
Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Has Declared War on Free Speech - nkurz
http://heatst.com/culture-wars/camille-paglia-free-speech-modern-campus-protest/
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ZeroGravitas
Kind of weird to read this sentence in a piece attacking political correctness
on campus:

"In my Anglo-Saxon class one day, the otherwise very affable young WASPy
professor did a crass sexist stunt, also involving an ethnic slur against
working-class Italian-Americans, that still shocks and disgusts me after all
these years."

~~~
malandrew
I think the Big Think video with John Cleese tackles the distinction between
what she's addressing and that one line.

"... political correctness has gone from a good idea, which is let's not be
mean, particularly to people who are not able to look after themselves. That's
a good idea. To the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or
group can be labeled cruel ..."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAK0KXEpF8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAK0KXEpF8U)

We made progressed when political correctness was used to combat nasty
falsehoods, but digressed when it "over corrected" and suppressed valid
criticism of observable phenomenon.

I would check out some of the ideas from Slavoj Žižek as well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Well, it's tricky drawing that line isn't it?

19th century science proved that native americans, the irish, ... well
basically everyone but the scientists themselves were inferior beings. The
people who held those views didn't secretly believe that everyone was equal
and they were making up lies for political advantage. They geniunely thought
they were documenting objective facts about the inferior races according to
science even though we can see from our perspective that it was all self-
justifying nonsense.

But if you'd asked them they'd say, yes, fine don't be mean, but this is valid
criticism based on observable phenomenon.

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chadlavi
Heatst is a conservative garbage rag.

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norea-armozel
Not to be mean, but isn't this the same Camille Paglia that likes to call
being trans a fad? I can't say I really trust her opinion considering her
biases.

~~~
arstin
Well, I really don't feel like working at the moment so I'll bite!

The article, of course, doesn't just give an opinion. It tells an historical
story---partly from her own experience as a social justice activist---and
makes an argument that a wrong turn was taken. You could well disagree with
her conclusion, some premises, or think she left out key facts, but I think
her grounds are a bit less flimsy than whatever biases she happened to
inherit.

FWIW, I didn't know who this person was, but I googled out of curiosity and
she appears to identify as trans herself? (but, sure, this doesn't matter
inside this dialectic since she could still have "cis privilege").

One of her recent criticisms seemed to be parents subjecting their children to
sex reassignment surgery before they are old enough to give informed consent.
And that the explanation for this---obviously, right?---involves the
prominence of gender and sexuality in our cultural zeitgeist and as
technologies for self-identification. She also points out that sex change is
now being misleadingly presented as a solution to deeper problems that would
really remain unaddressed.

A Twitter-inflaming interview had some interesting remarks on a connection
between sexuality and cultural decadence---which she has apparently written a
book on the history of---but she seems to be actually well read and was
working with a much more complex structure than bloggers picked up on
("decadence" is used as a technical term, the link isn't causal, a richer
concept of self-identity is assumed, the objectification of bodies is placed
in a more complex network, etc).

But again, this is just my impression from procrastinating for a bit!

~~~
metaphorm
> she appears to identify as trans herself

no, she doesn't. she's a cis-gendered lesbian. she was born female and still
identifies as female nor has she ever done otherwise as far as I know.

I'm surprised its your first time hearing about Camille Paglia though. She's
moderately famous (in my circles anyway). Has been stirring the pot in the
academia/inteligentisa scene for decades now.

She's a very iconoclastic and contrarian thinker and has made enemies on both
the left and the right. Her ideas are fairly deep and well thought out though
and a lot of the controversy she finds herself in is basically the media
trolling their audience with inflammatory out-of-context quotations.

Not to say Paglia isn't sometimes deliberately inflammatory. She can light it
up with the best of them.

~~~
malandrew
Not saying you're wrong, but please substantiate your statements with
citations/facts.

