Some thing from Camille…

This are just extracts from a playboy interview with one of my favourite social philosophers of our modern ecumenical, municipal, not-so-cosmopolite world, Camille Paglia.

Paglia is shunned by most feminists because she accuses the women's movement of betraying women, alienating men, and replacing dialogue with political correctness.

Though Paglia's image as an antifeminist feminist, antigay lesbian and anti-liberal liberal seems carefully cultivated, it is nonetheless remarkable. Called alternately "the bravest and most original critic of our day" and an "academic Rottweiler," Paglia articulates a philosophy that encompasses paganism, Madonna, pornography, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Freud.

A humanities professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Paglia has been America's most notorious enfant terrible of academe since the publication of her seminal work, "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson." "The Washington Post" called the book "at once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant." Released in 1990, it was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for its incendiary theories about Western culture from ancient Egypt to Elvis Presley. In the follow-up tome, "Sex, Art and American Culture," and her current bestseller, "Vamps & Tramps," Paglia skewers everything politically correct and then some. Though her views about issues as diverse as the origins of homosexuality, the danger of fraternity, parties and the implications of having a penis are always debatable, they are well argued and provocative.

"Pornography is sexual reality.

Certain forms of rape "are what used to be called unbridled love. "

"Lesbianism is increasing since anxious, unmasculine men have little to offer.

"Prostitutes like their work."

"Bisexuality, should be the universal norm."

"Legalize all drugs.

Stripping is "a sacred dance of pagan origins" and the money men stuff into G-strings is a "ritual offering." "The more a woman takes off her clothes, the more power she has " and feminists hate strippers because "modern professional women cannot stand the thought that their hard-won achievements can be outweighed in an instant by a young hussy flashing a little tits and ass."

She wants to lower the age of consent for sex to 14, and she supports the North American Man-Boy, Love Association, an organization that advocates gay sex with young boys. She says that AIDS is nature's revenge for promiscuity.

Paglia was born in 1947 in Endicott, New York. She has compared her suburban upbringing to that of two other controversial women, Madonna and Sandra Bernhard. "Half of us is a nice suburban girl," she says. "The other half is a raving pornographic maniac."

PLAYBOY: Are you a feminist?

PAGLIA: I'm absolutely a feminist. The reason other feminists don't like me is that I criticize the movement, explaining that it needs a correction. Feminism has betrayed women, alienated men and women, replaced dialogue with political correctness. PC feminism has boxed women in. The idea that feminism--that liberation from domestic prison--is going to bring happiness is just wrong. Women have advanced a great deal, but they are no happier. The happiest women I know are not those who are balancing their careers and families, like a lot of my friends are. The happiest people I know are the women--like my cousins--who have a high school education, got married immediately graduating and never went to college. They are very religious and they never question their Catholicism. They do not regard the house as a prison.

PLAYBOY: But what about the women who stay home and are still suffering?

PAGLIA: The problem is the alternative handed to them by feminism. I look at my friends who are on the fast track. They are desperate, frenzied and frazzled, the most unhappy women who have ever existed. They work nights and weekends and have no lives. Some of them have children who are raised by nannies.

PLAYBOY: What's your point? Do you want women to go back to the home?

PAGLIA: The entire feminist culture says that the most important woman is the woman with an attached case. I want to empower the woman who wants to say, "I'm tired of this and I want to go home." The far right is correct when it says the price of women's liberation is being paid by the children.