# What's up with Camille Paglia? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 11, 2004, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609 "2004-05-11T12:13:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609/21 "2004-05-11T17:14:15Z")
Salon has a number of archived Paglia columns. I can’t remember exactly where or what she teaches, but she is an academic. ---
**Author:** ![thermalribbon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@thermalribbon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thermalribbon)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609/22 "2004-05-11T17:20:06Z")
I don’t know about everyone else, but I have always appreciated her as an anti-PC liberal. That’s the best way I can describe her. She has a unique worldview for an academic. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her speak on a few occasions, and her willingness to defend what so many in academia attack make her seem inflammatory. But to me, all she is doing is protecting some sacred ideals (Western Arts and Traditions, namely) that some seem so willing to trample with so-called multicultural and moral equivalence. I feel that there need to be those who acknowledge that some cultural traditions are in fact better than others. ---
**Author:** ![moi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@moi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moi)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609/23 "2004-05-11T20:37:47Z")
Paglia teaches at my alma mater, [The University of the Arts](http://www.uarts.edu/parents/FacultyMainFrameset.html) in Philadelphia. [Salon.com](http://Salon.com) has [76 of her articles archived](http://dir.salon.com/topics/camille_paglia/), though none very recent. I don’t know that I like her, but I always find her work to be interesting to read. And, moreso than many other feminist authors, I find that she helps me better understand what I believe and why…even when I’m disagreeing with her. I never had the opportunity to hear her lecture, which I thought was unfortunate. I did, however, have the opportunity to learn from [Nancy Heller](http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2002-12-05/cover.shtml), the author of [_Why a Painting is Like a Pizza_](http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7335.html). 🆒 Anyway, back to Paglia, no matter what you do, don’t form your opinion on her based on quotes. You really owe it to yourself to read a full essay of hers and at least evaluate her ideas in context. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2004, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609/24 "2004-05-12T12:50:42Z")
She is an attention whore, but she’s also quite intelligent and astute at times in analyzing what’s really happening at the core of various sociological and pop cultural phenomena. The problem is in parsing out the throwaway, showoff, “Look how iconoclastic I’m being!” stuff from the incisive stuff, and quite often they are mixed together. Her best stuff is where she really is “speaking truth to power” and liberals dislke this being done to their cherished notions just as much as conservatives do. Her worst stuff is where she’s just chattering aimlessly of prosposing some wild ass theory. She’s also often talks (well brags really) about how she drives heterosexual men crazy with desire because they find her so intellectually fascinating and so hot (as opposed to hetero women I suppose). True or not this stuff does not win her friends on either side of the female gay/hetero aisles. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2004, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609/25 "2004-05-12T21:39:54Z")
Yes, read Paglia for yourself. About the best that I can say is that she probably means well. :dubious: It is her generalizations that drive me up the wall. Personally, I go along with part of what Molly Ivins has had to say about her: > [@](#): > > There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “Poor dear, it’s probably PMS.”’ Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “What an asshole.” Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-camille-paglia/244609.md?page=1)