Dissident Feminist Camille Paglia‘s new oped in Time Magazine has the feminist world’s metaphorical panties in a bunch for claiming: “It’s a Man’s World, and it Always Will Be.” Known as a feminist “bete noir,” Paglia proudly declares that the modern economy is a “male epic, in which women have found a productive role,” but then states boldly that women were not it’s author.

Paglia writes: “A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.”

The author goes on to argue that the reason that feminism has gone wrong in the United States has to do with our “Puritan residue.” She claims that feminists in France, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Latin America are able to be ambitious, professional women who can assert power while still projecting: “sexual allure and even glamour.” She describes this as the “true feminine mystique,” which flows from a recognition of the differences between the sexes.





Paglia writes that obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women, but from the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years. She believes that it was men that freed women from drudgery by creating labor saving appliances, spread by capitalism and says that in the event of an apocalypse, men would absolutely be indispensable.

Camille Paglia doesn’t mince words when she argues that a post-apocalyptic world without men would also be one without women. Who would build the roads? Who would lay bricks, pour concrete, cut and clear trees? It’s the men who bulldoze landscapes for housing developments. She describes the oil tankers that pass along the Delaware river in Philadelphia, crewed by men who built our modern economy.

Paglia concludes with a statement that might have been better as a question: “Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!”

Paglia’s criticisms are interesting in light of the recent rise of the “Men’s Rights Movement” online, where men and women have been coming together in recent years to challenge unfair gender bias in places such as family courts and on college campuses.

Feminist icon and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Lessing, who passed away this year, likely would have approved of this movement considering her statements in 2001 when she said that feminists should “lay off men.” Lessing argued that men were the new silent victims who are “continually demeaned and insulted” by women and can’t say anything. “Men seem to be so cowed that they can’t fight back, and it is time they did,” Lessing said. Definitely.

Considering that we live in a nation where more men are raped than women, colleges want to allow people to file anonymous rape reports, and more men are losing interest in marriage, it was only a matter of time before even the feminists started speaking up.











