Whatever happened to Camille Paglia?

Good writer, an often interesting speaker. Slightly insufferable at times. I'm surprised she never got a gig at a major university. She considers herself transgender?

Total nut-job, who listens to her drivel?!

She may be a nut job, but old Camille can really light up the DL.

OP? Why do you even care?

Gay men sure are odd these days.

Love her. She’s always interesting.

She considers herself transgender in the sense that she is gender non conforming. She does not think she's a man or non-binary, and doesn't want sex change procedures or hormones.

The only interesting female academic of the past 40 years.

If anything she is/was a gay man trapped in a lesbian's body.

She had a lust for life, a love of sex (in theory at least because by her own admission she did not have a lot of it) and a love of the sensual and the aesthetic.

She went silent in the public sphere after a trans mob came after her at her university.

She's leaving Manhattan. Friend in her building told me a neighbor is combining his apartment with hers.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time.

But you can't coast in academia anymore.

Hopefully, the "academic" Datalounger formerly known as the Datalounger who "works in academia" can chime from their perspective as the person who makes copies at the campus copy center.

Wherever she is, she should STAY THERE.

I swore we just had this thread a few days ago but I can't find it. Was it one of the now-deleted anti-trans threads, maybe?

The rest of her face fell into her mouth during one of her constant jabbering jags and she tragically chomped her own head off.

She's been quiet for a while now.

She's a nut, but a smart and interesting nut. I wouldn't want to be locked in a room with her, but I've always enjoyed her perspective on pop and high culture. Her feud with Susan Sontag was simply delicious.

I remember her from the 90’s when she was working so hard to woo Madonna.

Omg

What are your thoughts about Chelsea? Don’t you think it would benefit the Clintons to let Chelsea do a little interview with a little kiddie show or let her out to do something?

PAGLIA: No. No, I don’t. Chelsea’s a mess. Please. Remember she went out there at the inaugural? They had her at the MTV dance. Remember that? They let her out there. Look, if people want to see an example of bias in the press, they should go back and see the way Time magazine and the other major media treated... When Chelsea first was revealed to us at the Democratic Convention, we were all shocked to see this orphan in chains: One of the dowdiest creatures to ever walk the earth. And she’s a dead ringer, by the way, at that period, for Emily Dickinson, who also was suffering under all kinds of familial tensions. Anyway, please notice how in the ensuing weeks, the way the liberal press treated her. They deliberately did not show her face because they wanted Clinton to be elected. And they knew that if they showed that face — like a horror movie — that he would not get elected. If it was Reagan’s child, you would have close-ups of everything.

^ Spoken, in part, like a DLer. Maybe Camille walks among us right here although, at almost 75, she'd be on the younger side.

R18 That is so hilarious and what is funnier is that you know she means every word of it.

Isn’t she still in Philadelphia where she’s always been?

[quote]I'm surprised she never got a gig at a major university.

I'm not.

Who would choose to work with a notorious asshole?

Madame X happened. She couldn't handle it. She hasn't been seen since.

[bold]SLIGHTLY[/bold] insufferable??? Bitch please.

Being insufferable is kinda like being pregnant. You are, or you aren't.

She had a brief come back due to Jordan Peterson being a fan, and she made the rounds on a lot of “Intellectual Dark Web” pod cast, but it doesn’t seem that she really knew how to capitalize on it.

She did say relatively recently she was working on a sequel to Sexual Personae.

Until a few years ago, she used to write articles for major publications where she basically called current pop stars talentless whores.

The weird woman who does those live commentaries of I am Jazz on YouTube reminds me of Paglia.

R29 I love her. Exculsanic I think her name is. She has such a sardonic wit. I especially love when she wears those wild wigs and talks about her “dander identity”.

She lost her passion for pop culture to a degree. Certainly, she thinks Madonna isa now not worth talking about. She does love "Real Housewives".

She has an obsessive personality and most recently has been very focussed on paleo-Indian archeology. Arrow heads were her complete fixation for a while.

[quote]She considers herself transgender in the sense that she is gender non conforming.

Typical Camille Paglia pretentious horseshit.

I do love that as she's aging she's fully morphing into her hero, Keith Richards.

She hates Taylor Swift.

Who?

Camille Paglia hates Martina Navratoliva. Camille Paglia loves Barbra Streisand.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Susan Sontag can go fuck herself. Certainly no one else would.

Camille Paglia is fine, OP. She sends her waggle-tongued, unempirical love. .

Susan Sontag was an overrated pretentious bore.

R22 She's a long-time professor at a small liberal arts school that my friend attended. The woke students there HATE her and try to get her fired constantly. My friend never took a class with her, but her roommate did and said she was a great teacher. Super engaging lectures, heavily discussion based class, etc.

R29 and R30, yes, Exulansic is a bit like Camille. Two slightly eccentric, very clever lesbians.

Exulansic also reminds me of Edith Sitwell, but only physically.

In the immortal words of the late great Molly Ivins, "Christ somebody get that woman a Valium!"

Back in the early 90's, I read everything of hers I could. I do not agree with all that she has written, but have always found her work interesting.

She's still at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Given her Yale PhD, it is a coup for the school, but also points to her controversial scholarship that she did (could?) not land a more prestigious position. A "post-structural" feminist, she clashed with established academic feminists, who I do not doubt blackballed her from the "club."

Since she entered the realm of public discourse in the late 80's, generations of scholars have come and gone. Many tried to show empirically many of her theories, but, overall, they just do not stand up to serious scrutiny. Paglia benefited from being an early contrarian and she rode waves of praise for her positions on feminism, post-structuralist criticism of gendered iconography. But 30+ years on, I think mainstream academics lost interest in her.

[quote]If anything she is/was a gay man trapped in a lesbian's body.

Wowza. That is about the most unfortunate combination you could have.

R18 thanks for that excerpt…I laughed so hard I thought I ruptured an organ. God, she’s funny…and cruel!

[quote]She did say relatively recently she was working on a sequel to Sexual Personae.

She's been saying that for decades.

The Late and Great Harold Bloom on Camille:

[quote] Ah, Camille. I love it when she calls me her "mentor." Let's face it: I love it when she calls me at all. Though she deeply admires my work on the Western canon, she's pretty sure that my arguments for the works of Western Civilization just aren't enough to sway the masses. As she put it, "My feeling is that the people who are against the canon are not going to be convinced by this. That is my disappointment" (source). It's nice to have a shoulder to cry on.

She’s got great style and personal flair, which in this day and age counts a lot.

[quote]A "post-structural" feminist, she clashed with established academic feminists, who I do not doubt blackballed her from the "club."

Camille Paglia DEFINES herself as being excluded from anything/everything. It gets very old after a while.

How is she not excluded?

She accepts the reality of biological sex and doesn't see herself as a victim. She enjoys music and art and life, and doesn't think art needs to be ideologically compliant. She likes sex and celebrates sexual pursuit, They hate her.

^ Camille, please stay out of this thread.

She has a mind of her own, and isn't afraid to express her wackier thoughts or feels forced to hew to liberal orthodoxy. Which means that no one wants to hear from her anymore.

r52 Yes, everyone is so left wing, social, tolerant, liberal, humanitarian, etc nowadays.

She teaches at Philadelphia University of the Arts.

[quote] Which means that no one wants to hear from her anymore.

There's a whole industry of people who claim that and never fucking shut up.

Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED! Camille is being SILENCED!

In the 1980s, commercial music boasted a beguiling host of sexy pop chicks like Deborah Harry, Belinda Carlisle, Pat Benatar, and a charmingly ripe Madonna. Late Madonna, in contrast, went bourgeois and turned scrawny. Madonna’s dance-track acolyte, Lady Gaga, with her compulsive overkill, is a high-concept fabrication without an ounce of genuine eroticism.

r54, yeah, and friends who took her classes said she was a weird ass bitch

She put the "unt" in cunt.

R56 Shut the FUCK up! Shut the FUCK up!

She didn't get a job at a bigger university because she didn't publish her dissertation until nearly two decades after she finished her PhD. When she did publish it, the book was covered mostly by the mainstream press, not fellow academics. She became a media personality, an Italian Joan Rivers. Nobody in the humanities cited her to get hired/published/invited to conferences. She's lucky to have that UArts gig as she's one of the few instructors with tenure, which the school abolished long ago.

She praised Janet, Beyonce and Rihanna too. She's a lesbian who likes hot feminine women who own their feminine sexuality.

I went to the London School of Economics in the 90s and some women in an International Relations course were trying to arrange a debate between Paglia and one of our esteemed male professors (really a highly published super star in the field).

He was far more feminist than she, of course. It would have been a great debate, but the LSE prof balked.

I asked him in his office later why he declined and this internationally highly respected scholar/statesman said. "She scares me."

Haha. We both had a good laugh He referred to her as the rabid little chihuahua.

I love her rapt description of RHONJ's Jacqueline Laurita:

[quote]There was this incredible moment in this season’s culminating episode where they’re all fighting in the parking lot after the Posche fashion show at a Cuban restaurant in West New York. And there’s Jacqueline standing there alone in her sparkly black outfit and drop-dead strappy gold high heels. She looks like a Polynesian idol with her face frozen and tilted upward. It’s a classic Hollywood moment, all internal turmoil under that mask. She looks magnificent!

I agree, R52. So does the crazy homeless person down the street.

[quote] She teaches at Philadelphia University of the Arts.

I hope she's emerita by this time. Crazy old bat.

I don't know her.

Well, I do but I won't admit it.

She's such a strange and narcissistic woman. She was absolutely desperate for attention,. so she garnered huge publicity positioning herself as a maverick viciously attacking other scholars; but then she was shocked when her notoriety wouldn't translate into her being offered a job at the Ivies after [italic]Sexual Personae[/italic] was published.

R30, R41 Actually, Exulansic did a video on Camille Paglia, hilariously titled "The Hellmouth and Camille Pedophiglia". I wanted to link it but sadly she must've removed it.

She's dead. Captured!

What ever happened to "Volume II" of Sexual Personae that she was always promising as imminent back in the 90s? Did she give up on it?

I'm a literary scholar and I have to admit that I enjoyed reading Sexual Personae when it came out. But it reminds me of something she herself said about Susan Sontag's work on popular culture: it gets your imaginative juices flowing, but when you read closely for something to cite, it all just kind of evaporates. There's no particular formulation of an idea that you can build on, as opposed to punchy descriptions and aphorisms. And her broader arguments about gender and history are pretty simplistic.

Unpleasant, ignorant self-loathing woman suffering from internalised misogyny who got in bed with white misogynists and openly supports the Islamic oppression of women.

If Andrew Sullivan like to lick cunts instead of being a cunt, he'd be Camille Paglia.

Julie Burchill/Camille Paglia cunt off by fax (how90s).

R10, what a shitty, classless comment you made.

R18, so ur giving the Clintons shit because either

A) they don’t have a supermodel looking daughter, or

B) Because Chelsea’s facial expressions may or may not be interpreted as those of a fully functional person, which MOST of us aren’t?

OK, Bitch. Whatever.

She physically abused her wife and son. The wife left her to protect the boy.

Where on earth did you get that allegation from?

Her speaking style is so jarring but she's not an idiot. Very intelligent but she stammers so much

OMG that's a great clip R67. SS is just a gaping CUNT!

[quote] She's a lesbian who likes hot feminine women who own their feminine sexuality.

That's not a unique view, R62, contrary to jokes on the DL

She criticizes Sontag for not listening to ROCK and not watching TV.

I mean be careful who you call dated because soon, you'll be dated too.

She was a big Rush Limbaugh supporter. Quoted him often. Attacked liberals for refusing to recognize his "enormous intellectual influence" on the American public.

Sontag was so cunty in r67's clip.

[quote]She considers herself transgender in the sense that she is gender non conforming.

Since she has always lived in a loony fantasy world that she makes up as she goes along, this doesn't surprise me!

From the cunt off between Burchill and Paglia linked above.

Camille writes:

“ I could have helped you far more than you could help me. I am read and translated around the world from Japan to South America, and the basis of my fame is not just journalism but a scholarly book on the history of culture. You are a very local commodity, completely unknown outside of England, and you have produced nothing of global interest. It is you who began this fight, and it is you who will pay the price for it.The more vicious you are in print, the stupider you will look.”

Stupider? THIS is an academic?

What about ancient Greece and Rome? Is it possible that there were adult gayrelationships but it just wasn’t written about?

PAGLIA: I would find that very odd because there was no censorship on the poets. There was nothing to stop people from expressing whatever they were doing. We have an awful lot of wonderful poetry, like Horace and Juno talk about the love for boys. We know that the emperor Hadrian, for example, was in love with the boy Antinous. That’s how little people were censoring expression. He had to marry and have children. He was in love with this young man. The young man died — drowned in the Nile — and Hadrian built shrines all over the Mediterranean to his love. The point is, they probably could have been in [adult same-sex] relationships, but they simply were not the cultural norm. The young male body was considered ideal. I think that’s healthy. The Paglia system for the future is total bisexual experimentation across the spectrum. I’m trying to free up the man-boy love thing. I’m trying to focus attention on that to try to say that is not necessarily pernicious — that cultures through history have managed to integrate man-boy love into a larger structure. I’m sorry, but when I look around the world now — and at American homosexuality — I’m not exactly thrilled by what I’m seeing. I think there are a lot of problems in our culture that contemporary homosexuality is a response to. It’s not that I am considering homosexuality pathological, but rather I’m saying that the gay activist establishment has been very stupid in denying that there’s a psychological component. Every example of a gay man that I know is in some sense looking for masculinity, because it’s missing in their lives. It’s not there. 100 years ago America was an agricultural country. It was easy to know how to be a man. You hung around men more. You were with men more. You were with your father more, and your brothers and other men. I believe there wasn’t a need for homosexuality as much, because you had a kind of companionship with men that you were satisfied with. I think that’s one area gay activists have been totally dishonest about in not realizing the degree to which a lot of gay men are just starved for something which is genuine. I was on the forefront of this five years ago and going against the feminist line of the last 25 years that masculinity is an illness. Masculinity is a disease. It’s a neurosis. It’s the source of all the disasters of history. Because of my intimacy with gay men, I got over my repugnance toward men — coming from my battles for authority with men. And also through my love of art and seeing the beautiful images of men in art — from Greek antiquity on — of male nude bodies. It was me who started saying masculinity is real, it is beautiful, it is eternal, it is something that every single culture has always seen: the beauty of young men. I now feel that — I really do feel this, okay? There are a lot of gay men today who are identifying themselves as exclusively gay who in fact are simply searching for the masculinity that is lost to our culture. I’m not saying, “Stop sleeping with men.” Again, I’m always saying, “Self-knowledge.” Self-knowledge is the key to everything. I feel that the issue here is much bigger than homosexuality. It is what’s happened when we switched. We have gone into an industrial culture now. People work in offices, and kids are coming out of broken homes. And the fathers have shrunk down, and feminism is making men shrink even further. It’s being actually obstructive here.

SICK

She does that right wing pundit thing where you just use $5 words and keep babbling so people think you’re an intellectual.

I find her entertaining and she's definitely intelligent and educated. She's definitely narcissistic and likes to provoke. I don't agree with a lot of what she says though. She can talk about women's issues as a woman herself. She's a lesbian who identifies as transgender, so she can talk about that. But she knows nothing about gay men and is basing it off stereotypes and Freudianism. Like many intellectuals, she is still biased and still wrong on things. She's definitely not wrong with the post-truth society we live in and the destruction of community, culture and public education due to corporate greed and the wealthy establishment.

She has walked back some of the excesses of her early man-boy fixation. She now admits 14 is way too young for the legal age of consent.

Many of her views about gay identity (see reply 87) are theoretical and silly. No amount of integration with masculine roles and relationships will make me less homosexual or more willing to have sex also with women.

She is right in what she said to Peterson; there are early childhood family dynamics that appear remarkably common among the gay men I know. ie, some kind of fracture or dissatisfaction between the mother and father during the boy's first years, where the mother seeks a close emotional bond with the son (either because she lacks one with the husband, or because the husband has rejected the son and she is overcompensating to give him the love and attention he is lacking from his father). A close relationship with mother and cold, distant or absent father in early childhood is VERY common among gay men.

[quote] She is right in what she said to Peterson; there are early childhood family dynamics that appear remarkably common among the gay men I know. ie, some kind of fracture or dissatisfaction between the mother and father during the boy's first years, where the mother seeks a close emotional bond with the son (either because she lacks one with the husband, or because the husband has rejected the son and she is overcompensating to give him the love and attention he is lacking from his father). A close relationship with mother and cold, distant or absent father in early childhood is VERY common among gay men.

I feel that would better explain why there are gay men who are effeminate. Straight boys with absent fathers and clingy mothers are also effeminate. The dynamic has more to do with learned behavior rather than sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is genetically determined. Effeminate gay boys are more likely to be abused and socially rejected and also more likely to be openly gay. Which is why that belief is so common.

It's all a rich tapestry.

There are multiple examples of male identical twins where one is exclusively homosexual and the other is straight. Meaning genes alone do not determine the outcome. Some environmental trigger must be involved in the expression of any theoretical "gay gene(s)".

But we are not fully pre-programmed to be gay.

[quote] We have an awful lot of wonderful poetry, like Horace and Juno talk about the love for boys.

I think you meant "Horace and Juvenal."

Juno was not a poet; she was a goddess.

[quote] Until a few years ago, she used to write articles for major publications where she basically called current pop stars talentless whores.

Not that I disagree, but this from the woman who sung the praises of Madonna's 'talents'?

[quote]She's definitely narcissistic and likes to provoke...

THAT'S IT. That's her act.

NEXT!

R87's example shows how disjointed most of her arguments are. She's so easy to take down.

Plus sexuality is in the blood. It's as genetically determined as eye color and height. I'm convinced this will be substantiated as science progresses. Examining homosexuality as some kind of pathology as she does is off the wall and even she contradicts herself on the subject

She's nuts.

Homosexuality and bisexuality exist in other mammals. There's photos of male lions topping each other and male penguins raising babies together. That alone disproves the idea that it's nurtured. Our closest relatives: chimps and bonobos show bisexuality. The fact that anal sex is intensely pleasurable due to the prostate indicates that bisexuality was probably sexually selected in men. Humans evolved to form pairs, whether opposite-sex or same-sex both were helpful in survival and raising children.

Julie Burchill won.

R94, whatever that was a garbled transcript of, I hope she didn't say "Juvenal," because insofar as he writes about the love of boys he savagely derides it. Maybe she meant Catullus? Tibullus? Virgil? Ibycus? Meleager? My text-critical skills fail me here.

Germaine Greer wrote an entire art commentary book on male beauty of the young adolescent male form. I read it and found it pretty boring and repetitive. Greer is similarly controversial and a contrarian.

[quote] She teaches at Philadelphia University of the Arts.

Are you sure it isn't Philadelphia Community College?

Federico Fellini fucked Germaine Greer. I kniw. But it's true. Throw that at Paglia.

The parenthood dynamic that is so common in the histories of many gay men can be explained by the father noticing the effeminacy of the son, rejecting him, and the mother stepping in to fill the parenting gap. Instead of the devouring mother theory, you have the unloving father reality.

^^ oh please Go read the bible

If fucked up uncaring fathers were the cause of effeminate and gay men, then 90% of ALL MEN would be fags.

*ahem*

[quote]Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

[quote]A close relationship with mother and cold, distant or absent father in early childhood is VERY common among gay men.

Isn't that because fathers tend to have a harder time dealing with having a gay son than mothers do?

Straight boys can be effeminate too though. Most straight men are fucked up because their fathers were shitty too. It's just a gay or a male thing. And shitty and neglectful mothers do just as much damage if not more to their sons as well.

^^ you really think a parent/s can turn a guy straight or gay?

I'm going to have to start blocking the ignorant sods here

R110 Nope. Homosexuality is genetically determined just like bisexuality and heterosexuality. I was saying that everyone is damaged by abusive parents but it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Effeminacy is defined by culture and time period. Men rejecting their sons doesn't turn them gay obviously and it often has a lot of other factors that is entirely the father's fault not the child.

I noticed I had a typo which led to the misunderstanding. I meant to say "it's just not a gay or a male thing." Sorry

The theory in infamous self help book THE VELVET RAGE was that the cliched parenting dynamic experienced by so many gay men, comes from the father noticing the son is different in early childhood ("effeminate") and rejecting him. Then sets off a chain reaction of mother stepping in to give compensatory love, son learning to respond to feminine modes of being to better please mom, who unlike dad is at least responsive (example given: learning that bitchy jokes make mom laugh), and then son dealing with the wounds of dad's rejection by acting out in various ways, including by trying to be perfect at everything that he can excel in.

I’ve witnessed way more mothers having an issue with their son being gay than fathers. Mothers want grandchildren.

[quote] Homosexuality is genetically determined just like bisexuality and heterosexuality.

There’s no proof of that. Could be hormones in the womb.

[quote] Homosexuality and bisexuality exist in other mammals.

Not really. Make animals will top anything and it shows dominance. They’re not exclusively gay or bi.

I know a lot of gay men whose relationships with mother and father flip in much later life.

Was once very close to mom, and dad was a distant or hostile figure in childhood, and then that dynamic reverses in adulthood.

That's interesting and seems to be a real thing for a lot of people, but it doesn't change the reality of what was going on in early childhood.

People are really emotionally wedded to the "it's genetic" theory. As noted above, there are many examples of identical twins where one is gay and the other isn't. That's a very strong argument against a simple genetic explanation for homosexuality. Many genes or complexes of genes will create certain outcomes only due to environmental influence. That could be, for example, exposure to hormones in the womb, or maybe even something like stimuli encountered from social encounters. Screaming "but it's genetic!" when people point out that MANY gay men have similar early childhood dynamics with their parents is very simplistic and unhelpful. The truth is we don't know why people are gay, and it is OK to notice and comment on strong commonalities in experience.

Yeah, the identical twins with exactly the same genetic makeup, but one turning out gay while the other one is straight: has that biological conundrum ever been satisfactorily explored and resolved?

So, did Camille have Susan’s Chelsea apartment bombarded with radiation causing the various cancers she had? Did Camille and Annie ever fuck?

Camille by her own admission loved talking about and intellectualising SEX but in reality didn't often have it. She said her college years were largely dateless. Her only publicly prominent relationship, formed post-fame, came as the result of a fan letter; an "application" to be her girlfriend.

R114 is a fucking frau cunt idiot with her hormones in the womb.

The homophobia on this thread is not acceptable on a gay site.

There is nothing pathological about homosexuality.

Whoever said that men being affected by shitty/distant/disapproving fathers is common to ALL men is absolutely correct. Men want love from both parents. Further men want to bond with other men. Gay men can get that from being with/fucking men - to some degree. Straight men try to get it through sports and other forms of team building - from the benign to the extreme (militias). I said "to some degree" above for gay men because many (certainly not all) want to bond with men beyond sex/relationships.

I'ver never heard of Paglia recounting torrid sexual stories of her own experience. I've never heard her speak of one night stands. I have heard her speak at length of her long history of sexual obsession. Of becoming intoxicated by the giddy rush of obsession. She spoke of literally stalking Catherine Deneuve through the glove department in Bloomingdales after she chanced upon her in the street. Her consuming obsessions with Madonna and some Brazilian pop star are well documented. That's sexuality for her; obsession and the pursuit. The crazy rush of emotions.

Possibly she wanted to have a lot of sex but just didn't for whatever reason. Hasn't she said that herself. Or are you saying that the obsession, pursuit, and rush of emotions is just as good as sex for her.

I don't know how hard it is to get casual sex for a lesbian, especially pre dating apps. Only they can answer that question. I will say that most intellectuals live heavily in their heads and that's where a lot of their thrills come from; the theoretical rather than the practical. Unless we are talking about perverts like her arch enemy Foucault, who committed sex crimes throughout the world.

[quote]A "post-structural" feminist, she clashed with established academic feminists, who I do not doubt blackballed her from the "club."

Sorry to backtrack, but Camille would claw your eyes out if she read this. Post-structuralists like Foucault and Derrida were her sworn enemies. A recurring theme in her writing was the disastrous influence they exerted over American humanities departments.

Anyway...I enjoyed Paglia's books and essays in the 90s. She occupied a unique cultural space and there wasn't really anyone like her. But either her shtick became tired or I became tired of her shtick. For me the turning points were (1) the breathless adoration of Sarah Palin, comparing her malapropisms to brilliant jazz improvisations and so forth, and (2) when she declared 'Revenge of the Sith' the greatest work of art of our time. I admit I'm unable to give a single shit about the Real Housewives, so maybe our paths just diverged too greatly.

Camille's giddy, obsessive amorous fixations are her only definingly lesbian personality trait.

How big of a Lesbian Intelligentsia does Philly even have for her to hobnob with, she must be very lonely. And I can see the other Lesbian Academics at Penn snubbing her, though some of the old Lesbian art professors at Moore might welcome her to their coffee klatches every once in a while.

She spends her spare time watching Real Housewives and digging up arrow heads in the garden.

Camille always allied with gay men; she was never accepted by (nor was she interested in) the dull, negative and anti-sex lesbian intellectual establishment.

Camille has a sense of humor, that alone makes her an extremely unusual lesbian

She's a contrarian for the sake of it. Not a fan.

So was Greer.

Germaine Greer was right about probably 90% of the time at least.

No she wasn't.

R62 Is she into BBP?

[quote]Camille by her own admission loved talking about and intellectualising SEX but in reality didn't often have it.

Those who can't do, teach?

R135 What did she said wrong there?

R68 all academics are strange and narcissistic, those are the basic criteria for success in the industry--especially in the humanities. When did she say she was "shocked" that her notoriety didn't translate into a job offer from a more prestigious institution? She hated Yale as a grad student, her whole shtick was railing against the twinned WASPy straitjackets of French theory and hyper political correctness.

R71 don't you think the chapter on Emily Dickinson in Sexual Personae is cite-able?

I'd rather hear a gay male academic talk about gay men and his theories on why homosexuality exists. Because women, straight or lesbian will never understand what it's like.

What causes it is a mix of epigenetics and hormonal factors. Homosexuality does exist in other animals and it's not only about dominance. Many form pair bonds. The idea abusive upbringing or a single mother causes it is stupid. Homosexuality is like being blue-eyed or left handed. There's even evidence that homosexual behavior was favored because it reduced male competition over women in groups. Women who are extremely fertile and have many sons are more than likely to have a gay son. Research showed gay and bi men are more androgynous is facial features and body type compared to strictly heterosexual men. There's the ring finger length, left-handedness, long thin face with wider set eyes and bigger lips and also bigger penis which are more common in gay men than straight. Women tend to find gay and bi men physically attractive and given historically all human males would marry and procreate regardless. That would mean that the genes that cause homosexuality would still be passed down.

The people who argue that gay men are the way they are because of an absent or abusive father often say lesbians are the way they are because of rape too. Paglia was wrong about her theories on gay men.

Well anybody who hates Foucault, Lacan and Derrida can't be all bad.

What are her thoughts on Judy Greer?

Paglia v. Faludi

[quote] The theory in infamous self help book THE VELVET RAGE was that the cliched parenting dynamic experienced by so many gay men, comes from the father noticing the son is different in early childhood ("effeminate") and rejecting him. Then sets off a chain reaction of mother stepping in to give compensatory love, son learning to respond to feminine modes of being to better please mom, who unlike dad is at least responsive (example given: learning that bitchy jokes make mom laugh), and then son dealing with the wounds of dad's rejection by acting out in various ways, including by trying to be perfect at everything that he can excel in.

This must be a suburban thing. Working class moms want their sons to be strong and masculine in order to defend themselves and become a provider at an early age for the families. Mothers are in fact more disciplinarian to their children, both sons and daughters than the father. Any type of effeminate behavior or softness would be looked down upon. Mothers will tolerate girliness in their sons when they are young but as soon as that boy reaches 7 or 8, they start correcting him and tell him to "man up."

Many boys, gay or straight, don't do perfectionism. That's more of a female thing which is why so many girls develop eating disorders and OCD. Boys just act out by being defiant or disruptive because of their testosterone. To get attention, they will cause trouble or talk aggressively to authority. They also resent their fathers and aim to outdo them by becoming more skilled or more stronger or more educated. It's more competitive driven and if they know their dad is a deadbeat they won't emulate him and in fact will threaten him or ignore him if he tries to interfere. Boys do care more about what their mothers think though because the mother is almost always the primary caretaker. And by the time of adolescence, many boys just find male validation from other men or peers if their father is lacking. Though the pain of father's rejection doesn't go away but it usually turns into resentment, disgust and apathy towards the father not "poor me, I wish I knew my mother, I want daddy to love me."

There's an anti-gay troll on this thread

Many straight women deep down think gay men are "damaged" because they can't comprehend why we don't want to sleep with women. It's simply a reaction to centuries of women being taught the female is the fairer sex and the sole value of womanhood is being beautiful and an object of desire. Since gay men do not desire women, it fucks with some straight women's minds.

{quote]Possibly she wanted to have a lot of sex but just didn't for whatever reason.

The reason is her face.

R117 = Meredith Morton

I wonder if r10 is a cunt in real life, or just on DL?

And I wonder why she's obsessed with me?

[quote]OP? Why do you even care? [quote]Gay men sure are odd these days.

A frau pauses from posting her umpeth royaty thread to wonder why gay men would care about one of the most important cultural philosophers of the twentieth century.

Sorry if we caused a ripple your bovine consciousness, bitch!

She seems ripe for an eleventh hour comeback.

[quote] A close relationship with mother and cold, distant or absent father in early childhood is VERY common among gay men.

Interestingly, all the gay men I know, their mother had the hard time accepting their homosexuality, not their father. The mother wanted grandchildren, the wedding, the daughter-in-law, etc.

She's not intellectually honest, but of course, being a good faith actor isn't sexy and doesn't get you the big bucks.

She’s amazing