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{{Short description|American feminist academic and critic (born 1947)}}
'''Camille Anna Paglia''' (born ], ] in ]) is a social critic, author and avowed ]. She is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the ] in Philadelphia.
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2020}}


{{Infobox writer
<table align=right><tr><td>]</td></tr></table>
| birth_name = Camille Anna Paglia
| name = Camille Paglia
| image = Camille Paglia.jpg
| caption = Paglia in 2017
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1947|4|2|mf=y}}
| birth_place = ], U.S.
| occupation = Professor, cultural critic
| education = ] (])<br>] (], ])
| subjects = Popular culture, art, poetry, sex, film, feminism, politics
| movement = ]
}}
'''Camille Anna Paglia''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|p|ɑː|l|i|ə}}; born April 2, 1947) is an American academic, social critic and ]. Paglia was a professor at the ] in ], Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024.<ref>{{cite web|url= https://www.uarts.edu/staff-directory/cpaglia|title= Camille Paglia|website= Staff|publisher= U arts|access-date= May 7, 2019|archive-date= October 17, 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20191017181332/https://www.uarts.edu/staff-directory/cpaglia|url-status= dead}}</ref> She is critical of many aspects of modern culture<ref name="TMN-2005-08-03">{{Cite news |newspaper=The Morning News |title=Birnbaum v. Camille Paglia |date=August 3, 2005
| first=Robert |last=Birnbaum |url= http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/camille_paglia.php | format = interview}}</ref><ref name= "cbc-2009-05-23">{{Cite news |title = An atheist's defence of religion: The paradox of Camille Paglia, the cultural gunslinger|first = Richard|last = Handler|date = May 23, 2009 | work = CBC News|url = http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/an-atheist-s-defence-of-religion-1.835709}}</ref> and is the author of '']'' (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary ] and of ], as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of ] such as its ], ], and ].


== Personal life ==
Paglia is an ] of many apparent contradictions: a ] who champions art both high and low, with a classical view that ] is inherently dangerous, and yet who also celebrates dionysian revelry in the wilder, darker sides of ].


Paglia was born in ], the eldest child<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url= https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/camille-paglia-i-dont-get-along-with-lesbians-at-all-they-dont-like-me-and-i-dont-like-them-8076611.html |title=Camille Paglia – 'I don't get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them'|last= Patterson |first=Christina|date=August 25, 2012|work=The Independent |access-date=May 30, 2017|language= en-GB}}</ref> of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (née Colapietro) Paglia. All four of her grandparents were born in ]. Her mother emigrated to the United States at five years old from ], in the ], ], Italy.<ref name= "TMN-2005-08-03" /><ref>{{Citation | url = https://youtube.com/pg0hPidLPCk?t=41m37s | title = You tube | publisher = Google}}{{Dead link|date=November 2018 |bot= InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}</ref> Paglia has stated that her father's side of the family was from the ]n towns of ], ], and ].{{Sfn | Paglia | 1994 | p = 61}} Paglia was raised ],<ref>{{cite news |work= ]|url= https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-feminist-capitalist-professor-under-fire-11567201511|url-status=live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20191230102135/https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-feminist-capitalist-professor-under-fire-11567201511 |archive-date=December 30, 2019|title= A Feminist Capitalist Professor Under Fire|last= Varadaraja |first= Tunku|date=August 30, 2019}}</ref> and attended primary school in rural ], where her family lived in a working ].<ref>{{Citation | title = Arcadia | newspaper = ] | date = March 15, 1997 | page = 22}}</ref> Her father, a ] of ],<ref>{{Citation | title = Pasquale J. Paglia | type = obit | newspaper = Syracuse Herald Tribune | date = January 23, 1991}}</ref> taught at the Oxford Academy high school and exposed his young daughter to art through books he brought home about French art history. In 1957, her family moved to ], New York, so that her father could begin ]; he eventually became a professor of ] at ].<ref name="time-1992-01-13">{{Cite news |newspaper=Time |title=The Bête Noire of Feminism: Camille Paglia |first=Martha |last=Duffy |date=January 13, 1992 |url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974660-1,00.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20121106034740/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974660-1,00.html |url-status= dead|archive-date= November 6, 2012}}</ref> She attended the Edward Smith Elementary School, T.&nbsp;Aaron Levy Junior High, and ].<ref name="Scotsman">{{Cite journal | last = Paglia| first = Camille | title =My Education | journal = The Scotsman | date = January 26, 2000}}</ref> In 1992, Carmelia Metosh, her ] teacher for three years, said, "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now."<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite news |title= Hurricane Camille |first= James 'Jim' | last = McKeever | newspaper = Syracuse Herald American |location= Syracuse, NY |date= November 22, 1992}}</ref> Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgments to ''Sexual Personae'', later describing her as "the ] of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and ]s".<ref name = "Scotsman" />
Paglia came to public attention with the publication of her first book, '']: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'', in 1990, when she also began writing about ] and ] in mainstream newspapers and magazines. Less than a year after ''Sexual Personae'' was published, she was the subject of a '']'' cover story, "Woman Warrior".


During her stays at a summer ]<ref>{{cite web |title=A Short History of the Beaverkill Valley |url= http://beaverkillfriends.org/Pages/StoryV2History.html |website=Friends of Beaverkill Community |access-date=March 31, 2019}}</ref> camp in ], she took on a variety of new names, including Anastasia (her ] name, inspired by the film '']''), Stacy, and Stanley.{{Sfn | Paglia | 1994 | p = 428–29}} A crucially significant event for her was when an ] exploded after she poured too much ] into the latrine. "That symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture, into pornography and crime and ]... and I would drop the bomb into it".<ref>{{Cite news|url= https://www.chicagotribune.com/1994/12/08/camille-paglia/ |title=Camille Paglia! |last=Lavin |first=Cheryl |newspaper= Chicago Tribune | date = December 8, 1994 |access-date=January 18, 2017}}</ref><ref name = "nyt-1994-11-20">{{Cite news |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/20/books/advertisements-for-themselves.html |title=Advertisements for Themselves |first=Wendy |last=Steiner |newspaper=The New York Times |date = November 20, 1994}}</ref>
Her significance in the 1990s intellectual world was two-fold:


For more than a decade, Paglia was the partner of artist Alison Maddex.<ref>{{cite news |title= In a New Museum, a Blue Period |first=William L |last=Hamilton |date=March 11, 1999 |newspaper=The New York Times |url= https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40A11F8345B0C728DDDAA0894D1494D81 |archive-url= https://archive.today/20130130144017/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40A11F8345B0C728DDDAA0894D1494D81 |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 30, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title= Camille Paglia: Warrior for the word |last= Lauerman |first= Kerry |date=April 7, 2005 |newspaper=Salon |url= http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/04/07/paglia |access-date= October 9, 2010 |archive-date=January 23, 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110123234737/http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/04/07/paglia |url-status=dead}}</ref> Paglia legally adopted Maddex's son (who was born in 2002).<ref name= "gm-2007-10-18">{{Cite news |title= Camille Paglia: Hillary Clinton can't win – and shouldn't |newspaper= The Globe & Mail |first= Margaret |last= Wente |date=October 18, 2007 |url= https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/camille-paglia-hillary-clinton-cant-win---and-shouldnt/article1082452/
#The seventies had seen the rise of a particularly rigid, doctrinaire "feminism" that many were finding stifling but only a few were challenging (e.g., the "]" ] lesbians, perhaps typified by ]).
| location= Toronto}}</ref> In 2007, the couple separated<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.towleroad.com/2009/06/camille-paglia-gay-activists-childish-for-demanding-rights.html |title= Camille Paglia: Gay Activists 'Childish' for Demanding Rights |publisher= Towleroad |date= June 25, 2009 |access-date= June 28, 2012 |archive-date= April 1, 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150401072717/http://www.towleroad.com/2009/06/camille-paglia-gay-activists-childish-for-demanding-rights.html |url-status= dead }}</ref> but remained "harmonious co-parents", in the words of Paglia, who lived {{convert|2|mi|km|0|abbr=off|sp=us|spell=on}} apart.<ref name=":0" />
#The left was pushing for a change in the traditional focus of western universities on western culture (sometimes derided as the study of "]"). For example, ] was dropping its well-regarded undergraduate requirement of a year-long course in "]" in favor of a more broadly-focused study of "Cultures, Ideas and Values" or CIV.


Paglia is an ], and has stated she has "a very spiritual ] view of the universe".<ref name=PagliaMystic1>{{cite web|url=https://www.spl.org/Seattle-Public-Library/documents/transcriptions/2017/17-03-20_Camille-Paglia.pdf|title=Camille Paglia discusses 'Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism|publisher=]|accessdate=June 12, 2022}}</ref> She has expressed interest in ] and has written about it in several of her works, including ''Sexual Personae'': "I'm an astrologer – people don't mention this! I mean, everyone's attacked me for everything else. I mean, I'm an astrologer – it's right in my book. I endorse astrology. I believe in astrology. Will someone attack me for that? No!"<ref>{{cite web|title=Camille Paglia, astrologer|url=https://www.quut.com/cpc/pag-astr.html|work=Questionable Utility Company|accessdate=March 7, 2024}}</ref>
Against this backdrop, Paglia appeared on the scene as a female intellectual who enjoyed challenging the left-wing position in these areas. But she did so by arguing from an unusual position that also embraced ], ], and ]. She describes herself as a ] and a ]. She is also an ] with ] sensibilties, though she thinks ] should be at the center of world education.


==Writings== == Education ==


Paglia entered Harpur College at ] in 1964.<ref name=Showalter>{{Citation | last = Showalter | first = Elaine | title = Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage | place = London | publisher = Picador | year = 2002}}</ref> The same year, Paglia's poem "Atrophy" was published in the local newspaper.<ref>{{Cite news | title = ''Atrophy'' |newspaper=The Post-Standard |location=Syracuse, New York |date=April 12, 1964}}</ref> She later said that she was trained to read literature by poet ], who "believed in the responsiveness of the body, and of the activation of the senses to literature&nbsp;... And oh did I believe in that".<ref name="Nester"/> She graduated from Harpur as class ] in 1968.<ref name="time-1992-01-13" />
Following the academically-oriented ''Sexual Personae'' (1990), Paglia began a series of more popularly oriented works. In 1992 she published ''Sex, Art and American Culture''. Her next book, ''Vamps and Tramps'' (late 1994), was a collection of short pieces along with new material such as a theoretical manifesto about sex, "No Law in the Arena". In 1998 she published a short volume about ]'s '']'' in the ''British Film Institute Film Classics'' series.


According to Paglia, while in college she punched a "marauding drunk",<ref name="nyt-1994-11-20"/> and takes pride in having been put on ] for committing 39&nbsp;pranks.<ref name="Scotsman" />
In 2005 Pantheon Books published her study of poetry, entitled ''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems''. The title is from a line in "Holy Sonnet XIV" by ]. She is currently (]) writing a third essay collection for Vintage Books, and working on a project concerned with ] and ].


Paglia attended ] as a ], and she claims to have been the only open lesbian at ] from 1968 to 1972.<ref name="nyt-1994-11-20"/><ref>{{Cite news |first=Dan|last=Savage | title = Interview |newspaper=The Stranger |date = October 4, 1992}}</ref> At Yale, Paglia quarreled with ], whom she later characterized as "then darkly ]," and argued with the ], Women's Liberation Rock Band when they dismissed ] as ].<ref name="Editor 1998">"Letter to the Editor", Camille Paglia, "Chronicle of Higher Education", June 17, 1998.</ref> Paglia was mentored by ].<ref name=Showalter /> ''Sexual Personae'' was then titled "The Androgynous Dream: the image of the androgyne as it appears in literature and is embodied in the ] of the artist, with reference to the visual arts and the cinema."<ref name="ReferenceB">{{Citation | type = letter | first = Camille A | last = Paglia | title = To Professor Carolyn Heilbrun | date = February 13, 1972 | publisher = Knopf Archive, Humanities Research Center | place = Austin, Texas}}</ref>
Paglia was a columnist for ] for six years from its first issue and is now a contributing editor at ]. She continues to write articles and reviews for media and scholarly journals, such as her long article, "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s", published in the classics and humanities journal '']'' in winter 2003.


In 1973, Paglia drove to an appearance by ] at Dartmouth, hoping to arrange for her to speak at Bennington, but found it difficult to find the money for Sontag's speaking fee. Paglia staged a poster campaign urging students to attend Sontag's appearance. Sontag arrived at Bennington Carriage Barn, where she was to speak, more than an hour late, and then began reading what Paglia recalled as a "boring and bleak" short story about "nothing" in the style of a ].<ref name=RollysonandPaddock />
==Biography==


== Career ==
Camille Anna Paglia was born ], ], at 6:57 PM in ]. She was the first child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (Colapietro) Paglia, who was born in Italy, and was raised in an Italian immigrant family.


In the autumn of 1972, Paglia began teaching at ], which hired her in part thanks to a recommendation from ].<ref name="Findlay">{{Citation | newspaper = ] | first = Heather | last = Findlay | title = Interview |date=September 2000}}</ref> At Bennington, she befriended the philosopher James Fessenden, who first taught there in the same semester.{{Sfn|Paglia|1994|p=202}}
(The name "Paglia" specifically describes the color of the straw that is produced in Italy, the same color that ] had in mind in ] when she wrote of "the pale-golden straw scattered or in heaps.")


Through her study of the ] and the scholarly work of ], ], ] and others, Paglia developed a theory of sexual history that contradicted a number of ideas fashionable at the time, hence her criticism of ], ], ] and others. She laid out her ideas on ], ], homosexuality, ] and other topics in her Yale PhD thesis ''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art,'' which she defended in December 1974. In September 1976, she gave a public lecture drawing on that dissertation,<ref>{{Citation | newspaper = Bennington Banner | title = Lecture by Camille Paglia | date = September 20, 1976}}</ref> in which she discussed ]'s '']'', followed by remarks on ], ], ], and ].<ref>{{Citation | title = Interview |date=November 2002}}</ref>
The Paglia household had little money, but the parents exposed their daughter to the best of Western art and culture. She said that the first music to leave an impression on her was ]'s '']'', an opera which, in her words, "struck me with electrifying force." She was three when she heard it. That same year, she also became enamored with the witch in ]'s '']'', a character she later described as elegant and imperious.


Paglia wrote that she "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the ] program at the ], when they categorically denied that ]s influence human experience or behavior".<ref>{{Citation | title = Letter to the Editor | first = Camille | last = Paglia | newspaper = ] | date = June 17, 1998}}</ref> Similar fights with feminists and academics culminated in a 1978 incident{{explain|date=February 2021}} which led her to resign from Bennington; after a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a ] from the college and resigned in 1979.<ref name="Findlay" />
Throughout her childhood, she was drawn to several charismatic and powerful figures in art, popular culture and history, setting a precedent for her adult career as critic and scholar. Her writings often draw on the entire history of her experience with these figures, from the moment she first encountered them, through her enjoyment of them as a fan, to her scholarly and critical assessment of them. In this sense, she can be described as an ] critic; that is to say, her work is less theoretical than other writers and more attentive to her direct experience with the topics about which she writes.


Paglia finished ''Sexual Personae'' in the early 1980s, but could not get it published. She supported herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, ], and other Connecticut colleges. Her paper, "The ] Androgyne and the Faerie Queene", was published in ''English Literary Renaissance'', Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by ] in his April 1980 article "] and the Ellipses of Interpretation", in ''Journal of Religion in Literature'', but her academic career was otherwise stalled. In a 1995 letter to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a ] alternative newspaper ('']'') in the early 1980s". She wrote articles on New Haven's historic ]s and on an old house that was a stop on the ].<ref>{{Citation | first = Camille | last = Paglia | title = To Boyd Holmes (letter) |date=February 1995}}</ref>
As an example, even her ] characters as a child became subjects of her serious writings as an adult (she dressed as Alice from '']'' at the age of four; ] at five; the ] ] at six; a Roman soldier at seven; ] at eight and ] at nine; and she has been published on all of these topics, with the exception, perhaps, of Robin Hood.)


In 1984, she joined the faculty of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged in 1987 with the Philadelphia College of Art to become the ].
Her primary school years were spent in ], a farming community where, at the Oxford Academy, her father taught high school students. At the age of nine she tried to produce the play ''Hamlet'' (based on the Classics Comic Books) in school but became frustrated because some of her classmates hadn't learned their lines. The experience taught her that she couldn't depend on other people, and she soon became a rather aggressive child.


Paglia is on the editorial board of the classics and ] journal '']''.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.bu.edu/arion/about-arion/ |title= About Arion |publisher= Boston University |access-date= June 28, 2012 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120708062804/http://www.bu.edu/arion/about-arion/ |archive-date= July 8, 2012 }}</ref> She wrote a regular column for Salon.com from 1995 to 2001, and again from 2007 to 2009. Paglia resumed writing a Salon.com column in 2016.<ref>{{Cite news |url= http://www.salon.com/2016/02/11/sexism_has_nothing_to_do_with_it_camille_paglia_on_hillary_clinton_gloria_steinem_and_why_new_hampshire_women_broke_for_bernie_sanders/ |title="Sexism has nothing to do with it": Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem – and why New Hampshire women broke for Bernie Sanders |last=Paglia |first=Camille |newspaper=] |date=February 12, 2016}}</ref>
Her family moved to ], where her father entered graduate school at Syracuse University and then taught as a professor of romance languages at ]. Paglia attended the Edward Smith Elementary school, T. Aaron Levy Junior High and William Nottingham High School.


Paglia cooperated with Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock in their writing of ''Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon''. Rollyson and Paddock note that Sontag "had her lawyer put our publisher on notice" when she realized she was to be the subject.<ref name=RollysonandPaddock>{{Citation | last1 = Rollyson | first1 = Carl | last2 = Paddock | first2 = Lisa | title = Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon | place = New York | publisher = WW Norton & Co | year = 2000}}</ref>
During the summers, she went to Spruce Ridge Camp, a ] facility in the ]. Many years later she described it, in the New York Observer, as a "pre] heaven. It was just so romantic. I had mad ]es on all the counselors." She took different names when she was there, including Anastasia, her confirmation name, inspired by the ] ], Stacy, and Stanley. In one formative experience, she exploded the outhouse by pouring in too much ]. She said, "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture..."


Paglia participates in the decennial poll of film professionals conducted by '']'' which asks participants to submit a list of what they believe to be the ten ]. According to her responses to the poll in 2002, 2012, and 2022, the films Paglia holds in highest regard include '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', and '']''.<ref>{{Citation | url = http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=Camille&surname=Paglia | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120625143718/http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=Camille&surname=Paglia | url-status = dead | archive-date = June 25, 2012 | title = How the directors and critics voted: Camille Paglia | year = 2002 | work = ] via BFI | place = UK}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | url = http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/747 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120819021249/http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/747 | url-status = dead | archive-date = August 19, 2012 | title = Camille Paglia | year = 2012 | work = ] via BFI | place = UK}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time/all-voters/camille-paglia | title=Camille Paglia &#124; BFI }}</ref>
The year ] was an especially important year in Paglia's development, as it was the year her family got both a ] and a ] set. Television exposed her to the movies of the 1930s for the first time, especially those of ], who made a big impression on her. She also fell in love with ], and obsessively collected every photograph of her that she could lay her hands on. In 1961 when Taylor won for Best Actress at the 1960 ] for ], Paglia's reaction was "feverish excitement the whole next day at school." At about this time, she received a lecture from her father regarding ]'s poor opinion of actors.


In 2005, Paglia was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals '']'' and '']''.<ref name="gm-2007-10-18"/> In 2012, an article in '']'' remarked that {{nowrap|"nyone}} who has been following the body count of the culture wars over the past decades knows Paglia".<ref name=on-art/> Paglia has said that she is willing to have her entire career judged on the basis of her composition of what she considers to be "probably the most important sentence that she has ever written": "God is man's greatest idea."<ref>{{cite web|title=Camille Paglia| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120524081033/http://bigideas.tvo.org/episode/128098/camille-paglia | archive-date = May 24, 2012 |url=http://bigideas.tvo.org/episode/128098/camille-paglia|work=Big Ideas|publisher=]|date=November 7, 2009}}</ref>
While in high school, she began research on ]. The research lasted three years, ending when she was 17. She said, "I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime." She planned to write a book on Earhart, and while the project never came to fruition, she wrote about Earhart for a popular magazine in the 1990s.


== Views ==
By all accounts, she was an excellent student at Nottingham High, devoted to her work. Carmelia Metosh was her ] teacher for three years, and in 1992 recalled: "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now. She was very alert, `with it' in every way." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to ''Sexual Personae'', and in January 2000, described her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards."


=== Feminism ===
In some ways it appears that 1963 was the beginning of her career as a feminist scholar. For her birthday that year, she received a copy of ]'s ''The Second Sex'' from a Belgian colleague of her father's, ]. The book had a tremendous influence on her and furthered her resolve to be an important feminist writer. On ] of that year, '']'' magazine published her letter about equal opportunity for American women. And on ], she appeared in Syracuse's ''Herald American'' in a short profile about her outstanding achievements as a student, noting her longtime study of feminist icon Earhart.


Though Paglia admires ] and '']'' ("the supreme work of modern feminism... its deep learning and massive argument are unsurpassed") as well as ],<ref name = Showalter /> '']'' critic Martha Duffy writes that Paglia "does not hesitate to hurl brazen insults" at several feminists. In an interview, Paglia stated that to be effective, one has to "name names"; criticism should be concrete. Paglia stated that many critics "escape into abstractions", rendering their criticism "intellectualized and tame".<ref name= "Rodden2001">{{cite book|first=John|last= Rodden|title= Performing the Literary Interview: How Writers Craft Their Public Selves|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=WzMemaK2RMEC&pg=PA167 |year= 2001|publisher=]|location= Lincoln|isbn=0-8032-3939-4|page=174}}</ref> Paglia was known as one of the scholars and feminists that ] American singer ] within feminism and for which publications such as '']'' called her the "high priestess of ]".<ref name="Madonna">{{cite magazine|title=Madonna|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zUE-AQAAIAAJ|year=1998|magazine=Vogue|page=135|url-access=limited}}</ref>
===College years===


Paglia accused Greer of becoming "a drone in three years" as a result of her early success; Paglia has also criticized the work of feminist activist ].<ref name= "time-1992-01-13" /> ] calls Paglia "unique in the hyperbole and virulence of her hostility to virtually all the prominent feminist activists, public figures, writers and scholars of her generation", mentioning ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ] as targets of her criticism.<ref name= Showalter /> Paglia accused ] of starting "the repressive, ] style in feminist criticism."<ref name= "Salon-1999-06-05">{{Cite news |title=Kate Millett, the ambivalent feminist |first=Leslie |last=Crawford |newspaper= Salon |date=June 5, 1999 |url= http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/06/05/millet/print.html}}</ref> Paglia has repeatedly criticized ], former president of the ] (NOW), calling her a "sanctimonious", unappealing role model for women<ref>{{cite web |first= Camille |last=Paglia|url= http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970429.html |title= Why I Go for Women with Big Beaks |website=]|publisher=]|location=San Francisco, ] |date=April 29, 1997 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20081230063354/http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970429.html |archive-date= December 30, 2008}}</ref> whose "smug, arrogant" attitude is accompanied by "painfully limited processes of thought".<ref>{{cite web | first = Camille | last = Paglia | url = http://208.17.81.135/col/pagl/1997/10/14frames.html | title = Men and their Discontents | website = ] | publisher = ] | location = San Francisco, CA | date = October 14, 1974 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://archive.today/20100427052432/http://208.17.81.135/col/pagl/1997/10/14frames.html | archive-date = April 27, 2010 | access-date = January 16, 2009 }}</ref> Paglia contends that under Ireland's leadership, NOW "damaged and marginalized the women's movement".<ref>{{cite web |first=Camille|last= Paglia |url= http://archive.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2000/12/06/year_end/print.html |title=The Peevish Porcupine Beats the Shrill Rooster |website=] |publisher=] |location=San Francisco, CA |date= December 6, 2000 |access-date=June 28, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090206142246/http://archive.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2000/12/06/year_end/print.html |archive-date=February 6, 2009 }}</ref>
She graduated high school in 1964 and began attending ], Harpur College. There she became friendly with Bruce Benderson (who had also attended Nottingham High School), Stephen Jarratt and Stephen Feld, three gay men who would have a big influence on her. During a summer break, she worked the night shift at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse as a secretary in the emergency ward.


In 1999, ] wrote an essay called "The Professor of Parody", in which she criticized Judith Butler for retreating to abstract theory disconnected from real world problems.<ref>{{cite news|first1=Robert |last1= Boynton |title=Who Needs Philosophy?|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/21/magazine/who-needs-philosophy.html |newspaper=] |location= New York City|date=November 21, 1999 |access-date= December 12, 2015}}</ref> Paglia reacted to the essay by stating that the criticism was "long overdue", but characterized the criticism as "one ] diva turning against another". She criticized Nussbaum for failing to make her criticisms earlier while accusing her of borrowing Paglia's ideas without acknowledgement. She called Nussbaum's "preparation or instinct for sex analysis... dubious at best", but nevertheless stated that "Nussbaum is a genuine scholar who operates on a vastly higher intellectual level than Butler".<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.salon.com/it/col/pagl/1999/02/24pagl.html|title = Butler vs. Nussbaum|website = ]|publisher = ]|location = San Francisco, CA|date = February 24, 1999|access-date = July 2, 2009|archive-date = June 25, 2009|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090625205734/http://www.salon.com/it/col/pagl/1999/02/24pagl.html|url-status = dead}}</ref>
One semester at college she was put on probation for committing 39 pranks. When she was 19, she hit a drunken young stranger in the teeth with her right fist, protecting a small student whom he and a friend were groping on the street. ] '']'' was released that year. Paglia saw it and was particularly taken with actress ]. She later remarked: "She was one of the most original, stylish, and articulate sexual personae of the royal ]. I never forgot her, and I followed her subsequent movie career with great fascination." Many of Paglia's memories of the 1960s are linked to movies. For instance, in 1968 she and her friend Stephen Jarratt saw ]'s '']'', and ]'s '']'', and continued to write about the experience years later.


Many feminists have criticized Paglia; ] calls her "Perhaps the most conspicuous target of feminist opprobrium," noting that the ''Women's Review of Books'' described ''Sexual Personae'' as ]'s "counter-assault on feminism".<ref name=Sommers>{{Citation | last = Sommers | first = Christina Hoff | title = Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women | place = New York | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 1995| title-link = Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women }}</ref> Some feminist critics have characterized Paglia as an "] feminist", critical of central features of much contemporary feminism but holding out "her own special variety of feminist affirmation".<ref>{{Cite book |first= Peter |last=Loptson |title=Readings on human nature |date= 1998 |isbn=1-55111-156-X |page=490 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=6bGOKpFOY7kC&q=camille%20paglia&pg=PA490 | publisher =Broadview Press|location= Peterborough, Canada}}</ref>
She graduated from college in 1968, valedictorian of her class. Just a few months later, as a student at the Yale Graduate School she attended a party in the home of ], one of her teachers, and ended up being insulted by a prominent Yale psychiatrist named ] and his wife for being a lesbian. Lifton, at that time, was the Foundations' Fund Research Professor in Psychiatry at Yale, a position he held until 1984. His attack seems to have emboldened her to not only be out as a lesbian, but to be in everyone's face about it. She has repeatedly noted she was publicly out as a lesbian at ], and was actually the only open lesbian there from 1968 to 1972, a fact which harmed her career. As she told reporter ] in 1992:


] traded a series of sometimes personal attacks with Paglia throughout the early 1990s. In '']'', Wolf wrote that Paglia "poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters" and characterized Paglia as intellectually dishonest.<ref>{{cite magazine | first = Naomi | last = Wolf | author-link=Naomi Wolf |title = Feminist Fatale | newspaper = The New Republic | date = March 16, 1992 | pages = 23–25}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine | first = Camille | last = Paglia | title = Wolf Pack | magazine = ] | date = April 13, 1992 | pages = 4–5 |ref= none}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine | first1 = Naomi | last1 = Wolf | first2 = Camille | last2 = Paglia | title = The Last Words | newspaper = The New Republic | date = May 18, 1992 | pages = 4–5}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Viner|first= Katharine |title= Stitched up|url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/sep/01/society2 |newspaper= The Guardian| date = August 31, 2001|location= London}}</ref> In a 1991 speech, Paglia criticized Wolf for blaming anorexia on the media, calling Wolf a "twit".<ref>{{Citation | title = Gifts of Speech | url = http://gos.sbc.edu/p/paglia.html | last = Paglia | format = lecture | date = September 19, 1991 | publisher = ] | place = Cambridge, Massachusetts}}</ref> ] said of Paglia that, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a ] saying they're not ]."<ref>{{Cite news
:''"I took the career price for that. I shoved my lesbianism down people&#8217;s throats when I wasn&#8217;t getting any pleasure from it; I couldn&#8217;t find anyone to be with! There is the irony, I took all the negatives without any of the positives! I tried. I tried to pick up women, I tried. In 1969 I traveled Europe with the handbook, ''The Gay Guide to Europe''. I went from place to place, every city, and I thought, "What is the problem here?" All the gay men are finding contacts everywhere! You can&#8217;t avoid it! Bus terminals, toilets, diners, everywhere! Finally I had to conclude, after so many decades of frustration, that lesbians are not looking for sex. It&#8217;s not about sex. They think it&#8217;s about sex. It&#8217;s about mommy! It&#8217;s about mommy is what it&#8217;s about!"''
| title= New enemies list for some of you feminists |newspaper= Reading Eagle |last=Fields |first=Suzanne |date= May 14, 1992 |url= https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JLUxAAAAIBAJ&pg=1293%2C8699227}}</ref> Paglia called Steinem "the ] of feminism".<ref name= "tmj-1992-12-06">{{Cite news |title= Ideas flying, a maverick breaks the feminist mold |last= Blinkhorn |first= Lois |newspaper= The Milwaukee Journal |date= December 6, 1992 |url= https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=06AaAAAAIBAJ&pg=1706%2C3894467 }}{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> ] calls Paglia one of a "seemingly endless parade of social critics have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem". Pollitt writes that Paglia has glorified "male dominance", and has been able to get away with things "that might make even ] blanch," because she is a woman.<ref>{{cite web |last=Pollitt |first=Katha |author-link=Katha Pollitt |date=November 1997 |title=Feminism's Unfinished Business |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97nov/pollitt.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100429200713/https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97nov/pollitt.htm |archive-date=2010-04-29 |access-date=May 25, 2008 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref>


Paglia's view that rape is sexually motivated has been endorsed by ] ] and ]; they comment that "Paglia... urges women to be skeptical toward the feminist 'party line' on the subject, to become better informed about risk factors, and to use the information to lower their risk of rape".<ref>{{Citation | last1 = Thornhill | first1 = Randy | last2 = Palmer | first2 = Craig T | title = A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion | place = Cambridge, Massachusetts | publisher = MIT Press | year = 2000 | page = 183}}</ref>
While studying at Yale, Paglia quarreled with ], whom she later characterised as "then darkly ]", and fought with the ] Women's Liberation Rock Band because they dismissed the ] as "sexist."


In an essay critiquing the Hollywood/celebrity fad of "Girl Squads", made popular in 2015 by pop-icons like ], Paglia argued that rather than empowering women the cliquish practice actually harms the self-esteem of those who are not rich, famous, or attractive enough to belong to the group, while further defining women only by a very narrow, often sexualized stereotype. She challenged that to be truly empowering, these groups need to mentor, advise, and be more inclusive, for more women to realize their true, individual potential.<ref>{{cite news | last = Paglia | first = Camille | title = Camille Paglia Takes on Taylor Swift, Hollywood's #GirlSquad Culture | url = http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/camille-paglia-takes-taylor-swift-845827 | work = ] | date = October 12, 2015 }}</ref>
Her study of sexuality in Western literature continued to develop with her reading of ]'s '']'' and ] '']''. Several of her closest friends, Benderson, Jarratt and Feld all moved to San Francisco. Paglia recalled that she "had two close encounters with ] (author of ''Sexual Politics'') just after she became famous, in ], and ], but she was too morosely self-absorbed to notice." Because of what she saw as Millett's "careless" attitude toward scholarship, Millett became a person Paglia began to define herself against.


=== Transgender people ===
In 1971 she discovered ] ''The Nude'' while browsing the shelves of Yale's library. "If ever I was in love with a book, it was with this one," she wrote in ''Sex, Art & American Culture''; and in an article for '']'' in 2002, she called it "the best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art." She wrote, "Students who read Clark will be safely inoculated against the worst excesses of feminist theory, with its prattle about '']'' and ''the male ]''&mdash;terms cooked up by ideologues with glaringly little knowledge of or feeling for art." The book influenced her writing in her Yale ] and subsequent works.


Though she has not ], Paglia identifies as ].<ref name="WeeklyStandard">{{Cite news |last=Last |first=Jonathan V. |date=June 15, 2017 |title=Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror |work=] |location=New York City |url=http://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgenderism-and-islamist-terror/article/2008464 |access-date=June 15, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019101729/https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/donald-trump?source=%2Fweekly-standard%2Fcamille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgenderism-and-islamist-terror |archive-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref> She reports having ] since childhood, and says that "never once in my life have I felt female".<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|last=Varadarajan|first=Tunku|date=2019-08-30|title=Opinion {{!}} A Feminist Capitalist Professor Under Fire|language=en-US|work=The Wall Street Journal|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-feminist-capitalist-professor-under-fire-11567201511|access-date=2021-07-31|issn=0099-9660}}</ref> She says that she was "donning flamboyant male costumes from early childhood on".<ref name="WeeklyStandard" />
Of the dissertation, her mentor and adviser, ] found one fault in the draft he read in 1971. He cautioned in the margin that one passage was "Mere Sontagisme!" Paglia later wrote, "It saddened me, but I knew Bloom was right. ], who could have been ] successor as a supreme woman scholar, had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing." She received a Master's Degree in English from Yale that year.


Nevertheless, Paglia says that she is "highly skeptical about the current ] wave" which she thinks has been produced by "far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows". She writes that "In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity."<ref name="WeeklyStandard" />
In February of 1972 she wrote a letter to ], asking for information about her forthcoming book on ], and Heilbrun responded with a letter saying that her book would not be able to deal with all available material on that subject. When the book came out, Paglia gave a thoroughly negative assessment of it in a review for the Summer 1973 issue of the journal the '']''. "Heilbrun's book is so poorly researched that it may disgrace the subject in the eyes of serious scholars," she wrote. The article showed that the reviewer was an expert on the history of sexual androgyne, but as it was the journal's policy for reviews to be published without attribution, few people knew that Paglia wrote it.


Paglia's views led to a petition demanding that the ] remove her from their faculty, but the university rejected it. Paglia considered it "a publicity stunt" and praised the university's "eloquent statement affirming ] a landmark in contemporary education."<ref>{{Cite web|title=University of the Arts rejects calls to fire Camille Paglia|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/university-arts-rejects-calls-fire-camille-paglia|access-date=2021-08-03|website=insidehighered.com|date=April 17, 2019 |language=en}}</ref>
===Teaching career===


=== Climate change ===
In the fall, she began her first semester teaching at ]. There she met ], a philosophy instructor from Columbia University, who started teaching at the same time as Paglia. In January 1997, Mark W. Edmundson, now a professor at the University of Virginia, recalled attending Bennington while Paglia was there:
{{See also|Climate change denial}}
Paglia has long rejected the scientific consensus on ], which she describes as "the political agenda that has slowly accrued" around the issue of ].<ref>{{cite web|last=Paglia|first=Camille|date=June 11, 2007|title=Real inconvenient truths|url=https://www.salon.com/2007/04/11/global_warming_14/|access-date=October 4, 2018|website=]|publisher=]|location=San Francisco, California}}</ref> In a 2017 interview with '']'', Paglia stated, "It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to ] (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender."<ref name="WeeklyStandard" />


=== French academia ===
:''"She was appointed as my faculty advisor in her first term. I went in for my advisorial visit and she was entirely herself, talking very fast about many things I knew nothing about. I ran in fear. Alas, I was too puzzled to take any of her classes, which seemed to be full of very sophisticated people from LA and from New York."''


Paglia is critical of the influence many postwar French writers have had on the humanities, claiming that universities are in the "thrall" of French ];<ref name="smh-2005-04-08">{{Cite news
In 1973, her paper, "] and ]," was published in the journal '']'' (a '']'' cover story on Lord Hervey, November 2nd, praised the paper as "brilliant.") In April, she traveled to see Susan Sontag at a lecture at ] and later invited her to Bennington. Sontag spoke there on October 4th, an event that caused much controversy at the college since she read a short story instead of giving a cultural lecture, as she had agreed to. Paglia later commented, "I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual," and then wrote about the meeting at length in a catty essay entitled "Sontag, Bloody Sontag," published in "Vamps & Tramps".
| newspaper=]
| last=Baird |first=Julia
| title=Hark, a libertarian looks to her right
| date=April 8, 2005
| url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/Julia-Baird/Hark-a-libertarian-looks-to-her-right/2005/04/18/1113676702351.html}}</ref> that in the works of ], ], ] and ], she never once found a sentence that interested her.<ref name="salon-2007-04-11">{{Cite news
| title=Real inconvenient truths
| newspaper=]
| first=Camille |last=Paglia
| date=April 11, 2007
| url=https://www.salon.com/2007/04/11/global_warming_14/}}</ref>


However, Paglia's assessment of French writers is not purely negative. She has called ]'s '']'' (1949) "brilliant and imperious" and she traces the lineage of her "dissident feminism", not from ] but from Beauvoir. Paglia also identified ]'s work as part of a high period in literature. She has praised ]'s '']'' (1957) and ]'s '']'' (1967), while finding both men's later work flawed. Of ], who influenced Paglia, she wrote " dignified yet fluid phenomenological descriptive method seemed to me ideal for art", adding that he was "the last modern French writer I took seriously".{{Sfn|Paglia|1992|p=243}}{{Sfn|Paglia|1994|p=232}}<ref>{{Citation|url=http://www.salon.com/july97/columnists/paglia2970722.html |title=Of Versace and killer prom queens |page=2 |date=July 22, 1997 |newspaper=] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411071450/http://www.salon.com/july97/columnists/paglia2970722.html |archive-date=April 11, 2008 }}</ref>
Another intellectual disappointment for Paglia was ], who published '']'' in 1974. At the same time, Paglia launched "a detailed attack on an exhibit at Bennington's Crossett Library, ']: The Golden Age,' which used appallingly shoddy feminist materials alleging the existence of a peaceful, prehistoric matriarchy, later supposedly overthrown by nasty males."


=== Politics ===
Through her study of the classics and her reading of the scholarship of ], ], ] and others, Paglia had developed a theory of sexual history that was in opposition to the ideas in vogue at the time, which is why she was so critical of Gimbutas, Heilbrun, Millet and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and many other topics in her dissertation ''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art,'' which she completed in December of 1974, at the age of 27.


Paglia characterizes herself as a ].<ref name="smh-2005-04-08"/><ref>{{cite news | last = Pagila | first = Camille | title = The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime | url = https://time.com/72546/drinking-age-alcohol-repeal/ | magazine = ] | date = April 23, 2014 }}</ref> She opposes laws against prostitution, pornography, ], and abortion. She is also opposed to ] laws.<ref>{{cite news | last = Postrel | first = Virginia | author-link = Virginia Postrel | title = Interview with the Vamp | url = http://reason.com/archives/1995/08/01/interview-with-the-vamp | work = ] | date = August–September 1995 }}</ref><ref name="eagle-1992-12-20">{{Cite news |last=Killough |first=George | title = Paglia attacks political correctness |url= https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DKwkAAAAIBAJ&pg=5977%2C2051846|newspaper=] |publisher= William S. Flippin | location = Reading, ] |date=December 20, 1992 }}</ref> Some of her views have been characterized as ], although when asked in 2016 if she considers herself a cultural conservative she replied: "No, not at all... Conservative would mean I was cleaving to something past which was great, and no longer is... and Usually I'm not saying we should return to anything. I do believe we're moving inexorably into the future."<ref name= "time-1992-01-13"/><ref>{{Cite web|url= https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/camille-paglia/|title = Camille Paglia on Her Lifestyle of Observation and Lamb Vindaloo | work = Conversations with Tyler | date = April 25, 2016}}</ref>
In March of 1975, she drove from Vermont to ] to see ] speak. She was disappointed, reporting later that "During the question period, I nervously raised my hand from the crowd and asked if Greer, a former English professor, would be writing on literary subjects again soon. Her reply was stern and swift: 'There are far more important things in the world than literature!'" Another time at Albany, Paglia "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's-studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior. These women (whose field was literature) attributed my respect for science to 'brainwashing' by men."


Paglia criticized ] for not resigning after the ], which she says "paralyzed the government for two years, leading directly to our blindsiding by ]".<ref name="reason" /> In the ], she voted for the ] candidate ] " I detest the arrogant, corrupt ] of the ], with which I remain stubbornly registered."<ref name= "reason">{{cite magazine | title = Who's Getting Your Vote? | magazine = ] | publisher = ] | location = Washington DC | date = November 2004 | url = http://www.reason.com/news/show/29304.html | access-date = October 27, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081029233711/http://www.reason.com/news/show/29304.html | archive-date = October 29, 2008 | url-status = dead }}</ref>
Similar sorts of fights with feminists, lesbians, chauvinists, homophobes, and academics would continue for years, reaching a high point in 1978. While at Bennington, Paglia had two girlfriends. The second one, a theatrical young woman named Patty, was a former student. The couple went to a school dance one evening when a rich student from Chicago came out of nowhere and physically attacked them. Paglia spoke about this to ] in a cover story for '']'' magazine. She said, "I went to the police and filed a report. Then her parents went ballistic. There was an enormous to-do from her rich parents telling the administration, 'Open homosexuals shouldn't be employed by a college. We're not sending our daughter to a place where there are gays like this on the faculty.'" After a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned a year later.


In the ], Paglia supported ], and in ] she supported ].<ref>{{Cite news |first= Camille| last=Paglia | title=Why Women Shouldn't Vote for Hillary Clinton | url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1896080/Why-women-shouldn%27t-vote-for-Hillary-Clinton.html | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080516215138/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1896080/Why-women-shouldn%27t-vote-for-Hillary-Clinton.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=May 16, 2008 | newspaper=] | location=London, England | date=April 20, 2008 | access-date=April 28, 2010}}</ref> In 2012, she supported ] candidate ].<ref>{{cite web |first = Kerry |last = Lauerman| title = In "Glittering" return, Paglia lets loose | url = http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/camille_paglias_glittering_images/ | website = ] | publisher= ]|location=San Francisco, CA|date = October 10, 2012}}</ref> Paglia was highly critical of 2016 presidential candidate ], calling her a "fraud" and a "liar".<ref>{{Cite magazine |first1=Nick | last1=Gillespie | first2=Todd | last2=Krainin |url= http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/19/everythings-amazing-and-camille-paglia-i/ | title=Everything's Awesome and Camille Paglia Is Unhappy! | magazine=] | publisher=]|location= Washington DC|date=March 19, 2015|access-date= May 20, 2015}}</ref> Paglia refused to support either Hillary Clinton or ] in the ], indicating in a March '']'' column that if Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party's nomination, she would either cast a write-in vote for ] or else vote for Green Party candidate Stein, as she did in 2012.<ref>{{Cite news | url= http://www.salon.com/2016/03/24/camille_paglia_this_is_why_trumps_winning_and_why_i_wont_vote_for_hillary/ | title= Camille Paglia: This is why Trump's winning, and why I won't vote for Hillary | last1=Paglia | first1=Camille | date= March 25, 2016 | work=] | access-date= May 15, 2016}}</ref> Paglia later clarified in a statement that she would vote for Stein.<ref>{{Cite news | url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-stars-are-voting-third-party-candidates-944954 | title=Which Hollywood Stars are Voting for Third-Party Candidates? | magazine=] | publisher=] |location=Los Angeles, CA |date=November 8, 2016 |access-date=November 11, 2016}}</ref>
In the early 1980s, Paglia finished her book but couldn't get published and was supporting herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. She taught night classes at the ] plant. Her paper, "The ] Androgyne and the Faerie Queen," was published in '']'', Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "] and the Ellipses of Interpretation," in '']'', but aside from that, not much was happening with her academic career at a time when her peers were moving on to important positions at major universities. In a letter of March 1993 to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (''The Advocate'') in the early 1980s. There was an article on the historic pizzerias of the town and also one on an old house that was a stop on the ]."
In 2017, she stated that she is a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary and for Jill Stein in the 2016 general election.<ref name= "WeeklyStandard" /> For the ], Paglia criticized the Democratic Party for lacking a coherent message and a strong candidate. She disavowed Sanders as being "way too old and creaky" and retracted her initial support for ] for missing "a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role."<ref name="The Spectator">{{Cite news | url= https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/camille-paglia-hillary-wants-trump-to-win-again- | title=Camille Paglia: 'Hillary wants Trump to win again' | last1=Paglia | first1= Camille | date=December 5, 2018 | work=] | access-date=May 5, 2021}}</ref> Citing the "need to project steadiness, substance, and warmth," Paglia expressed interest in ] and ] as potential candidates.<ref name= "The Spectator"/>


=== Child sexuality ===
She got a teaching job at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts in 1984, which merged with its next-door neighbor, the Philadelphia College of Art, to become the ] in 1987. She took some time off to visit Europe, and while in Germany noted that "The women, stern-faced, melt the submissive heart...All look like ]!"


In accordance with a highly politicised view of child abuse, Paglia notably commented in an interview in 1992: "In the case of ], child abuse was justified". This was her response to the singer's action on '']'', where she tore up a picture of the pope in protest of the unfolding ].<ref>{{Cite web |date=1992-11-02 |title=Transcript: Interview: Camille Paglia |url=https://www.tvo.org/transcript/008445/interview-camille-paglia |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=TVO Today}}</ref> In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting ], a ] and ] advocacy organization.<ref>{{cite news | last = Paglia | first = Camille | title = The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime | url= http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100261734/allen-ginsberg-camille-paglia-and-the-literary-champions-of-paedophilia/ | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140306014809/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100261734/allen-ginsberg-camille-paglia-and-the-literary-champions-of-paedophilia/ | work = ] | date = March 1, 2014 | url-status = dead | archive-date=March 6, 2014}}</ref><ref name="salonissue">{{cite magazine | title = Camille Paglia's online advice for the culturally disgruntled | magazine = ] | publisher = Salon Media Group | location = San Francisco, CA | date = April 15, 1997 | url = http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20000510042252/http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html | access-date = September 7, 2019 | url-status = dead | archive-date = May 10, 2000 }}</ref> In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the ] to 14. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist ], "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age."{{sfn |Paglia|1994 |pages = –91}}<ref>{{cite web|first= Camille|last=Paglia|url= http://archive.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=E6B2CF78-031D-11D4-AD990050DA7E046B|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110711133353/http://archive.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=E6B2CF78-031D-11D4-AD990050DA7E046B |title=Has the gay movement turned down the wrong path?|website=The Guide|publisher= Bill Andriette|location= Montréal, Canada|date=August 1995|access-date= September 7, 2019 | url-status = dead | archive-date= July 11, 2011}}</ref> In a 1997 '']'' column, Paglia expressed the view that male pedophilia correlates with the heights of a civilization, stating "I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In '']'', I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization."<ref name= "salonissue"/> Paglia noted in several interviews, as well as ''Sexual Personae'', that she supported the legalization of certain forms of ].<ref name= "timeinterview">{{cite magazine | title = The Bête Noire of Feminism: Camille Paglia | magazine = ] | location = New York City | date = January 13, 1992 | url = http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974660,00.html | access-date = September 7, 2019 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Camille|last=Paglia|url= http://gos.sbc.edu/p/paglia.html|title=Crisis In The American Universities|website=Gift of Speech |publisher= ] |location= Sweet Briar, ] |date=September 19, 1991|access-date=September 7, 2019}}</ref>{{sfn|Paglia|1994 |pages = –91}}
===Publishing Career===


She later changed her views on the matter. In an interview for ]'s ''Saturday Morning'' show, conducted on April 28, 2018, by ], Paglia was asked, "Are you a libertarian on the issue of pedophilia?", to which she replied, "In terms of the present day, I think it's absolutely impossible to think we could reproduce the Athenian code of pedophilia, of boy-love, that was central to culture at that time. We must protect children, and I feel that very very strongly. The age of consent for sexual interactions between a boy and an older man is obviously disputed, at what point that should be. I used to think that fourteen (the way it is in some places in the world) was adequate. I no longer think that. I think young people need greater protection than that. This is one of those areas that we must confine to the realm of imagination and the history of the arts."<ref>{{cite web |last1= Paglia |first1= Camille |title=Camille Paglia – Free Women, Free Men |url= https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018642586/camille-paglia-free-women-free-men |website= Radio New Zealand |access-date=August 22, 2020 |location= Wellington, NZ | at =44 min 29 s |date=April 22, 2018}}</ref>
The two-volume manuscript of ''Sexual Personae'' was completed in February 1981 and then rejected by seven publishers and five agents throughout the 1980s before its final acceptance by Ellen Graham for ] in 1985. For the next few years, she continued to teach while perfecting volume one of the book for its eventual publication in February 1990 and releasing a few additional portions of it in other journals and books.


== Books ==
Her essay "] and the English ]" was published in 1988 in ''Oscar Wilde's ]'', edited by Bloom; '"Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art", was published in 1988 in ''Western Humanities Review''; and "Sex," was published in the '']'' by A. C. Hamilton in 1989.


=== ''Sexual Personae'' (1990) ===
After the release of ''Sexual Personae'' on ], ], the book received little publicity from its publisher, as was typical of university presses at the time, but it sold well for months, prompting Yale University Press to send it into a second printing by November, 1990. It was nominated for a ] that year, and then reprinted in paperback by Vintage Press in 1991. It became a best-seller, as did her subsequent books ''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992) and ''Vamps and Tramps'' (1994).
{{Main|Sexual Personae}}
Paglia's '']'' was rejected by at least seven different publishers before it was published by ], where it became a best-seller.<ref name="time-1992-01-13" /> 'Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like ], ]. It took all the resources of being ] to cut myself off and sit in my cell."<ref name=Showalter /> ''Sexual Personae'' has been called an "energetic, ]-friendly reading of ]", one that seemed "] and perverse", at the height of ]; according to Daniel Nester, its characterization of "] as the British ] or ] and ] as 'self-ruling ]s who cannot mate' still pricks up many an English major's ears".<ref name="Nester">{{cite web | first = Daniel | last = Nester | author-link = Daniel Nester | title = An interview with Camille Paglia | url = http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php | website = bookslut.com | publisher = ] | date = April 2005 | access-date = June 28, 2012 | archive-date = May 10, 2012 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120510061035/http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_04_005030.php | url-status = dead }}</ref>


In the book, Paglia argues that ] has an inherently dangerous ] or ] aspect, especially in regard to ].<ref name="news-1990-12-09">{{Cite news |first= Karen |last= Romano |title= Camille Paglia's 'Sexual Personae' provokes amusement, outrage |newspaper= ] |publisher= ] |location= Boca Raton, Florida |date= December 9, 1990 |url= https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KNcPAAAAIBAJ&pg=5043%2C5354257 }}{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Culture and civilization are created by men and represent an attempt to contain that force.<ref name = "news-1990-12-09" /> Women are powerful, too, but as natural forces, and both marriage and religion are means to contain chaotic forces.<ref name="time-1992-01-13" /> A best seller, it was described by ] in a '']'' book review as being both "intellectually stimulating" and "exasperating".<ref>{{cite news |first=Terry |last=Teachout|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/22/books/siding-with-the-men.html|title=Siding With the Men |newspaper=The New York Times |location=New York City|date= July 22, 1990|access-date=October 4, 2018 }}</ref> ''Sexual Personae'' received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars.<ref>''See the following'':
In ''Sexual Personae'', and in subsequent media statements and campus appearances throughout the early 1990s, Paglia aroused controversy by making statements against leaders of the American feminist movement, claiming they were ignorant of art, science, and history, that they were hostile to men, and doing harm to young women by teaching them to see themselves as nothing but victims. Her views on issues such as date rape, pornography, gay rights, and educational reform mostly angered people on the political left, who accused her of such things as ], ] and ]. A selection of her articles, lectures and other writings from this period appeared in ''Sex, Art, and American Culture''.


* {{Cite journal | first = Sandra M. | last = Gilbert |author-link = Sandra M. Gilbert | title = Review: Freaked Out: Camille Paglia's ''Sexual Personae'' | journal = ] | publisher = ]| location=Gambier, Ohio| volume = 14 | issue = 1 | pages = 158–164 | date =Winter 1992 | jstor = 4336635 }}
Whereas the 24 chapters of ''Sexual Personae'' looked at the study of decadence in art and culture from Egyptian history to the late 19th century, ''Sex, Art, and American Culture'', exposed readers to Paglia's views on contemporary figures such as ] ("the future of feminism"), ], ], and ].
* {{Cite journal | last = Lofreda | first = Beth | title = Of Stallions and Sycophants: Camille Paglia's ''Sexual Personae'' | journal = ] | publisher = ]| location=Durham, North Carolina|volume = 30 | issue = 30| pages = 121–124 | doi = 10.2307/466472 | jstor = 466472 | date = 1992 }}
* {{Cite journal| first = Mary Rose | last = Kasraie |title = Book Reviews: ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' by Camille Paglia | journal = ] | publisher = ]| location=Atlanta, Georgia| volume = 58 | issue = 4 | pages = 132–135 | doi = 10.2307/3201015 | jstor = 3201015 | date = November 1993 }}
* {{Cite journal |first = Alison| last = Booth | title = The Mother of All Cultures: Camille Paglia and Feminist Mythologies | journal = ] | publisher = ] | location=Gambier, Ohio| volume = 21 | issue = 1 | pages = 27–45 | date =Winter 1999 | jstor = 4337811 }}
* {{Cite journal | last = Sheets | first = Robin Ann | title = Book Reviews: ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' by Camille Paglia | journal = ] | volume = 2 | issue = 2 | pages = 205–298 | publisher = ] | date = October 1991 | jstor = 3704039 }}
* {{Cite journal | last = Ebert | first = Teresa L. | title = Review: The Politics of the Outrageous | journal = ] | volume = 9 | issue = 1 | pages = 12–13 | publisher = ] | doi = 10.2307/4021115 | jstor = 4021115 | date = October 1991 }}
* {{cite book | last = Noble | first = Marianne | contribution = Notes to Chapter 5 (note 1) | editor-last = Noble | editor-first = Marianne | title = The masochistic pleasures of sentimental literature | url = https://archive.org/details/masochisticpleas00nobl_262 | url-access = limited | pages = –226 | publisher = Princeton University Press | location = Princeton, New Jersey | year = 2000 | isbn = 9780691009377 }}
* {{Cite journal | last = Simons | first = Judy | title = Book Reviews: ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' by Camille Paglia | journal = ] | volume = 45 | issue = 179 | pages = 451–452 | publisher = ] | doi = 10.1093/res/XLV.179.451 | jstor = 518881 | date = August 1994 }}</ref> ] described ''Sexual Personae'' as "a fine disturbing book" that "seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his or her prejudices".<ref>{{cite news | last= Burgess | first = Anthony | author-link = Anthony Burgess |date= April 27, 1990 | title= Creatures of decadent light and violent darkness: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson |newspaper= ] | publisher=Independent Print Ltd.| location = London, England| page = 19 }}</ref>


=== ''Sex, Art and American Culture'' (1992) ===
Two chapters of the book were devoted to date rape, which the author said contemporary feminists had been incapable of preventing. "Rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in civilized society," she wrote, "Yet feminism, which has waged a crusade for rape to be taken more seriously, has put young women in danger by hiding the truth about sex from them."
{{external media| float = right| video1 = , ]}}
''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' is a collection of short pieces, many published previously as editorials or reviews, and some transcripts of interviews.<ref name="eagle-1992-12-20"/> The essays cover such subjects as ], ], rock music, ], the ], rape, ], ], ], ], and ]. It made ] for paperbacks.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/10/books/paperback-best-sellers-january-10-1993.html |title=Paperback Best Sellers | work=The New York Times | date= January 10, 1993}}</ref>


=== ''Vamps and Tramps'' (1994) ===
Her next book, also an essay collection, was titled ''Vamps and Tramps''. This book collected all of her writings since her previous essay collection, and the critical response tended to be that she had written too much on too wide a variety of topics: ] of "Insight on the News" called it "a hodgepodge"; ]r of the '']'' said it "suffers from the mixing of its author's three discordant personae: scholar, polemicist, and celebrity role model"; and David Link of the journal ''Reason'' wrote that "''Vamps and Tramps'' is a carnival. We see Paglia here in all her guises, from the highly serious to the completely loopy." Nevertheless, the book was a bestseller and exposed a wide readership to her views on contemporary matters such as the ] presidency, the life of ], and the career of ].
''Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'' is a collection of 42 short articles and a long essay, "No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality". It also contains a collection of cartoons from newspapers about Paglia. Writing for ''The New York Times'', Wendy Steiner wrote "Comic, camp, outspoken, Ms. Paglia throws an absurdist shoe into the ponderous wheels of ]".<ref>{{cite news | first = Wendy | last = Steiner | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/20/books/advertisements-for-themselves.html | title = Advertisements for Themselves | newspaper =]|location=New York City|date = November 20, 1994 |access-date=October 4, 2018}}</ref> ], also writing for ''The New York Times'', wrote: "Her writings on education&nbsp;... are highly persuasive, just as some of her essays on the perils of regulating pornography and the puritanical excesses of the women's movement radiate a fierce common sense&nbsp;... Unfortunately, Ms. Paglia has a way of undermining her more interesting arguments with flip, hyperbolic declarations".<ref>{{cite news | first = Michiko | last = Kakutani | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/15/books/books-of-the-times-the-rise-of-a-self-proclaimed-phenomenon.html | title = The Rise of a Self-Proclaimed Phenomenon | newspaper = ] |location=New York City|date = November 15, 1994|access-date=October 4, 2018}}</ref>


=== ''The Birds'' ===
In 1998 her fourth book was published, its subject a single film: ]'s '']''. She wrote it for the ]'s "Film Classics Series".
In 1998, in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the release of ]'s film '']'', the ] commissioned Paglia to write a book about the film. The book interprets the film as "in the main line of British Romanticism descending from the raw nature-tableaux and sinister femme-fatales of ]".<ref>{{cite book|first=John P.|last=McCombe|chapter=The Birds and Hitchcock's Hyper-Romantic Vision|editor1-first=Marshall|editor1-last=Deutelbaum|editor2-first=Leland A.|editor2-last=Poague|title=A Hitchcock Reader|publisher=]|location=Hoboken, New Jersey|year= 2009|isbn=978-1405155571|page=266}}</ref> Paglia uses a ] framework to interpret the film as portraying "a release of primitive forces of sex and appetite that have been subdued but never fully tamed".<ref>McCombe p.267</ref>


=== ''Break, Blow, Burn'' (2005) ===
In 2005, ''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems'' was published by Pantheon. Paglia conducted an extensive tour in support, lecturing and signing books at many universities and bookstores across the US.
''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' is a collection of 43 short selections of verse with an accompanying essay by Paglia.<ref name="nyt-2005-03-27">
{{Cite news
| title=Well Versed
| last=James
| first=Clive
| date=March 27, 2005
| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/break-blow-burn-well-versed.html
| work=The New York Times
}}</ref> The collection is oriented primarily to those unfamiliar with the works.<ref name="nyt-2005-03-27"/> ] wrote that Paglia tends to focus on American works as it moves from ] forward through time, with ], following ], as the last European discussed,<ref name="nyt-2005-03-27"/> but emphasized her range of sympathy and her ability to juxtapose and unite distinct art forms in her analysis.<ref name="nyt-2005-03-27"/>


=== ''Glittering Images'' (2012) ===
==Books==
{{Main|Glittering Images}}
*''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art'' (Dissertation: 1974)
'']'' is a series of essays about notable works of art from ancient to modern times, published in October 2012.<ref name="random house"> on Random House website.</ref> Writer John Adams of '']'' was skeptical of the book, accusing it of being "so agenda driven and so riddled with polemic asides that its potential to persuade is forever being compromised".<ref name=on-art>{{cite news|last=Adams|first=John|title=Paglia on Art|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/books/review/glittering-images-by-camille-paglia.html|date=November 30, 2012|work=The New York Times|access-date=July 7, 2014}}</ref> Gary Rosen of '']'', however, praised the book's "impressive range" and accessibility to readers.<ref name=WSJ1>{{cite news|last=Rosen|first=Gary|title=The Pagan Aesthetic|url=https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443675404578058504002593338|work=The Wall Street Journal|date=October 16, 2012|access-date=February 7, 2014}}</ref>
*'']: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' (1990)
*''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992)
*''Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'' (1994) ISBN 0679751203
*''] (BFI Film Classics)'' (1998)
*''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005) ISBN 0375420843


=== ''Free Women, Free Men'' (2017) ===
==External links==
{{main|Free Women, Free Men}}
*
{{external media| float = right| video1 = , ]}}
*
''Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism'' is a series of essays from 1990 onward.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/126099/free-women-free-men-by-camille-paglia/9780375424779/ |title=Free Women, Free Men |access-date=March 15, 2017}}</ref> ] in ''The New York Times'' wrote Paglia's essays address two main targets: modern feminism, which, Paglia writes, "has become a catchall vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses," and modern American universities, of which she asks, "How is it possible that today's academic left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and overregulation of student life?"<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/books/review-camille-paglia-free-women-free-men.html|title=From Camille Paglia, 'Free Women, Free Men' and No Sacred Cows|last=Garner|first=Dwight|date=March 23, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=May 30, 2017|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
*


=== ''Provocations'' (2018) ===
]
Paglia's fourth essay collection, ''Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education'', was published by ] on October 9, 2018.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Paglia|first=Camille|url=|title=Provocations: collected essays|date=2018|publisher=Pantheon Books |isbn=978-1-5247-4689-6|language=English|oclc=1019883092}}</ref>
]
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== Works ==
]

]
* ''The Androgyne in Literature and Art'' (1974; PhD thesis)
]
* '']'' (1990) {{ISBN|0-679-73579-8}}
* ''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992) {{ISBN|0-679-74101-1}}
* '']'' (1993), documentary film
* ''Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'' (1994) {{ISBN|0-679-75120-3}}
* ''The Birds'' (]) (1998) {{ISBN|0-851-70651-7}}
* ''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005) {{ISBN|0-375-42084-3}}
* '']'' (2012) {{ISBN|978-0-375-42460-1}}
* '']'' (2017) {{ISBN|978-0-375424779}}
* ''Provocations: Collected Essays'' (2018) {{ISBN|978-1-52474689-6}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===

* {{Citation | last = Paglia | first = Camille | title = Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays | year = 1992 | publisher = Knopf Doubleday Publishing | isbn = 0-679-74101-1}}
* {{citation | last = Paglia | first = Camille | title = Vamps and Tramps: New Essays | url = https://archive.org/details/vampstrampsnewes00pagl | url-access = limited | publisher = ] | location = New York | year = 1994 | isbn = 978-0-67975120-5 |author-mask= 3}}

== External links ==
{{Portal|United States|Biography|Feminism}}
* {{Wikiquote-inline}}
* {{Commons category-inline}}
*
* {{C-SPAN|27017}}
**
* {{IMDb name|0656468}}
* Russell Walter (2023).
* Lyons, Donald (March 2024). ''The New Criterion'', Vol. 42, No. 7.

{{Criticism of postmodernism}}
{{Authority control}}

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Latest revision as of 05:23, 8 January 2025

American feminist academic and critic (born 1947)

Camille Paglia
Paglia in 2017Paglia in 2017
BornCamille Anna Paglia
(1947-04-02) April 2, 1947 (age 77)
Endicott, New York, U.S.
OccupationProfessor, cultural critic
EducationBinghamton University (BA)
Yale University (MA, PhD)
SubjectsPopular culture, art, poetry, sex, film, feminism, politics
Literary movementIndividualist feminism

Camille Anna Paglia (/ˈpɑːliə/; born April 2, 1947) is an American academic, social critic and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.

Personal life

Paglia was born in Endicott, New York, the eldest child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (née Colapietro) Paglia. All four of her grandparents were born in Italy. Her mother emigrated to the United States at five years old from Ceccano, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, Italy. Paglia has stated that her father's side of the family was from the Campanian towns of Avellino, Benevento, and Caserta. Paglia was raised Catholic, and attended primary school in rural Oxford, New York, where her family lived in a working farmhouse. Her father, a veteran of World War II, taught at the Oxford Academy high school and exposed his young daughter to art through books he brought home about French art history. In 1957, her family moved to Syracuse, New York, so that her father could begin graduate school; he eventually became a professor of Romance languages at Le Moyne College. She attended the Edward Smith Elementary School, T. Aaron Levy Junior High, and Nottingham Senior High School. In 1992, Carmelia Metosh, her Latin teacher for three years, said, "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgments to Sexual Personae, later describing her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards".

During her stays at a summer Girl Scout camp in Thendara, New York, she took on a variety of new names, including Anastasia (her confirmation name, inspired by the film Anastasia), Stacy, and Stanley. A crucially significant event for her was when an outhouse exploded after she poured too much quicklime into the latrine. "That symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture, into pornography and crime and psychopathology... and I would drop the bomb into it".

For more than a decade, Paglia was the partner of artist Alison Maddex. Paglia legally adopted Maddex's son (who was born in 2002). In 2007, the couple separated but remained "harmonious co-parents", in the words of Paglia, who lived two miles (three kilometers) apart.

Paglia is an atheist, and has stated she has "a very spiritual mystic view of the universe". She has expressed interest in astrology and has written about it in several of her works, including Sexual Personae: "I'm an astrologer – people don't mention this! I mean, everyone's attacked me for everything else. I mean, I'm an astrologer – it's right in my book. I endorse astrology. I believe in astrology. Will someone attack me for that? No!"

Education

Paglia entered Harpur College at Binghamton University in 1964. The same year, Paglia's poem "Atrophy" was published in the local newspaper. She later said that she was trained to read literature by poet Milton Kessler, who "believed in the responsiveness of the body, and of the activation of the senses to literature ... And oh did I believe in that". She graduated from Harpur as class valedictorian in 1968.

According to Paglia, while in college she punched a "marauding drunk", and takes pride in having been put on probation for committing 39 pranks.

Paglia attended Yale as a graduate student, and she claims to have been the only open lesbian at Yale Graduate School from 1968 to 1972. At Yale, Paglia quarreled with Rita Mae Brown, whom she later characterized as "then darkly nihilist," and argued with the New Haven, Connecticut, Women's Liberation Rock Band when they dismissed The Rolling Stones as sexist. Paglia was mentored by Harold Bloom. Sexual Personae was then titled "The Androgynous Dream: the image of the androgyne as it appears in literature and is embodied in the psyche of the artist, with reference to the visual arts and the cinema."

In 1973, Paglia drove to an appearance by Susan Sontag at Dartmouth, hoping to arrange for her to speak at Bennington, but found it difficult to find the money for Sontag's speaking fee. Paglia staged a poster campaign urging students to attend Sontag's appearance. Sontag arrived at Bennington Carriage Barn, where she was to speak, more than an hour late, and then began reading what Paglia recalled as a "boring and bleak" short story about "nothing" in the style of a French New Novel.

Career

In the autumn of 1972, Paglia began teaching at Bennington College, which hired her in part thanks to a recommendation from Harold Bloom. At Bennington, she befriended the philosopher James Fessenden, who first taught there in the same semester.

Through her study of the classics and the scholarly work of Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, Erich Neumann and others, Paglia developed a theory of sexual history that contradicted a number of ideas fashionable at the time, hence her criticism of Marija Gimbutas, Carolyn Heilbrun, Kate Millett and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and other topics in her Yale PhD thesis Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, which she defended in December 1974. In September 1976, she gave a public lecture drawing on that dissertation, in which she discussed Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, followed by remarks on Diana Ross, Gracie Allen, Yul Brynner, and Stéphane Audran.

Paglia wrote that she "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior". Similar fights with feminists and academics culminated in a 1978 incident which led her to resign from Bennington; after a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned in 1979.

Paglia finished Sexual Personae in the early 1980s, but could not get it published. She supported herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. Her paper, "The Apollonian Androgyne and the Faerie Queene", was published in English Literary Renaissance, Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "Wuthering Heights and the Ellipses of Interpretation", in Journal of Religion in Literature, but her academic career was otherwise stalled. In a 1995 letter to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (The Advocate) in the early 1980s". She wrote articles on New Haven's historic pizzerias and on an old house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In 1984, she joined the faculty of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged in 1987 with the Philadelphia College of Art to become the University of the Arts.

Paglia is on the editorial board of the classics and humanities journal Arion. She wrote a regular column for Salon.com from 1995 to 2001, and again from 2007 to 2009. Paglia resumed writing a Salon.com column in 2016.

Paglia cooperated with Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock in their writing of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon. Rollyson and Paddock note that Sontag "had her lawyer put our publisher on notice" when she realized she was to be the subject.

Paglia participates in the decennial poll of film professionals conducted by Sight and Sound which asks participants to submit a list of what they believe to be the ten greatest films of all time. According to her responses to the poll in 2002, 2012, and 2022, the films Paglia holds in highest regard include Ben-Hur, Blowup, Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, North by Northwest, Orphée, Persona, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Ten Commandments, and Vertigo.

In 2005, Paglia was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect. In 2012, an article in The New York Times remarked that "nyone who has been following the body count of the culture wars over the past decades knows Paglia". Paglia has said that she is willing to have her entire career judged on the basis of her composition of what she considers to be "probably the most important sentence that she has ever written": "God is man's greatest idea."

Views

Feminism

Though Paglia admires Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex ("the supreme work of modern feminism... its deep learning and massive argument are unsurpassed") as well as Germaine Greer, Time critic Martha Duffy writes that Paglia "does not hesitate to hurl brazen insults" at several feminists. In an interview, Paglia stated that to be effective, one has to "name names"; criticism should be concrete. Paglia stated that many critics "escape into abstractions", rendering their criticism "intellectualized and tame". Paglia was known as one of the scholars and feminists that theorized American singer Madonna within feminism and for which publications such as Vogue called her the "high priestess of post-feminism".

Paglia accused Greer of becoming "a drone in three years" as a result of her early success; Paglia has also criticized the work of feminist activist Diana Fuss. Elaine Showalter calls Paglia "unique in the hyperbole and virulence of her hostility to virtually all the prominent feminist activists, public figures, writers and scholars of her generation", mentioning Carolyn Heilbrun, Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, Marilyn French, Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Susan Thomases, and Hillary Clinton as targets of her criticism. Paglia accused Kate Millett of starting "the repressive, Stalinist style in feminist criticism." Paglia has repeatedly criticized Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), calling her a "sanctimonious", unappealing role model for women whose "smug, arrogant" attitude is accompanied by "painfully limited processes of thought". Paglia contends that under Ireland's leadership, NOW "damaged and marginalized the women's movement".

In 1999, Martha Nussbaum wrote an essay called "The Professor of Parody", in which she criticized Judith Butler for retreating to abstract theory disconnected from real world problems. Paglia reacted to the essay by stating that the criticism was "long overdue", but characterized the criticism as "one PC diva turning against another". She criticized Nussbaum for failing to make her criticisms earlier while accusing her of borrowing Paglia's ideas without acknowledgement. She called Nussbaum's "preparation or instinct for sex analysis... dubious at best", but nevertheless stated that "Nussbaum is a genuine scholar who operates on a vastly higher intellectual level than Butler".

Many feminists have criticized Paglia; Christina Hoff Sommers calls her "Perhaps the most conspicuous target of feminist opprobrium," noting that the Women's Review of Books described Sexual Personae as patriarchy's "counter-assault on feminism". Some feminist critics have characterized Paglia as an "anti-feminist feminist", critical of central features of much contemporary feminism but holding out "her own special variety of feminist affirmation".

Naomi Wolf traded a series of sometimes personal attacks with Paglia throughout the early 1990s. In The New Republic, Wolf wrote that Paglia "poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters" and characterized Paglia as intellectually dishonest. In a 1991 speech, Paglia criticized Wolf for blaming anorexia on the media, calling Wolf a "twit". Gloria Steinem said of Paglia that, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they're not anti-Semitic." Paglia called Steinem "the Stalin of feminism". Katha Pollitt calls Paglia one of a "seemingly endless parade of social critics have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem". Pollitt writes that Paglia has glorified "male dominance", and has been able to get away with things "that might make even Rush Limbaugh blanch," because she is a woman.

Paglia's view that rape is sexually motivated has been endorsed by evolutionary psychologists Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer; they comment that "Paglia... urges women to be skeptical toward the feminist 'party line' on the subject, to become better informed about risk factors, and to use the information to lower their risk of rape".

In an essay critiquing the Hollywood/celebrity fad of "Girl Squads", made popular in 2015 by pop-icons like Taylor Swift, Paglia argued that rather than empowering women the cliquish practice actually harms the self-esteem of those who are not rich, famous, or attractive enough to belong to the group, while further defining women only by a very narrow, often sexualized stereotype. She challenged that to be truly empowering, these groups need to mentor, advise, and be more inclusive, for more women to realize their true, individual potential.

Transgender people

Though she has not transitioned, Paglia identifies as transgender. She reports having gender dysphoria since childhood, and says that "never once in my life have I felt female". She says that she was "donning flamboyant male costumes from early childhood on".

Nevertheless, Paglia says that she is "highly skeptical about the current transgender wave" which she thinks has been produced by "far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows". She writes that "In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity."

Paglia's views led to a petition demanding that the University of the Arts remove her from their faculty, but the university rejected it. Paglia considered it "a publicity stunt" and praised the university's "eloquent statement affirming academic freedom a landmark in contemporary education."

Climate change

See also: Climate change denial

Paglia has long rejected the scientific consensus on global warming, which she describes as "the political agenda that has slowly accrued" around the issue of climate change. In a 2017 interview with The Weekly Standard, Paglia stated, "It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender."

French academia

Paglia is critical of the influence many postwar French writers have had on the humanities, claiming that universities are in the "thrall" of French post-structuralists; that in the works of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, she never once found a sentence that interested her.

However, Paglia's assessment of French writers is not purely negative. She has called Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) "brilliant and imperious" and she traces the lineage of her "dissident feminism", not from Betty Friedan but from Beauvoir. Paglia also identified Jean-Paul Sartre's work as part of a high period in literature. She has praised Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957) and Gilles Deleuze's Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967), while finding both men's later work flawed. Of Gaston Bachelard, who influenced Paglia, she wrote " dignified yet fluid phenomenological descriptive method seemed to me ideal for art", adding that he was "the last modern French writer I took seriously".

Politics

Paglia characterizes herself as a libertarian. She opposes laws against prostitution, pornography, drugs, and abortion. She is also opposed to affirmative action laws. Some of her views have been characterized as conservative, although when asked in 2016 if she considers herself a cultural conservative she replied: "No, not at all... Conservative would mean I was cleaving to something past which was great, and no longer is... and Usually I'm not saying we should return to anything. I do believe we're moving inexorably into the future."

Paglia criticized Bill Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which she says "paralyzed the government for two years, leading directly to our blindsiding by 9/11". In the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, she voted for the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader " I detest the arrogant, corrupt superstructure of the Democratic Party, with which I remain stubbornly registered."

In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Paglia supported John Kerry, and in 2008 she supported Barack Obama. In 2012, she supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Paglia was highly critical of 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, calling her a "fraud" and a "liar". Paglia refused to support either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, indicating in a March Salon column that if Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party's nomination, she would either cast a write-in vote for Bernie Sanders or else vote for Green Party candidate Stein, as she did in 2012. Paglia later clarified in a statement that she would vote for Stein. In 2017, she stated that she is a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary and for Jill Stein in the 2016 general election. For the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Paglia criticized the Democratic Party for lacking a coherent message and a strong candidate. She disavowed Sanders as being "way too old and creaky" and retracted her initial support for Kamala Harris for missing "a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role." Citing the "need to project steadiness, substance, and warmth," Paglia expressed interest in Cheri Bustos and Steve Bullock as potential candidates.

Child sexuality

In accordance with a highly politicised view of child abuse, Paglia notably commented in an interview in 1992: "In the case of Sinéad O'Connor, child abuse was justified". This was her response to the singer's action on Saturday Night Live, where she tore up a picture of the pope in protest of the unfolding child sexual abuse scandal surrounding the Catholic Church. In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting NAMBLA, a pederasty and pedophilia advocacy organization. In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to 14. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette, "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age." In a 1997 Salon column, Paglia expressed the view that male pedophilia correlates with the heights of a civilization, stating "I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In Sexual Personae, I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization." Paglia noted in several interviews, as well as Sexual Personae, that she supported the legalization of certain forms of child pornography.

She later changed her views on the matter. In an interview for Radio New Zealand's Saturday Morning show, conducted on April 28, 2018, by Kim Hill, Paglia was asked, "Are you a libertarian on the issue of pedophilia?", to which she replied, "In terms of the present day, I think it's absolutely impossible to think we could reproduce the Athenian code of pedophilia, of boy-love, that was central to culture at that time. We must protect children, and I feel that very very strongly. The age of consent for sexual interactions between a boy and an older man is obviously disputed, at what point that should be. I used to think that fourteen (the way it is in some places in the world) was adequate. I no longer think that. I think young people need greater protection than that. This is one of those areas that we must confine to the realm of imagination and the history of the arts."

Books

Sexual Personae (1990)

Main article: Sexual Personae

Paglia's Sexual Personae was rejected by at least seven different publishers before it was published by Yale University Press, where it became a best-seller. 'Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like Cervantes, Genet. It took all the resources of being Catholic to cut myself off and sit in my cell." Sexual Personae has been called an "energetic, Freud-friendly reading of Western art", one that seemed "heretical and perverse", at the height of political correctness; according to Daniel Nester, its characterization of "William Blake as the British Marquis de Sade or Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson as 'self-ruling hermaphrodites who cannot mate' still pricks up many an English major's ears".

In the book, Paglia argues that human nature has an inherently dangerous Dionysian or chthonic aspect, especially in regard to sexuality. Culture and civilization are created by men and represent an attempt to contain that force. Women are powerful, too, but as natural forces, and both marriage and religion are means to contain chaotic forces. A best seller, it was described by Terry Teachout in a New York Times book review as being both "intellectually stimulating" and "exasperating". Sexual Personae received critical reviews from numerous feminist scholars. Anthony Burgess described Sexual Personae as "a fine disturbing book" that "seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his or her prejudices".

Sex, Art and American Culture (1992)

External videos
video icon Presentation by Paglia on Sex, Art and American Culture, October 26, 1994, C-SPAN

Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays is a collection of short pieces, many published previously as editorials or reviews, and some transcripts of interviews. The essays cover such subjects as Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, rock music, Robert Mapplethorpe, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination, rape, bodybuilding, Marlon Brando, drag, Milton Kessler, and academia. It made The New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks.

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Vamps and Tramps: New Essays is a collection of 42 short articles and a long essay, "No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality". It also contains a collection of cartoons from newspapers about Paglia. Writing for The New York Times, Wendy Steiner wrote "Comic, camp, outspoken, Ms. Paglia throws an absurdist shoe into the ponderous wheels of academia". Michiko Kakutani, also writing for The New York Times, wrote: "Her writings on education ... are highly persuasive, just as some of her essays on the perils of regulating pornography and the puritanical excesses of the women's movement radiate a fierce common sense ... Unfortunately, Ms. Paglia has a way of undermining her more interesting arguments with flip, hyperbolic declarations".

The Birds

In 1998, in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, the British Film Institute commissioned Paglia to write a book about the film. The book interprets the film as "in the main line of British Romanticism descending from the raw nature-tableaux and sinister femme-fatales of Coleridge". Paglia uses a psychoanalytic framework to interpret the film as portraying "a release of primitive forces of sex and appetite that have been subdued but never fully tamed".

Break, Blow, Burn (2005)

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems is a collection of 43 short selections of verse with an accompanying essay by Paglia. The collection is oriented primarily to those unfamiliar with the works. Clive James wrote that Paglia tends to focus on American works as it moves from Shakespeare forward through time, with Yeats, following Coleridge, as the last European discussed, but emphasized her range of sympathy and her ability to juxtapose and unite distinct art forms in her analysis.

Glittering Images (2012)

Main article: Glittering Images

Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars is a series of essays about notable works of art from ancient to modern times, published in October 2012. Writer John Adams of The New York Times Book Review was skeptical of the book, accusing it of being "so agenda driven and so riddled with polemic asides that its potential to persuade is forever being compromised". Gary Rosen of The Wall Street Journal, however, praised the book's "impressive range" and accessibility to readers.

Free Women, Free Men (2017)

Main article: Free Women, Free Men
External videos
video icon Presentation by Paglia on Free Women, Free Men, March 20, 2017, C-SPAN

Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, and Feminism is a series of essays from 1990 onward. Dwight Garner in The New York Times wrote Paglia's essays address two main targets: modern feminism, which, Paglia writes, "has become a catchall vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses," and modern American universities, of which she asks, "How is it possible that today's academic left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and overregulation of student life?"

Provocations (2018)

Paglia's fourth essay collection, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education, was published by Pantheon on October 9, 2018.

Works

References

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  93. See the following:
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