The Sheila Variations

I love it when Camille goes on a rampage

Check this out.

Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, adviser to Al Gore (as in Ms. "Wear Earth Tones" Wolf), has, 20 years after the fact, accused Harold Bloom, her adviser at Yale, of sexual harassment.

This is patently ridiculous on 5,678,923 levels.

It's stupid, it's hypocritical, it's wrong. 20 years? Ms. Feminist Stand-up-for-myself? Some guy put his hand down your pants, and you can't seem to ever ever ever get over it? You are haunted years later??

Harold Bloom was responsible for your Rhodes scholarship, having written you a glowing recommendation ...

This is why I also scorned the feminist establishment's lifting up Anita Hill into some kind of idol. If the woman were sexually harassed, she did not speak up, she did not come forward - and she benefitted fully from Clarence Thomas' attentions - moving up the ranks. And NOW? Now she comes forward?

Sorry. There are PLENTY of women who REALLY fight sexual harassment, who lose their damn jobs because of it ... who put their reputations, their futures on the line, in order to stand up for what is right. THOSE are the women we should admire. Not Anita Hill, for God's sake.

Naomi Wolf has always bugged me and I am always happy when someone comes forward and calls her on her shit. I could not have been happier when she was lambasted for her "be an Alpha Male, wear earth tones" advice to the floundering Vice-President.

THIS is what feminism has amounted to?

I have one thing to say: Ick.

Camille Paglia, who never loses an opportunity to bash Naomi Wolf, has come forward and raged about this latest incident (Wolf has demanded that Yale University apologize to her). God, that is just so STUPID. 20 freakin' years later?? Grow the fuck up.

Camille Paglia, who traded blows with Ms. Wolf in the early 1990’s over their radically different views on female sexual power, said she was no longer at war with Ms. Wolf, but was "shocked" to learn of Ms. Wolf’s accusations against Mr. Bloom, who is a long-time mentor of Ms. Paglia’s.

"I just feel it’s indecent that if Naomi Wolf did not have the courage to pursue the matter at the time, or in the 1990’s, and put her own reputation on the line, then to bring all of this down on a man who is in his 70’s and has health problems—who has become a culture hero to readers in the humanities around the world—to drag him into a ‘he said/she said’ scenario so late in the game, to me demonstrates a lack of proportion and a basic sense of fair play," said Ms. Paglia, who is professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she said she helped institute that university’s sexual-harassment policies in the 1980s.

"At the beginning of the 90’s, people said, ‘Oh, Naomi Wolf, this great thinker,’" said Ms. Paglia. "But what she’s managed to do in 10 years is marginalize herself as a chronicler of teenage angst. She doesn’t want to leave that magic island when she was the ripening teenager. How many times do we have to relive Naomi Wolf’s growing up? How many books, how many articles, Naomi, are you going to impose on us so we have to be dragged back to your teenage-heartbreak years? This is regressive! It’s childish! Move on! Move on! Get on to menopause next!"

Er ... but how do you really feel, Camille?

You go, Camille. You go.

Posted by sheila