force. Questions both ancient and new are freethought, particularly the criticism of new freedom, but also by a new severi- being raised—do women think differently religious dogmas, has played in bringing ty. For it will be enforced by the realities of associated life as they are disclosed about increasing equality for women. than men? How relevant are biological to careful and systematic inquiry, and and social determinants? Is equality As Dewey pointed out, in a paper writ- not by a combination of convention and among the sexes possible, and, if so, what ten in 1931, an exhausted legal system with senti- mean? The following arti- mentality. does this really The growing freedom of women can cles detail the current debates being raised hardly have any other outcome than the about these issues in feminist circles. In production of more realistic and more The significance of this new freedom is addition, they show the important role that human morals. It will be marked by a explored in the following pages. •

FI Interview Camille Paglia on Freethought, Feminism, and Iconoclasm conducted by Timothy J. Madigan One does not really interview Camille Paglia—author of the best-selling works Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, and American Culture; and Vamps and Tramps—one gives her a forum to express her free-wheeling opinions in machine-gun delivery style on whatever issues she wants to address. What follows is a prime example of what might be called her "in-your-face feminism."—Ens.

REE INQUIRY: You're one of the few America. Fpublic intellectuals whose work is FI: In Vamps and Tramps, you state discussed both on college campuses and that "the silencing of authentic debate in working-class bars. Why do you think among feminists helps the rise of the far you've touched such a nerve? right." CAMILLE PAGLIA: It's pretty amazing. PAGLIA: That's right, and the fruits of Don't forget by the time I burst on the this are now being seen. I've warned about scene five years ago, I was in my forties, this for years—the suppression of debate and I'd gotten absolutely no attention by the liberal wing has moved the entire whatsoever. I couldn't get published. Not nation to the right. People who were sur- only was Sexual Personae rejected by prised by the Republican sweep have sim- seven major publishing houses, but parts ply not been listening to me. It happened of it had been rejected for years by maga- not because of any right-wing conspiracy; zines. it happened because of a spiritual vacuum But by the beginning of the 1990s, the on the left. The left became too removed culture seemed to change, and suddenly from the people. Leftism began 150 years people were listening to me. There was a ago supposedly to speak for the silent big shift. I represent the best of the 1960s, majority, for the people. True sixties radi- which was all about freethought and free calism really was populist. I'm a Clinton speech. I hate dogma in any form. I hate it supporter and I'll vote for him again (God in the Roman Catholic church, which is help me), but he has surrounded himself why I left it twenty-five years ago. I hate air. with these white, upper middle class elite it in gay activism and feminism now. People who are interested in ideas wel- professionals who speak about "the peo- Dogma has also taken over the humanities comed me, and people who cling to a ple" from a very great distance and, in a departments in elite schools—poststruc- fixed belief system find me threatening. very paternalistic, condescending way, as turalism and so forth. I think people are There's nothing more dangerous to a lib- "victims." It is insulting—I'm remember- sick of the ideological and clichéd ways in eral democracy than fixed dogma. I don't ing my background in an immigrant fam- which cultural issues were approached in like coteries. I have struggled to maintain ily when I say this—they are totally the 1980s. So I came like a breath of fresh my outside position, which is very rare in removed from the people they pretend to

Spring 1995 5 speak for. These false progressives are Generation X. It's no coincidence that would be so easy for the left to say, "A merely voices of reaction, clinging to out- Kurt Cobain killed himself. What we have moment of meditation in the schools is moded, broken-down liberal ideas. After bequeathed is chaos to the young. The far fine." What is the big deal? People who all, a lot of sixties radicalism was critical right accurately observed the hollowness are religious can think religious thoughts. of the liberal establishment, like Leonard at the heart of our culture; but I disagree Let people just gather their thoughts. Bernstein having the Black Panthers over with the cure that the far right offers. I'm in the posture of attacking the left for tea—radical chic. Liberals were the What I'm saying to the left is, "Wake up! and saying to them "You have spawned worst hypocrites in the 1960s. I despise The far right sees something you are in Newt Gingrich." Rush Limbaugh is neces- "limousine liberalism." denial about" sary. He's one of the few freethinkers in FI: You also say, "To rescue feminism, Everything is blighted for the young. the whole culture. The people at Harvard, we must give religion its due, but require They have reduced aspirations. They are Princeton, Duke, and Stanford aren't free- it to stay in its place." in a dead end. Because of this total neglect thinkers. They're just a bunch of lem- PAGLIA: That has to be done to rescue of spiritual values we have the tremen- mings compared to Rush Limbaugh, all progressive politics. One of the major dous appeal of the right. There's two thou- who's out there with his own independent crises that the heirs to the left have sand years of developed thought behind point-of-view. He's a principled speaker received is the neglect of spiritual values. Christianity. There's three thousand years and thinker, even though my politics are I'm an atheist, but we people of the sixties behind Judaism. So, better Jehovah than not his. The left can no longer claim to be were very spiritual in our own ways. That Foucault. Jehovah at least brings along the voice of the people. is, we abandoned organized religions, but this incredible work, the Bible. What a FI: You also talk about a renewed we sought out Hinduism and Buddhism. great collection of poetry, magnificent, interest in the pagan. Certainly organized We were very interested in cross-cultural filled with things of spiritual use, whether religion had tried to eradicate pagan ele- spiritual experiences. A passage to India, you believe in God or not. The grandeur ments. as it were. and intellectual development of Catholic PAGLIA: The overall theme of my Now what's happened as part of the theology is staggering. Foucault is a work is this: Judeo-Christianity never collapse of the progressive left is a fraud; and that's the diet our best kids in defeated paganism. Instead, paganism, descent into social constructivism, which the elite schools are being fed. It is after the fall of Rome, was driven under- says that everything that we are is made appalling. The man knew nothing. ground, and it has erupted in Western cul- by society. There's no feeling for nature We have destroyed the young's natural ture at three key moments. The first was anymore. The feminism that's being instincts. We told them you cannot look at the Renaissance. Greco-Roman human- taught now is a very shrunken view of life. art without thinking of a prefab social ism came back—Botticelli did a painting We are defined as nothing but social agenda—racism, sexism, homophobia. of Venus rather than the Madonna. The beings, the product of environmental pres- We have destroyed the natural, pleasur- second moment was Romanticism. And sures. There's a whole wing of feminism able response to art. We've turned them the most glamorous of my three eruptions that insists there's no difference between into dried-up cynics. True creativity is the twentieth century. I call it not male and female—we're exactly the same, means being willing to make a fool of Sartre's Age of Anxiety, but rather the Age and we become different because society yourself, letting it all go. of Hollywood. Modern popular culture is shapes us in one direction or another. The left is to be blamed for the appeal in fact an eruption of the buried pagan ele- Gloria Steinern believes that, for example. of the right. The right offers stable, tradi- ment in Western civilization—the very There's another wing of feminism—the tional religious values. And when people things the far right finds most unpalatable. only one that does think of nature—and it marry and have children, they are con- Christianity has never been able to hon- sentimentalizes nature. It sees it as a won- cerned about what kind of values to give estly deal with sex, because it belongs to derful goddess figure, and she's all good. them. That's why so many people are the natural realm and Christianity imag- I criticize that as being Rousseauist; and turning back to the old religions. Religion ines us as transcending our natural selves, it's not true. The great fertility religions of has tremendous cultural power. becoming like God up in heaven who's the world have seen nature as having dual What I have offered in my work is a sexless and bodiless. "Turn the other parts. Nature is a cycle of birth and death. compromise solution. There should be cheek" does not deal with the innateness It's positive and negative. Creative and shared educational experiences in all of aggression. Many feminists believe one destructive. There's a profound kind of nations. The history of any culture is its is taught to be violent by a violent society. collapse and contraction. religion. I'm looking for a scholarly view Those things that people most deplore are The Enlightenment turned away from of religion. Everyone in the world should precisely what the culture needs. It is the organized religion, but put reason and sci- know Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judeo- strange truncations, limitations, and ence in its place. Romanticism rebelled Christianity, African tribal religions, and repressions of Judeo-Christianity that against organized religion, but put nature so forth. What we would do in effect is have in fact produced the cult of the striv- and art in its place. What has modernism say, "Here are all the possible ways of ing, heroic, turbulent individual artist, done? It turned against organized religion, spiritually apprehending the universe." from Michelangelo to Baudelaire to Lord and given nothing in its place. The effects Trying to produce an education that's Byron down to Elvis Presley. This is part of this are being felt by the young today. completely clear of religion is stupid. It of the greatness of the West. It's based on

6 FREE INQUIRY neurosis and repression. don't seem to catch the irony that these be living in grass huts." I knew that this FI: The artists are somewhat like oys- are male thinkers telling them about sentence would inflame these women, that ters producing pearls from the irritants of "phallocentrism." they would not read my book, and I could their upbringing. PAGLIA: Precisely. Most of the women stampede them to go in the wrong direc- PAGLIA: Judeo-Christian theology is in academe who pretend to be feminists tion. They would assume that I was of the fascinating—very complex, very intellec- are not. They do not know the history of far right. They were absolutely convinced tually stimulating. In some ways, it's an feminism. They never studied history, that they knew what my system was. overdevelopment of one part of the brain, anthropology, psychology, biology. And It worked brilliantly. I managed to and the body suffers. We need a long that is why, for all their attacks on the evade early tackles. I had the field to view. But we're in a period of postmod- canon and tradition, they created an myself for a long time. I often say, I mod- ernism, where people have this stupid idea instant canon of their own, all the more eled my hits—my one-line attack sound- that there are no great narratives anymore. false. I speak as a feminist. My feminism bites—on those great crisp hits in the mid- Everything is discontinuous. predates the feminism of Gloria Steinem. dle of the field that you can hear all the FI: Postmodernism seems to lead back I go way back. Most of these women in way in the back row. I love that kind of to premodernism: questioning all the pre- my view have drifted from their own cul- style, where a free safety appears out of sumptions of modernism reawakens inter- tural or ethnic or religious identities and nowhere. I'm doing quick, sharp hits, very est in ancient theologies. they cling to feminism as a new religion. violent but also with great bravura. If I PAGLIA: Postmodernism is a big fancy That's why they are absolutely irrational were to be asked what position I'd play it word for nothing. It is so passé. Let's get when you try to argue with them. They would be either free safety or tight end— past Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The have accepted passively certain received those big guys who run right over people view of the world that there's nothing but truths, and they have not thought them to the goal line. Football is a great model a nihilistic landscape is completely out- through. They cling together in bands, and for keeping your vision, concentrating moded. That's not our world. I feel that never listen to anyone outside their group. energy, planning, and keeping in condi- African-American music has entered very They had the idea that if they ignored tion. deeply into our psyche. The negativity and someone like me, I'd go away. It was per- FI: It would be nice if you could coach alienation in the African-American expe- fect for me, because it allowed me to ram- the Buffalo Bills. They might actually win rience is our native sensibility, and it's page unchecked. They're stupefied now. I a Super Bowl with your attitude. revolutionized the world in terms of music have had three best-sellers in five years. You have a very Nietzschean element and dance. I'm trying to assassinate post- FI: Speaking of your tactics, you write in your writing style—you, too, "philos- modernism. I'm at war with the people in that football is your only religion, and that ophize with a hammer." You make many our universities and academic journals feminists should learn strategies from it. statements that are deliberately provoca- and everywhere where people are still Our editor Paul Kurtz published an article tive. Here's one from Vamps and preaching this line. It's the worst thing in defending football in our Spring 1994 Tramps: "It's not male hatred of women, the world to say to someone, "The world issue, and a lot of our readers got very but male fear of woman that is the great is empty, the world is meaningless, no upset, accusing him of advocating vio- universal" ideals are possible." lence. PAGLIA: I think that that is my best FI: Related to postmodernism is the PAGLIA: Ugggh. Baseball is a sport contribution to feminism. When I came on claim that rational thinking is "phallocen- that all intellectuals pretend to like. It's the scene, all these wonderful archetypes tric." very passive. I've never liked it, even from the whole of world history—the PAGLIA: Oh! That kind of talk is so though I played softball in school. But I femme fatale, the medusa, the gorgon— embarrassing. It comes out of Jacques love football. It's controlled violence. were considered to be hallucinatory pro- Lacan. Even the word phallocentric is There are rules to circumscribe uncon- jections by women-hating men. And what such a stupid neologism. What kind of trolled violence. You're penalized. I think I did was to recover the stereotypes and idiots do we have pretending that that is that football is absolutely magnificent. I show that they contain some terrible truth supposed to be a big philosophical term? watched it with my father in Syracuse about sexual relations. Take a film like All of Lacan's work is a big pile of when I was young. The way the coaches Basic Instinct, which feminist and gay manure as far as I'm concerned, com- and players strategize, plan, marshall the activists picketed. I loved Basic Instinct. I pletely useless. Thank God, when I troups, anticipate, develop subterfuge— thought Sharon Stone gave one of the entered college in 1964, I was exposed to it's a wonderful combination of brain and great performances in the history of film. great literature, great art, great thought, brawn. She showed, in the interrogation scene everything from Plato and Aristotle down There's no doubt that I have modeled a where all the men are turned to jelly when to Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. lot of my tactics on football. When the she uncrosses her legs, that the sexual People who use the word phallocentric academic feminists tried to stonewall me, woman dominates man. She is in such are desperate academic careerists who I ran a misdirection play. My most notori- command there. Men don't hate women. want to sound important. ous sentence is in the first chapter of There are some men who hate their moth- FI: Female writers who make these Sexual Personae—"If civilization had ers—usually they end up being serial claims and refer to Lacan and Foucault been left in female hands, we would still murderers.

Spring 1995 7 Mostly men are fascinated by and fear called a misogynist! Does that make any feminist who is a critic of the feminist women. Woman represents the origin of sense? Someone who's an open lesbian, establishment. I'm someone who's trying man—every boy comes out of a woman's who's written on Madonna and Diana and to reform feminism, as much as my great body. It's beyond personality. It has to do Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy heroine, St. Teresa of Avila, who wasn't with this huge force that is nature itself. Onassis? I'm constantly writing evoca- trying to get rid of Catholicism, but was Some feminism tries to cut us off from tively of women. trying to reform it. Which she did. She nature and says "We're just the same"— By the way, I hope you will identify me was great trouble to the archbishop and well, we're not just the same. Woman's as a feminist. Some people just carelessly the Catholic hierarchy, but she complete- reproductive capabilities are very mysteri- call me an anti-feminist. Gloria Steinern ly, single-handedly reformed the Spanish ous. Science still can hardly come up with just did that again recently in the New York Carmelites. And that's what I feel I'm terms to analyze it. I regard man as Times. That is so stupid. I am a dissident doing to feminism, and to academe. • peripheral, marginal, to this huge reality. I got this idea from studying literature and art and realizing that so much of world mythology has certain shared themes. When you find something so widespread through so many periods, Toward a Partnership Society then you must say there is something to female sexuality that gives rise to these nightmare visions. I have a larger vision as a scholar, with a huge view of histo- Stuart Jordan ry—most of my opponents are pathetic. They know nothing. They might know rr raditional thinkers often say, "There modern periods, they might know the is nothing new under the sun." renaissance, but they really do not have Arguing that human nature is a rock on this broad overview. which many utopian ideas have Men do fear being sucked back into the foundered, they look with skepticism on womb again, shrunk down into infancy the denial of a "fixed" human nature that again. It's not clear how intimate men can has characterized much liberal thought be with women without masculinity being since the Enlightenment. Some even suffocated and terminated in women's describe the current movement toward greater power. This is a profound prob- equal rights and opportunities for men lem. A lot of behavior that looks like male and women as one more example of an ill- domination, I began to realize, was part of considered reform. the way that men keep themselves free. Even if we grant the existence of a Masculinity is very very fragile. Men go fixed human nature, this does not prove directly from control by their mothers to that people of either sex should dominate control by their wives. They have one society. The partnership society, a term "It is hard not to imagine almost brief period when they're free, and that's adopted from a contemporary book, is continuous improvement in many people's when they run and rampage. We need to based on equal opportunity for all regard- personal lives if the rights and understand this. Warren Farrell, in his ing ethnicity and race but especially gen- opportunities of both sexes were book The Myth of Male Power, says that der.' We argue below that our future sur- to converge." "Female beauty is the world's most potent vival may depend on this condition, which can lead to improvement in our drug." That is so true, and feminism does religion has had a profound influence on personal lives as well. not understand the allure that women the development of civilization, or that have, that men are awed by women and the gender orientation of religion is Historical Observation then become defensive because they don't important in how we view men and want to be castrated or become slaves to women today. We also know that main- D egardless of their views on religious women. There's a real tension, back and stream traditional religion throughout the ogma, few scholars would deny that forth through history. world has been overwhelmingly patriar- I have a peculiar way of looking at chal since at least the Minoan culture of things, through male eyes. It's probably Stuart Jordan is a past president and cur- the second millennium B.C.E.' It should because of my bisexual experience. Many rent board member of the Washington not be surprising, then, that our societies of the things I'm saying are obvious, but Area Secular Humanists. He is a Senior remain largely patriarchal today, indepen- feminism is so stuck behind its own blind- Staff Scientist at the National Aeronautics dent of what might be "built into our ers. One of the worst of these is to con- and Space Administration Goddard genes" This observation is important for stantly see misogyny everywhere. I'm Space Flight Center. what follows.

8 FREE INQUIRY