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AOL Transcript 9/19/95 Camille Paglia

AOL Transcript Camille Paglia

Copyright 1995 America Online, Inc.

PhilCLU: Evening everyone. I'm Phil Gutis, the ACLU's national media relations director and all around handyman in Constitution Hall, our AOL forum. We're delighted to have Camille Paglia join us tonight. Let me take a couple of minutes to introduce her and then we'll get to your questions.

OnlineHost: Camille Paglia is a self-proclaimed "radical libertarian" and "dissident feminist." An academic by profession, Paglia received her doctorate at Yale. She eventually landed as a Professor of Humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she now teaches.

OnlineHost: Paglia is the author of three bestselling books, the latest of which is titled "Vamps & Tramps," which takes on the anti-porn feminist crowd. She is also a regular columnist for the Advocate, the national newsmagazine of the gay and lesbian community.

OnlineHost: As a fascinating yet relentless culture critic, Paglia has commented on just about every subject imaginable. But censorship strikes a special cord with Paglia -- she feels that censorship is particularly targeted at so-called subversive culture and alternative lifestyles, those very aspects of society where Paglia roams most frequently.

OnlineHost: Please join us in welcoming Camille Paglia to the AOL CenterStage as part of the ongoing series of ACLU discussions with the newsworthy and newsmakers.

PhilCLU: A couple of words about the format.

OnlineHost: The auditorium consists of two major areas the audience, where you are right now, and the stage, where the speakers appear. Text which you type onscreen shows only to those in your row, prefaced by the row number in parentheses, such as (2) if you are in row 2. To interact with the speaker, use the Interact icon on your screen.

OnlineHost: To send your question to the speaker, click on the Interact icon, then use the Ask a Question option.

PhilCLU: Alright, I'll open with the first question Why in the world, Camille, did you choose the screename Volsci?

Volsci: The Volscians were the fiercest tribe in ancient Italy.

Volsci: My mother was born in that region.

Volsci: Vergil named his great Amazon warrior in the Aeneid "Camilla"

Volsci: and the name has been in my family for generations.

PhilCLU: We're talking with Camille Paglia, the controversial feminist and author. The first question tonight comes from DMLH218.

Question: I've got to hear what Camille says about the recent swimsuit debate in the Miss America Pageant.

Volsci: I love the swimsuit competition! It is absolutely crucial to the whole sensational, exhibitionistic spectacle. However, let's get those gals back into heels! Any drag queen knows you don't look your best in flat feet!

PhilCLU: We're talking with ACLU member Camille Paglia. The next question is from Isis220.

Question: Could you explain your theories on why porn does not victimize women?

Volsci: Look at the vast, beautiful world of gay male porn. Clearly, no gay man believes porn victimizes the gorgeous hunks who adorn the back pages of every gay newspaper and magazine. We have just got to get over this provincial, puritanical attitude about porn "degrading" the mouthwatering bodies which it displays like art works.

PhilCLU: We're talking with author and commentator Camille Paglia. The next question is from ThPaineMa.

Question: professor Paglia has stated that it is important for religious institutions and the sex industry shoud both be strong because they play off each other what exactly does she man by this?

Volsci: Western culture is a very complex combination of two traditions the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman. The overarching argument of all of my work is that paganism was never in fact defeated by Christianity but instead went underground to resurface at three key moments the Renaissance, Romanticism, and twentieth-century popular culture, whose sex and violence I interpret as pagan phenomena. I am saying that the tension and conflict between those two traditions account for the enormity and grandeur and staggering variety of Western art. Volsci: Hence I want to encourage and intensify that conflict, since I think it crucial to Western achievement.

PhilCLU: Great. We're talking with Camille Paglia, who has outted herself as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. The next question comes from Davebsmit.

Question: What are your views on abortion?

Volsci: I am militantly pro-choice--or rather pro-abortion, as I prefer to put it, without euphemism. I belong to Planned Parenthood and also NARAL. My libertarian philosophy is that government has no right to tell anyone what he or she does with his or her body. It is crucial to modern woman's liberation that she have total control over her own body and all its physiological processes. I think, in fact, that it is Mother Nature who is our greatest oppressor, since the female body seems designed for only one mission--pregnancy. Woman must fight for liberty against fascist Nature!

PhilCLU: We're talking wth the ever-controversial Camille Paglia. The next question is from Zarrdoz

Question: Camille, in your book Vamps and Tramps, you state Organicism is the true deconstruction. Care to expand on that for us?

Volsci: Mother Nature is the ultimate deconstructor, since everything that is created must eventually die. I loathe the absence of nature from the poststructuralist world view. It has devastated education in the elite schools. The Sixties, for heaven's sake, were all about turning back toward nature and recognizing that from the perspective of the cosmos, society is very artificial and very frail. Society is nothing compared to the vastness of outer space. The cosmic perspective is the real instrument of deconstruction--not those little French nerds Lacan and Foucault, whom the professors of the elite schools have made into tin gods.

PhilCLU: And now for a less weighty topic. The next question for Camille Paglia comes from SkiGirls.

Question: What is accurate and inaccurate about the Lesbian stereotype?

Volsci: Lesbians certainly are changing these days, but not as fast as I would wish. I think that the urban centers have a lot of fabulous looking women, but in the other cities of the country, not to mention the vast expanses of suburbia, things are still very banal and very grim. I am concerned that lesbianism is becoming a safe haven for women who just don't want to have to deal with men--not because men are brutes or chauvinists, in the old way, but because men are shrinking. They are less masculine, less confident, less interesting, but clearly more compliant to feminist manipulation. I am very worried about the direction of heterosexuals and homosexuals both. The Packwood case shows that good old-fashioned lust is no longer fashionable. I think that stinks! Lesbians have got to realize that, in my view, the strongest women in the world are those who know how to deal with men at their most macho.

PhilCLU: We're talking with author and professor Camille Paglia. The next question comes from DLuttinen, who would like to know about a recent controversy on Madison Ave.

Question: What is your opinion regarding Calvin Klien pulling his new ad campaign?

Volsci: I have just written a column on that subject for the Advocate. Up to now, I have always been a big fan of Calvin Klein's supersophisticated ads.

Volsci: But I thought these were stupid and badly done. Steven Meisel, the photographer, ruined Madonna with that totally unsexy book, Sex, and now he's tarnishing Calvin Klein as well.

PhilCLU: We're talking with Camille Paglia. Let me ask a follow up, if I may What about the child pornography angle and your thoughts on the age of consent?

Volsci: Throughout my three books, I have argued that pedophilia runs throughout the Western high art traditon. It's even in the plush little bodies of Valentine's Day Cupids! This is one of the most controversial issues of our day. I was nearly lynched on the Jane Wallace Show four years ago when she asked me about my defense of man-boy love in Sexual Personae, my first book. As a woman, I think I have an obligation to force discussion of this very painful issue. Everyone around me--advisors, friends,etc.--has tried to persuade me to stay away from it.

But I think that an intellectual has an obligation to pursue dark, complex topics even when they cause discomfort. Freud's theory of infantile sexuality--the innate eroticism of children--has never been fully absorbed, even though it's a century old at this point. The reason is that most parents cannot bear the idea that their children could be responding erotically to touch. Germaine Greer talked about the quite different standards of touch between adults and children in the non-Western world in her book, Sex and Destiny. What we need is much more scholarly attention to this issue. All I know is that everywhere I look in the great cultural moments of the West--in ancient Athens or Renaissance Florence--I see a lot of pedophiliac eroticism, and I want to know why.

Naturally, we don't want real children used in pornography--that would be a violation of the great progressive principle of abolition of child labor. But I believe that everything that the human imagination is capable of devising should indeed be represented -- not enacted in behavior -- but represented in words or drawing, so that we can learn fully about the soul.

PhilCLU: We're talking with the always challenging author and commentator Camille Paglia. The next question comes from Driley7.

Question: How does it feel to be the feminist most hated by Gloria S. and the rest? Do you ever wonder if you are out of step in those charming combat boots?

Volsci: Gloria Steinem is an old dinosaur. Get with it!

PhilCLU: Here's an interesting one for author Camille Paglia.

Question: Are you going to see "Showgirls?"

Volsci: Yes, of course! I am a great fan of the director, since I loved his "Basic Instinct" and defended it against the Stalinist attacks of the feminist and gay activist establishment. A year ago, "Penthouse" magazine published my tour of New York strip clubs with a woman reporter. I loved posing in the dressing room with all the fabulous seminude women with their little beige pasties. My life is very interesting, let's face it!

PhilCLU: We're talking with Camille Paglia, a self-acknowledged ACLU member. The next question comes from Radz 95.

Question: What do you imagine is going on in the minds of gay Republicans -- Dole staffers, John Schlafly, etc.?

Volsci: As a Clinton Democrat, I do feel that anything that breaks down the old polarized categories of right versus left, Republican versus Democrat, is good. If the moderate wing of the Republican party revives, the gay Republican groups will obviously have a warmer welcome.

PhilCLU: The next question for Camille Paglia comes from Loubavich.

Question: When will you give up academia to become a talk show host?

Volsci: I have had plenty of offers, believe me! Everytime I go on radio, producers hover in the studio doorway trying to lure me into a permanent post behind the mike. I currently am helping Arianna Huffington put together a TV show, but I do not want to make the same mistake that Susan Sontag and Germaine Greer made when they left academe in the Seventies.

I am a scholar by vocation. And I think that through teaching in the classroom--especially freshmen, whom most professors normally try to avoid--one stays close to the changing culture and has a huge impact on the future.

PhilCLU: A more serious question for Camille Paglia from Denise no.

Question: What do you think of the laws against statutory rape?

Volsci: I have called for a reduction of the age of consent to fourteen. For example, how absurd to imagine that seventeen-year-old Amy Fisher was somehow a child that needed protection from stud muffin Joey! I am very radical in my view that there should be no sexual laws of any kind--this is one of the few areas where I agree with that overrated fellow, Michel Foucault. I think that the law should control only matters of physical assault or injury. In the absence of hard evidence, we cannot, in my view, have this he said/ she said type of justice, cases impossible to prove and dragged out a decade after the disputed event. The Anita Hill episode was a particularly abysmal example of this sort of creeping fascism. If women truly want equality with men--and that is my central feminist principle--then they must let go of these special protections which make a fetish of their innocence and purity.

PhilCLU: Unfortunately, we've only got time for one more question for Camille Paglia. It comes from RainorShine.

Question: Don't or can't you seem to understand that the ACLU is responsible for more family break down and divisions then most any other organization around?

Volsci: I am astounded at your claim! In point of fact, the ACLU--even when it drifts toward political correctness, as some of its mailings have done of late--is the flaming sword guarding our American civil rights!

OnlineHost: Well, that was certainly interesting. Please join us in thanking Camille Paglia for what was probably one of the most intriguing CenterStage appearances ever! And to continue the debate about feminism, censorship or anything else we touched on tonight, please join us in the ACLU's Free Speech Zone.

OnlineHost: The Zone (keyword ACLU) has *the* best reputation for chat that flows fast and furious. Join us in the morning for the Breakfast Club, hosted by Finchley, from 9 to 11:30. After that, have a invigorating midday break with the Lunch Bunch, hosted by BlueKing, from 11:30 to 1 P.M.

OnlineHost: And for the evening crowd, the Zone is open from 8:30 to ??? for hosted open debate. Finally, for the late-night-early- morning crowd, join Vote as he hosts the Insomniacs Society from 3 to 7 A.M. (AOL network willing).

OnlineHost: And join us tomorrow at 9 P.M. as we explore a very different side of civil liberties with Ed Bennett, the co-chairman of the ACLU's new Disability Rights Task Force. Ed brings an unending energy and indefatigable enthusiasm as he pushes forward in this relatively new area of the law.

PhilCLU: Thanks again to our guest, Camille Paglia. I wish she could see some of the questions we didn't get to! We'll have to have her back if she agrees.

Copyright 1996, The American Civil Liberties Union

You are currently visiting the ACLU online archives. These pages are not updated. For the latest information from the ACLU, go to http://www.aclu.org.