Outspoken social critic and professor Camille Paglia once liked Hillary Clinton’s personality, but that is no longer the case.
Now, Paglia finds Clinton’s “accomplishments” to be anything but, and will not vote for her.
“It’s an outrage how she’s played the gender card,” Paglia told the Spectator. “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 accomplished have been like the destabilization of North Africa, causing refugees to flood into Italy …”
The woman is a disaster!” she added.
Paglia also said that women haven’t been running for president not because of some kind of glass ceiling, but because they’re just not drawn to the rigors of what that kind of campaign takes. Paglia added that in 2012, she voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
“So I have already voted for a woman president,” she said.
This is not the first time Paglia has been critical of Clinton. Earlier this year, Paglia knocked Clinton’s “blame-men-first” brand of feminism that “defines women as perpetual victims requiring government protections.”
Paglia defined her own feminism to the Spectator as “street-smart Amazon feminism,” which is a much more appealing term than current modern outrage feminism.
“I’m from an immigrant 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,” she said.
She added that women today are being coddled and protected in a way that is actually hurting — not empowering — them.
“We are rocketing backwards here to the Victorian period with this belief that women are not capable of making decisions on their own. This is not feminism — which is to achieve independent thought and action,” she said. “There will never be equality of the sexes if we think that women are so handicapped they can’t look after themselves.”
Paglia said women’s studies majors on college campuses are to blame. She also said phrases like “no means no” (which is now out of fashion in favor of the even more impossible standard “yes means yes”) have made the relationship between men and women more clumsy.
“Well, no — sometimes ‘no’ means ‘not yet,'” she said. “Sometimes ‘no’ means ‘too soon.’ Sometimes ‘no’ means ‘keep trying and maybe yes.'”
Sadly, Paglia could not name any young feminists she admires.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
