‘Hillary Clinton is a disaster!’
The iconoclastic professor discusses the presidential election, feminism and date rape
EMILY HILLare not capable of making decisions on
their own. This is not feminism — which is
to achieve independent thought and action.
There will never be equality of the sexes if
we think that women are so handicapped
they can’t look after themselves.’
Paglia traces the roots of this belief sys-
tem to American campus culture and the
cult of women’s studies. This ‘poison’ —
as she calls it — has spread worldwide. ‘In
London, you now have this plague of female
journalists... who don’t seem to have made
a deep study of anything...’
Paglia does not sleep with men — but
she is, very refreshingly, in favour of them.
She never moans about ‘the patriarchy’ but
freely asserts that manmade capitalism has
enabled her to write her books.
As for male/female relations, she says
that they are far more complex than most
feminists insist. ‘I wrote a date-rape essay in
1991 in which I called for women to stand
up for themselves and learn how to han-
dle men. But now you have this shibboleth,
“No means no.” Well, no. Sometimes “No”
means “Not yet”. Sometimes “No” means
“Too soon”. Sometimes “No” means “Keep
trying and maybe yes”. You can see it with
the pigeons on the grass. The male pursuesT
alking to Camille Paglia is like
approaching a machine gun: mad-
ness to stick your head up and ask a
question, unless you want your brain blown
apart by the answer, but a visceral delight
to watch as she obliterates every subject
in sight. Most of the time she does this for
kicks. It’s only on turning to Hillary Clin-
ton that she perpetrates an actual murder:
of Clinton II’s most cherished claim, that
her becoming 45th president of the United
States would represent a feminist triumph.
‘In order to run for president of the Unit-
ed States, you have to spend two or three
years of your life out on the road constantly
asking for money and most women find that
life too harsh, too draining,’ Paglia argues.
‘That is why we haven’t had a woman pres-
ident in the United States — not because
we haven’t been ready for one, for heaven’s
sakes, for a very long time...’
Hillary hasn’t suffered — Paglia con-
tinues — because she is a woman. She has
shamelessly exploited the fact: ‘It’s an out-
rage how she’s played the gender card.
She is a woman without accomplishment.
“I sponsored or co-sponsored 400 bills.” Oh
really? These were bills to rename bridges
and so forth. And the things she has accom-
plished have been like the destabilisation of
North Africa, causing refugees to flood into
Italy... The woman is a disaster!’
Not that Paglia was always opposed
to the Clintons. She voted for Bill Clinton
twice before becoming revolted by the treat-
ment meted out to Monica Lewinsky: ‘One
of the very first interviews I did here — the
headline was “Kind of a bitch — why I like
Hillary Clinton”. My jaundiced view of her
is entirely the result of observing her behav-
iour. And last election, I voted for Jill Stein’s
Green party. So I have already voted for a
woman president.’
As far as most feminists are concerned,
such a view is unconscionable. Gloria Stei-
nem and Madeleine Albright made it their
business to castigate American girls who
wanted Bernie Sanders, while Madonna
has promised a blowjob for every Clinton
vote. Professor Paglia does not seem to
mind much if she makes herself violently
unpopular with her contemporaries — she’s
an expert at it. Currently professor of the
humanities at the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia, she first shot to fame in 1990with the publication of Sexual Personae — a
manuscript turned down by seven publish-
ers before it became a bestseller.
Paglia’s feminism has always been con-
cerned with issues far beyond her own navel
and the Hillary verdict is typical of her atti-
tude — which is more in touch with women
in the real world than most feminists’ (a
majority of Americans, for example, havean ‘unfavourable view of Hillary Clinton’
according to recent polling).
‘My philosophy of feminism,’ the New
York-born 69-year-old explains, ‘I call street-
smart Amazon feminism. I’m from an immi-
grant family. The way I was brought up was:
the world is a dangerous place; you must
learn to defend yourself. You can’t be a fool.
You have to stay alert.’ Today, she suggests,
middle-class girls are being reared in a pre-
cisely contrary fashion: cosseted, indulged
and protected from every evil, they become
helpless victims when confronted by adver-
sity. ‘We are rocketing backwards here to the
Victorian period with this belief that women‘It’s an outrage how Hillary has
played the gender card. She is
a woman without accomplishment’