Earlier this year, Camille Paglia gave a problematic interview to New York Magazine. Paglia is best known for her feminist writings, or her critiques on modern feminism, gender, masculinity, what have you. I enjoy reading her interviews because she makes me think, but I rarely agree with her about anything. Paglia is something of a Trump defender, or maybe something like a “sympathetic analyst” of Trump and Trumpism. She doesn’t see him as a racist bully or a white supremacist or a sexual predator. She sees him as a man’s man who owns his (dated) concept of masculinity admirably. Paglia has a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter and my God, this woman can talk. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Hugh Hefner’s importance: “Hugh Hefner absolutely revolutionized the persona of the American male. In the post-World War II era, men’s magazines were about hunting and fishing or the military, or they were like Esquire, erotic magazines with a kind of European flair. Hefner reimagined the American male as a connoisseur in the continental manner, a man who enjoyed all the fine pleasures of life, including sex. Hefner brilliantly put sex into a continuum of appreciative response to jazz, to art, to ideas, to fine food. This was something brand new. Enjoying fine cuisine had always been considered unmanly in America. Hefner updated and revitalized the image of the British gentleman, a man of leisure who is deft at conversation — in which American men have never distinguished themselves — and the art of seduction, which was a sport refined by the French.
Trump as the Playboy Man: “Before the election, I kept pointing out that the mainstream media based in Manhattan, particularly The New York Times, was hopelessly off in the way it was simplistically viewing Trump as a classic troglodyte misogynist. I certainly saw in Trump the entire Playboy aesthetic, including the glitzy world of casinos and beauty pageants. It’s a long passé world of confident male privilege that preceded the birth of second-wave feminism. There is no doubt that Trump strongly identified with it as he was growing up. It seems to be truly his worldview. But it is categorically not a world of unwilling women. Nor is it driven by masculine abuse. It’s a world of show girls, of flamboyant femaleness, a certain kind of strutting style that has its own intoxicating sexual allure — which most young people attending elite colleges today have had no contact with whatever.
When men were men and women were women: “The unhappy truth is that the more the sexes have blended, the less each sex is interested in the other. So we’re now in a period of sexual boredom and inertia, complaint and dissatisfaction…With the sexes so bored with each other, all that’s left are these feminist witch-hunts. That’s where the energy is! And meanwhile, men are shrinking. I see men turning away from women and simply being content with the world of fantasy because women have become too thin-skinned, resentful and high-maintenance.
On Gloria Steinem’s critique that “what Playboy doesn’t know about women could fill a book.” “What Playboy doesn’t know about well-educated, upper-middle-class women with bitter grievances against men could fill a book! I don’t regard Gloria Steinem as an expert on any of the human appetites, sexuality being only one of them. Interviews with Steinem were documenting from the start how her refrigerator contained nothing but two bottles of carbonated water. Steinem’s philosophy of life is extremely limited by her own childhood experiences. She came out of an admittedly unstable family background. I’m so tired of that animus of hers against men, which she’s been cranking out now for decade after decade. I come from a completely different Italian-American background — very food-centric and appetite-centric. Steinem, with that fulsomely genteel WASP persona of hers, represents an attitude of malice and vindictiveness toward men that has not proved to be in the best interest of young women today… Steinem is basically a socialite who always hid her early dependence on men in the social scene in New York. And as a Democrat, I also blame her for having turned feminism into a covert adjunct of the Democratic party. I have always felt that feminism should transcend party politics and be a big tent welcoming women of faith and of all views into it…”
She goes on like that for like seven pages. I can’t. I just… can’t. I don’t think Steinem is a perfect feminist either, and you know why? Because there’s no such thing. It’s about the conversation, it’s about the progression of ideas, and it’s about working towards tangible achievements, like educating police and prosecutors about rape, sexual assault, harassment and stalking. It’s about pay equity and a culture of consent and sexual agency. It’s about reproductive choice. The fact that Paglia is basically defending Trump because he views himself as a throwback “playboy” is gross. I also get the feeling that Paglia sort of hates women? Just in general, she thinks women are subhuman.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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