The anti-feminist feminist

All becomes clear the moment she fireballs her way into the Philadelphia restaurant, for here is a woman who never, ever sleeps. What energy! The entire restaurant immediately revs up: waiters stride faster, the light buzzes brighter.

Time does not dim her. It is now seven years since she vaulted on to the international lecture circuit with her seminal work Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson. She infuriated critics who dismissed her as a one-book wonder by promptly following up with Sex, Art And American Culture and Vamps And Tramps, which skewered all things politically correct, including date rape and sexual harassment.

“I’m an equity feminist,” she shouts above the restaurant clatter. “I want equality for women in the eyes of the law, but I oppose special protections, they’re reactionary. If women are up to the task, they should be adopted for combat.” A bowl of gazpacho appears and she picks up her spoon as if it were a club. We will come back to her own record of violence in a moment, but first she has a point to finish.

“This galls me because I thought the Sixties were about getting institutions out of our personal lives. Back then, women were ballsy, feisty. We were fighting for freedom!” She has not yet stopped to take breath and appears to inhale the soup without once interrupting her flow.

Then mid-seventies, something went wrong with feminism. It all turned and was anti everything — humourless, anti-sex, anti-art and anti-men.”Paglia, who is 50 and currently lies with a woman, is not anti-men. “Physically, I am very attracted to men, very, but I can’t get along with them. Men always want to argue.” She sighs crossly. What sort of men does she find attractive? Academics? “No!” Americans? “No!” She pauses for a rare hyper-second, then mutters: “Dutch men. They aren’t intimidated. Nor are Australians.”

I can see some men might find her overwhelming, scary even, but is she really as self-confident as she appears? “In matters of work, yes, in matters of love no! When I moved here to Philadelphia, I thought I must make an effort to meet people. So I tried to date women but it went nowhere! No one had any interest in trying to converse with me. Hah! Then a gay man would go by, there would be a spark and we could talk for three hours!”

She produces thousands of words over lunch, many of them amusing and self-deprecating, and there is no subject on which she does not have a refreshingly unshy opinion. Gwyneth Paltrow? “An absolute pile of nothing, talentless! Oh, we live in a period of declining personality!” Demi Moore? “An automaton!” George Clooney? “Sexy, wolfish!” Brad Pitt? “Pretty but no pizzazz. Who’s going to play Moses, who’s going to play Michelangelo?” she cries suddenly. “I worry about the kids today, the shrinking down of the cultural scene. There’s too much irony now, everything’s cool and people are afraid to be enthusiastic.I’m always blundering! I’m always saying too much, knocking things over!”

Fired from her first teaching job, at Bennington College in Vermont, for fighting, Paglia relishes attacking men. She attacked another recently after he had the effrontery to sit down right in front of her at a dance show. But why hit him? “I enjoy fighting, something deep in me. It’s about territory.” But why this anger, where does it come from? “Immigrant family?” She shrugs uncertainly. She talks often about her childhood and I wonder if she regrets not having children.

“Never, I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. I am an Amazon! Whatever maternal instincts I have are with my students, but I’m more like a nun, I’m very strict. My history and my entire inspiration is a sense of feeling different. I think I had a severe gender dysfunction.”

As she’s about to explode again, another diner appears. “I’m Barbara, I play the violin in the Philadelphia orchestra and I’d like to say you’re fantastic.” She moves to disappear, then turns and says quickly: “Ms Paglia, forgive me, but you just say it like it is.”

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