The Bete Noire of Feminism: CAMILLE PAGLIA

Cultural iconoclast CAMILLE PAGLIA likes to throw punches, both physical and verbal, against smug formulas and codes of political correctness

"There is something in my book to offend absolutely everybody. I am proabortion, pro the legal use of drugs, propornography, child pornography, snuff films. And I am going after these things until Gloria Steinem screams."

The speaker -- at nonstop, sewing-machine speed -- is Camille Paglia, contrarian academic and feminist bete noire, and her 1990 book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press), is the most explosive tome to emerge from academe in quite some time. The book is about many things -- paganism, pop culture, androgyny, sexual conflicts -- but what has drawn the...

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