglia writes about gender in a way that assumes biological sex determines much more than we realize. this is an assumption I don't disagree with entirely. Certainly hormones--to the extent that we actually measure hormone flux in differently gendered bodies--make a difference in a person's bodily development and likely their personality. But these essays assume a basis of biological research that frankly hasn't been accepted as 'true' since the 80s or 90s. While Paglia wants to claim biological support for her arguments (and criticizes women's studies and gender studies programs for not adequately including bio research as reqs for their students), the biology she uses is outdated and watered down to support her beliefs. Research from this century (add comment and I'll PM you citations) makes it very clear that even biological sex is multi-layered, intersectional, and in many ways (such as chromosonal sex and sex-based DNA markers) still not understood.
In one essay she asserts that men are critiqued for rape, but women are not held responsible for their part in being passive in relationships and asserts they should take responsibility when "she makes a mistake" rather than "running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee. " This statement to me is highly problematic. While I agree that all persons have the right and the responsibility to be assertive and both set and respect boundaries in our relationships, that does not make it 'our' mistake when someone else violates our boundaries (through rape or Other violence). It's a paradox, I agree, that there are things we can do to minimize our risk of violence, and there are often things we can do to interrupt the patterns of a would-be rapist. But that does not make the experience of violence 'our' responsibility. We have the right to not be violated. The natural consequence of heavy drinking is a hangover, not rape! To imply otherwise is IMHO anti-feminist.
Overall I was disappointed. I wanted this book to lead me in new direction, introduce me to research and ideas that would be fruitful. While I was glad to have read this collection of essays, and would recommend it to others as an intellectual exercise, as far as women's studies or feminist studies is concerned, these essays are frankly outdated. Even her attempts bring art history into the mix are fraught. As a scholar (My PHD is in South Asian literature), I found her analyses of Asian comparisons simplistic at best, and unfactual at worst.
In one essay she asserts that men are critiqued for rape, but women are not held responsible for their part in being passive in relationships and asserts they should take responsibility when "she makes a mistake" rather than "running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee. " This statement to me is highly problematic. While I agree that all persons have the right and the responsibility to be assertive and both set and respect boundaries in our relationships, that does not make it 'our' mistake when someone else violates our boundaries (through rape or Other violence). It's a paradox, I agree, that there are things we can do to minimize our risk of violence, and there are often things we can do to interrupt the patterns of a would-be rapist. But that does not make the experience of violence 'our' responsibility. We have the right to not be violated. The natural consequence of heavy drinking is a hangover, not rape! To imply otherwise is IMHO anti-feminist.
Overall I was disappointed. I wanted this book to lead me in new direction, introduce me to research and ideas that would be fruitful. While I was glad to have read this collection of essays, and would recommend it to others as an intellectual exercise, as far as women's studies or feminist studies is concerned, these essays are frankly outdated. Even her attempts bring art history into the mix are fraught. As a scholar (My PHD is in South Asian literature), I found her analyses of Asian comparisons simplistic at best, and unfactual at worst.
November 5, 2017
Could not put this book down! Camille Paglia is a one person think tank! In a no holds barred style, she absolutely decimates the views/arguments of her critics/opponents in this hugely entertaining collection of essays. Fearless and provocative, she comes out with both guns blazing from the opening paragraph:
"History moves in cycles. The plague of political correctness and assaults on free speech that erupted in the 1980s and were beaten back in the 1990s have returned with a vengeance. In the United States, the universities as well as the mainstream media are patrolled by well-meaning but ruthless thought police, as dogmatic in their views as agents of the Spanish Inquisition. We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group."
So many things to love about Paglia: she's a big picture thinker who doesn't limit herself to a specific ideology; she's courageous; she calls out bullshit where ever she finds it; she's ethical; she's provocative; and her writing is a blast -- so colourful and descriptive.
"History moves in cycles. The plague of political correctness and assaults on free speech that erupted in the 1980s and were beaten back in the 1990s have returned with a vengeance. In the United States, the universities as well as the mainstream media are patrolled by well-meaning but ruthless thought police, as dogmatic in their views as agents of the Spanish Inquisition. We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group."
So many things to love about Paglia: she's a big picture thinker who doesn't limit herself to a specific ideology; she's courageous; she calls out bullshit where ever she finds it; she's ethical; she's provocative; and her writing is a blast -- so colourful and descriptive.
April 7, 2017
I have admired Camille Paglia's intellect for quite some time. I knew I had to read her latest book and it did not disappoint. I have to admit some of the vocabulary was a bit out of my league but that's what makes it so wonderful. She makes you think. She made me stretch my intellectual boundaries. My soon to be 81 year old Mom will read it next and then my 15 year old daughter and then my 15 year old son. I can't wait to discuss some of the issues and articles with them. One of my favorite chapters was 16, GRIDIRON FEMINISM. Thank you for your words and wisdom Professor Paglia.
July 23, 2020
It's been at least 20 years since I read Sexual Personae and I'd completely forgotten how much I enjoy Camille Paglia. (Also, since this was available in audiobook format, I was finally able to hear the word "chthonic" pronounced aloud for the first time!) Her worldview is refreshingly, bracingly original--and seemingly undaunted by social trends or prevailing schools of thought (urgh, no pun intended). E.g., her essay about rape on college campuses, written over 25 years ago, is presented here without apology or concession to the distance the goalposts have moved in the intervening time. Whether you agree or disagree with her, you won't find a fiercer advocate for (or example of) female power in the Amazonian sense of the word. While I don't agree with *every* argument she makes (for one, I think her view of transgender people is--I hesitate to say "uninformed"--but maybe misguided), I suspect there are very few people who agree with *all* her opinions. At least Professor Paglia expresses them with conviction, rationality and biting wit, which is always entertaining to read (or hear, as the case may be).
July 1, 2017
I've been wondering what happened to her more "men-friendly" version of feminism. She certainly writes like a fever and certainly left me with a few passages I will remember for some time. She has an interesting set of views: she is 100% for abortion rights, but somewhat pro-life, she is pro androgyny, well at the same time admitting that sexual freedom often precedes the decline of civilizations, and most controversially of all, she thinks the "rape-culture" accusation is infantilizing and counter productive. Like most intellectuals, she is interesting to read and you can learn a few things even if you don't agree with her. The jury is still out for me on some of her ideas, but she writes with such a flourish the book was hard to put down, despite being fairly repetitive.
October 21, 2017
More of a 3.5 but rounded to 4 because I liked some of the essays so much. I didn't agree with them all but overall the book led to deep reflection on my own thoughts about feminism. Even when I disagreed with Paglia's opinions, I appreciated the opportunity to think about why I disagreed and how I had come to form my opinions on an issue. It is interesting to read her work through the years. The more things change....
While it is repetitive at times, that is understandable since her message has been consistent through the years. I particularly like that Paglia's take on feminism includes the acceptance of strong men. The male-bashing that frequently occurs with much of feminism has disturbed me for years. Her articles/thoughts on Title IX, stay-at-home moms, getting more women elected, and thoughts on abortion are particularly worth the read since they are rather different from the norm.
Some of my favorites: the introduction, "Men's Sports Vanishing", "Coddling Won't Elect Women, Toughening Will", "Gridiron Feminism", "The Modern Battle of the Sexes", "Feminism Past & Present", "Gender Roles: Nature or Nurture", "Southern Women: old Myths & New Frontiers", "What a Woman President Should Be", "On Abortion". These make up about a third of the book. I listed the titles because I may want to review them later or have friends read them so we can discuss. They should be fairly easy to look up again since most were published in newspapers and magazines. It's an easy book to start and put down since it is broken into manageable sections of 30+ essays.
While it is repetitive at times, that is understandable since her message has been consistent through the years. I particularly like that Paglia's take on feminism includes the acceptance of strong men. The male-bashing that frequently occurs with much of feminism has disturbed me for years. Her articles/thoughts on Title IX, stay-at-home moms, getting more women elected, and thoughts on abortion are particularly worth the read since they are rather different from the norm.
Some of my favorites: the introduction, "Men's Sports Vanishing", "Coddling Won't Elect Women, Toughening Will", "Gridiron Feminism", "The Modern Battle of the Sexes", "Feminism Past & Present", "Gender Roles: Nature or Nurture", "Southern Women: old Myths & New Frontiers", "What a Woman President Should Be", "On Abortion". These make up about a third of the book. I listed the titles because I may want to review them later or have friends read them so we can discuss. They should be fairly easy to look up again since most were published in newspapers and magazines. It's an easy book to start and put down since it is broken into manageable sections of 30+ essays.
May 2, 2020
One thing sticks out at you as you read Paglia's collection of essays on feminism and sex; she has been consistent. Her libertarian brand of feminism has remained constant since her publication of Sexual Personae in 1990, the book that launched her career as a voice in the space.
What I appreciated about the book is the history of feminism Paglia weaves into her essays. I found myself frequently going to the search engines to get deeper into the historical references. I also enjoyed her no-holds-barred even handedness. She is not afraid to call out what she perceives to be bunk, nor is she above giving credit to positions she disagrees with.
If you want to get away from main-stream, men-bashing feminism, this book is for you.
What I appreciated about the book is the history of feminism Paglia weaves into her essays. I found myself frequently going to the search engines to get deeper into the historical references. I also enjoyed her no-holds-barred even handedness. She is not afraid to call out what she perceives to be bunk, nor is she above giving credit to positions she disagrees with.
If you want to get away from main-stream, men-bashing feminism, this book is for you.
February 27, 2018
Reading Camille Paglia, just like listening to her, is akin to letting a fantastic circus run though your brain, with the intensity turned to max and at the speed of hyperloop. M'kay?
She is a force of nature, in her intellectual physicality, determination, knowledge and imagination. Even more so, given the sorry state of public discourse these days. In her own words:
"... what I represent is independent thought. What I represent is the essence of the Sixties, which is free thought and free speech. And a lot of people don’t like it. A lot of people who are well-meaning on both sides of the political spectrum want to shut down free speech. And my mission is to be absolutely as painful as possible in every situation."
She is a force of nature, in her intellectual physicality, determination, knowledge and imagination. Even more so, given the sorry state of public discourse these days. In her own words:
"... what I represent is independent thought. What I represent is the essence of the Sixties, which is free thought and free speech. And a lot of people don’t like it. A lot of people who are well-meaning on both sides of the political spectrum want to shut down free speech. And my mission is to be absolutely as painful as possible in every situation."
June 5, 2017
feisty, Sex positive Feminist
a good read,
her book reads like she speaks
although the book is more coherent,
Camille Paglia,
the author gave talk at Seattle Public Library-(Central),
late May/ early June 2017,
listened to her lecture on KUOW
a couple days after event.
https://www.alternativeradio.org/#
a good read,
her book reads like she speaks
although the book is more coherent,
Camille Paglia,
the author gave talk at Seattle Public Library-(Central),
late May/ early June 2017,
listened to her lecture on KUOW
a couple days after event.
https://www.alternativeradio.org/#
March 28, 2019
This book was really painful to read because it felt like a long and mostly shallow rant against all sorts of feminist straw-women. Paglia clearly likes to fight even when she's fighting against a theory she just made up. With that said, there were some good essays in here--I liked her one about sadomachism and how the scholarship gets that wrong, some of her book critiques were interesting too. But she has one theory that she keeps using to whack at feminist icons.
Her theory is that feminists don't account for biology and it's all academic babble disconnected with the real world and coddling of college-aged girls. So one example she keeps coming back to is the feminist theory (that maybe she heard somewhere at some point) that society created rape. Paglia says "you idiots, not it didn't" rape is natural, biological and society is what keeps more men from raping. I consider myself a feminist and I totally agree with her. What's the controversy? But Paglia then uses that to basically expose how idiotic second wave feminists are. But stepping back from that statement--how exactly is it that society polices male aggression? Through movements of women and men telling predatory men to cut it out. To me, #metoo is a recent societal pushback on workplace harrassment. Paglia hates #metoo, presumably because she thinks the feminists have taken the fun out of sex. But isn't it just society pushing back against nature?
I'm not going to dissect her argument point by point--I am sure way smarter people than me have done exactly that. I read a lot of evolutionary biology though and I think Paglia needs to learn a bit more about that before she distorts it further to make a point. But clearly she's very popular in the IDW circuit and I can see why. She's like the "feminist" who says things like "men built everything. feminists shouldn't talk bad about men. Sex is always fun." She's the cool girl feminist
Her theory is that feminists don't account for biology and it's all academic babble disconnected with the real world and coddling of college-aged girls. So one example she keeps coming back to is the feminist theory (that maybe she heard somewhere at some point) that society created rape. Paglia says "you idiots, not it didn't" rape is natural, biological and society is what keeps more men from raping. I consider myself a feminist and I totally agree with her. What's the controversy? But Paglia then uses that to basically expose how idiotic second wave feminists are. But stepping back from that statement--how exactly is it that society polices male aggression? Through movements of women and men telling predatory men to cut it out. To me, #metoo is a recent societal pushback on workplace harrassment. Paglia hates #metoo, presumably because she thinks the feminists have taken the fun out of sex. But isn't it just society pushing back against nature?
I'm not going to dissect her argument point by point--I am sure way smarter people than me have done exactly that. I read a lot of evolutionary biology though and I think Paglia needs to learn a bit more about that before she distorts it further to make a point. But clearly she's very popular in the IDW circuit and I can see why. She's like the "feminist" who says things like "men built everything. feminists shouldn't talk bad about men. Sex is always fun." She's the cool girl feminist
May 7, 2018
So I've been waiting for this book for a while as I enjoy Paglia on the YouTubes, despite her near impossible trains of thoughts to follow. This collection of essays is no different, however, her writing is downright poetic, in particular, how she describes women as nature. It was sobering and beautiful. It blew my mind, knocked me out, shook me back to consciousness, and I was compelled to read it over and over again. Since I write fantasy fiction, I never expected this type of book to inspire me in that realm. It definitely gave me some great ideas for future book themes. I highly recommend this book to anyone hungry for a new perspective on men, women, and nature. For Feminism, I felt it was repetitive, but nonetheless relevant. Not for the faint of heart or for people who offend easily. Paglia does not hold back here. However, in no way do you need to agree with everything she says to take something away from her perspective (keep in mind most of these essays were written in the 90's, so things have changed somewhat).
August 9, 2017
i can read a book that includes views that i disagree with. fine. but a badly written book? nope.
August 21, 2024
This is an incredible collection of Paglia's cultural criticism on topics in contemporary sexual politics. Mixed with her culture and art criticism, Paglia inserts memoiristic impressions, personal philosophy, and polemical tirades. Her primary targets are third-wave feminists and post-structuralist philosophers/activists. She also reserves her most vehement distaste for those who put their politics before the pursuit of truth.
With this collection, Paglia demonstrates four of her distinct contributions to feminism: 1) Advocacy for the inclusion of biological science in feminist pedagogy 2) Advocacy for cross-sex conciliation (i.e. an end to an hostile posture toward men) 3) Advocacy for female agency (a pro-sexuality/eroticism, pro-market, pro-responsibility stance) and 4) an eagerness to inclusively taxonomize different female archetypes.
I would cherish a sociobiological feminism. There are hints of this today from thinkers like Louise Perry, but Perry's view of female sexuality contrasts sharply with Paglia. I also am heartened by Paglia optimism about merging female liberation with the cultural technologies meant to direct male biopsychology toward pro-social activities. This is perhaps possible because of the efforts gender critical and dissident feminists have made to minister Paglia's cultural legacy.
Paglia's manic and sharp voice has undoubtedly roused many from their falsely pleasant reveries about sex and gender. Many have stirred unhappily from their slumber only to thoughtlessly lash out at Paglia. This collection affords Paglia the opportunity to contextualize the controversies she's courted and share her perspective on her historical position in the various gender wars. Today, her profile has declined somewhat as she has entered her late 70s and has begun to wind down her public appearances and publishing.
Free Women, Free Men is Paglia's second most recent essay collection and clearly signal Paglia's desire to summarize her ideas for posterity. Subsequently, there is a significant amount of repetition across the collection, but it is always delivered with verve. Paglia has also done some helpful distillation. For instance, we get the whole of her opus Sexual Personae boiled down to a sentence: art is man's transcendental response to the dark urges of nature.
All things considered, Paglia is a towering cultural figure whose influence and impact is underestimated. Fortunately, readers of this collection will not make that mistake.
With this collection, Paglia demonstrates four of her distinct contributions to feminism: 1) Advocacy for the inclusion of biological science in feminist pedagogy 2) Advocacy for cross-sex conciliation (i.e. an end to an hostile posture toward men) 3) Advocacy for female agency (a pro-sexuality/eroticism, pro-market, pro-responsibility stance) and 4) an eagerness to inclusively taxonomize different female archetypes.
I would cherish a sociobiological feminism. There are hints of this today from thinkers like Louise Perry, but Perry's view of female sexuality contrasts sharply with Paglia. I also am heartened by Paglia optimism about merging female liberation with the cultural technologies meant to direct male biopsychology toward pro-social activities. This is perhaps possible because of the efforts gender critical and dissident feminists have made to minister Paglia's cultural legacy.
Paglia's manic and sharp voice has undoubtedly roused many from their falsely pleasant reveries about sex and gender. Many have stirred unhappily from their slumber only to thoughtlessly lash out at Paglia. This collection affords Paglia the opportunity to contextualize the controversies she's courted and share her perspective on her historical position in the various gender wars. Today, her profile has declined somewhat as she has entered her late 70s and has begun to wind down her public appearances and publishing.
Free Women, Free Men is Paglia's second most recent essay collection and clearly signal Paglia's desire to summarize her ideas for posterity. Subsequently, there is a significant amount of repetition across the collection, but it is always delivered with verve. Paglia has also done some helpful distillation. For instance, we get the whole of her opus Sexual Personae boiled down to a sentence: art is man's transcendental response to the dark urges of nature.
All things considered, Paglia is a towering cultural figure whose influence and impact is underestimated. Fortunately, readers of this collection will not make that mistake.
August 23, 2022
plumped 4 this grab bag of essays as my 1st foray into paglia's writing becos completionist that i am i could not bear to mount the 700pgs her magnum opus sexual personae spans........................OBVIOUSLY this is no substitute.... free women free men: sex, gender, feminism (does a worse title exist) proves that just because you have enough lecture transcripts to fill a book doesn't mean you should. reading this is like learning your multiplication tables: laborious. but at least you'll never forget the answers because camille's beat you over the head with them so many times
July 11, 2017
I really enjoyed these common sense essays about feminism from someone who seems to delight in humanity, rather than hate half of it.
June 11, 2018
Paglia is an unapologetic libertarian intellectual and many of her insights are thought provoking and even refreshing, but ultimately she shows the same limits that plague anyone who writes about a movement from their very personalized POV. She is undoubtedly a pistol of a woman and she is understandably proud of that- but she barely disguises her disgust with anyone "too soft" to be an admirable woman. I admire a strong woman as much as the next person, but Paglia expects any woman "worth her salt" to be able to defend herself from insults, harassment and perhaps worse from men (who she characterizes as alternately cowed by women- or the brave warriors who built our civilization -depending on the essay). She essentially asks women why we expect to be protected and why can't we protect ourselves (dammit)? Well...Ok, I can appreciate the sentiment of taking care of yourself, but doesn't that give men a whole lot of latitude? It doesn't hold them accountable at all (except under the law if proven guilty which she adds as almost an aside) and puts all of the pressure on women to be tough enough to just... spit in their face I guess... meanwhile men can continue to foist all kind of obnoxious or aggressive of behavior upon us. I don't know about that. And this is one of maybe...25 topics that she writes about with a bold empowered perspective but often takes a bit too far almost as if she just wants to be a contrarian for the pure joy of it. It seems that she loves some women and despises others which is not terribly helpful-and her opinions are a little simplistic since every person is a mix of positive and negative aspects at least to some extent. In any case, we have to get along with a wide array of characters in this world and not everyone is willing or able to be the sultry vixen she seems to admire (a la Madonna). And this is not even touching some of her tone deaf comments on Affirmative Action. I haven't heard her address this topic in depth but she seems out of touch from what I see here. She usually starts out saying that these efforts are "well-intentioned" but then goes on the bash them. She has just about zero compassion or understanding of women who need help or ask for help not to mention asking why this would be the case (discrimination, abuse, illness or just not being born so damn strong/smart/outspoken as she was). Her ability to write a biting book review is unrivaled in my opinion (a dubious honor). I read this with my jaw dropped half the time. She does not pull her punches and she does have a remarkably descriptive vocabulary. I got lost in all her talk of post structuralist theory and didn't totally understand her gripe with Foucault or Pierre Bourdieu. In fact I found myself wondering if she would think I was smart or educated enough to be permitted to read her book-I could feel her imagined wrath descend on me when I skimmed through something too esoteric. She seems to loath most French intellectuals save Simone de Beauvoir (thank god) and Marquis de Sade (hmmm...) Reading this made me kind of relieved I am not a woman academic publishing today because she goes right for the jugular. God be with you if you haven't boned up on just about everything ever written about art or feminism. I almost pitied those two anti-pornography activists, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon -and I had never even heard of them. But Paglia really roasts them-and it gets personal. I guess knowing her Vamps and Tramps book I knew what I was getting into. I can't help but think she goes for shock value with some of her opinions such as her ode to Princeton Wrestling and her high praise of buxom cheerleaders as fabulously feminine in all the best ways. She totally dismisses ideas of "female objectification" which, while it did make me think, did not really convince me. I wonder if there is a Feminist today who would take her on. I'd like to see it. Personally, she reminds me of an English teacher I had once. I never knew if she would love or hate what I wrote but I knew she could defend her judgement with impeccable prose. That doesn't mean she was always right though. The one thing I do like about her is that she brings up the male bashing habit of some feminists that is counter productive. She also has an interesting take on southern vs northern women (spoiler-she loves strong southern charm and hates the cold uptight north) but as with all her essays she manages to say thing in such categorically emphatic terms that ultimately, you can never agree with her.
February 3, 2018
Reflexões mais do que necessárias, urgentes mesmo, para o debate feminista. Um alento ler textos que fogem do pensamento de manada, do clichê vazio de mantras como "capitalismo", "patriarcado", "construção social".
October 3, 2017
The book is a collection of speeches and essays that Paglia has published over the years. While there is a lot of overlap between the subjects and her ideas it is a great reader for anyone interested in her libertarian view of feminism. I had never really read much of her work and while the book is repetitive it is a nice primer for anyone curious about her work.
"The title of this book exalts freedom as an indispensable condition for the incubation and flourishing of individualism. My libertarian feminism, which takes the best from both liberalism and conservatism but is decidedly neither, places freedom of thought and speech above all ideology." xxiv
"The freedom to hate must be as protected as the freedom to love. It is only when hate crosses over into action that the law may properly intervene. Without complete freedom to explore the piercing extremes of human emotion, we will never have great art again." xxv
"Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted...But sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted." 6
"For life is not a tragedy but a comedy. Comedy is born of the clash between Apollo and Dionysus. Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals." 11
"Both the Apollian and Judeo-Christian traditions are transcendental. That is, they seek to surmount or transcend nature. Despite Greek culture's contrary Dionysian element, which I will discuss, high classicism was an Apollian achievement. Judaism, Christianity's parent sect, is the most powerful of protests again nature. The Old Testament asserts that a father god made nature and that differentiation into objects and gender was after the fact of his maleness. Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as an earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.
The evolution from earth-cult to sky-cult shifts woman into the nether realm." 13-14
"Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing of symbol-making activity. Man's vastly greater commercial patronage of pornography is analogous." 30
"A boy becoming a man quests for experience. The penis is like eye or hand, an extension of self reaching outward. But a girl is a sealed vessel that must be broken into by force. The female body is the prototype of all sacred spaces from cave shrine to temple and church. The womb is the veiled Holy of Holies, a great problem, as we shall see...The taboo on woman's body is the taboo that always hovers over the place of magic." 34
"Finally, a volatility in gender roles is usually symptomatic of tensions and anxieties about larger issues. That is, sexual identity becomes a primary focus only when other forms of identification and affiliation-religious, national, tribal, familial-break down. 218
"The title of this book exalts freedom as an indispensable condition for the incubation and flourishing of individualism. My libertarian feminism, which takes the best from both liberalism and conservatism but is decidedly neither, places freedom of thought and speech above all ideology." xxiv
"The freedom to hate must be as protected as the freedom to love. It is only when hate crosses over into action that the law may properly intervene. Without complete freedom to explore the piercing extremes of human emotion, we will never have great art again." xxv
"Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted...But sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted." 6
"For life is not a tragedy but a comedy. Comedy is born of the clash between Apollo and Dionysus. Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals." 11
"Both the Apollian and Judeo-Christian traditions are transcendental. That is, they seek to surmount or transcend nature. Despite Greek culture's contrary Dionysian element, which I will discuss, high classicism was an Apollian achievement. Judaism, Christianity's parent sect, is the most powerful of protests again nature. The Old Testament asserts that a father god made nature and that differentiation into objects and gender was after the fact of his maleness. Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as an earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.
The evolution from earth-cult to sky-cult shifts woman into the nether realm." 13-14
"Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing of symbol-making activity. Man's vastly greater commercial patronage of pornography is analogous." 30
"A boy becoming a man quests for experience. The penis is like eye or hand, an extension of self reaching outward. But a girl is a sealed vessel that must be broken into by force. The female body is the prototype of all sacred spaces from cave shrine to temple and church. The womb is the veiled Holy of Holies, a great problem, as we shall see...The taboo on woman's body is the taboo that always hovers over the place of magic." 34
"Finally, a volatility in gender roles is usually symptomatic of tensions and anxieties about larger issues. That is, sexual identity becomes a primary focus only when other forms of identification and affiliation-religious, national, tribal, familial-break down. 218
May 19, 2017
This book of essays is mostly very entertaining. It is pretty repetitive tho with multiple pieces about the state of feminism and her critique of gender studies. I find some of what she says interesting and even refreshing. Other stuff is much worse --her thoughts on the inadequacies of female politicians to take the US presidency, lots of her ideas about rape culture and responses to sexual violence. She seems at times to be pandering to a male reader, or maybe just baiting feminists (who seem to be a monolith in her view). I also get tired of reading about her love for Madonna (which by now is just ???) and Patty smith and Keith Richards (again ???); also her tedious reminisces of her gender non conformist childhood. After a harsh critique of modern gender studies she also declares herself transgender which suggests to me she doesn't appreciate what that actually means. She's provocative tho and she writes wonderfully and has some terrific ideas.
May 30, 2017
I had read a small amount of her work and was interested in delving deeper into her thoughts and philosophies. This book was an excellent way to do just that. While it did get a bit repetitive, it showed me why many of my "feminist" friends do not like her. I find her refreshing and with a good dose of common sense.
May 16, 2017
Wish I could give it half a star. The only way to make this book better is if I made it into a Gloria Steinem drinking game. She must have said her name a million times.
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