Camille Paglia: evaluation

Transcript context

…First of all, I think the way that my own party, the Democratic party, is using this rubric of equal pay for women as if this has not been a matter of law ever since the presidency of JFK, for heaven’s sake. There may be cases of outrageous disparity in pay for doing the same work. Now and then, they’ll find something like in a hospital, a woman doctor, a veteran doctor who’s not being paid the same level. But it’s rare when these actual cases do surface. There’s all this propaganda being pumped out about this issue, when in fact, women are not — if women are earning 72 cents or 75 cents on the dollar, it’s not for the same job. This is the lie that’s being told. Women doing the same job as a man are not being paid 75 cents for something that the man is being paid a dollar. What it is, is overall, the averages of women, of their own volition, for whatever reasons, are taking jobs that have more flexibility as opposed to the around-the-clock, seven days a week, night thing. For example, women tend to shy away from commission sales jobs where they’re on the road a lot, and that is where a lot of men have very high earnings. Women are making choices, and they would prefer to be closer to their children, so yes. These disparities are ultimately based in biological differences. Susan Faludi and these other feminists of the Steinem kind of credo have one answer. Men must do more. That’s their answer. Men must do more. Susan Faludi has never had a child, so has absolutely no idea. What I feel is that there is a tie. There is an ineffable, indefinable, biological tie between a child and the mother in whose body the child has developed into a full being, and there are all kinds of impulses and instincts that women may have of protectiveness toward their biologically born children. I think that to politicize the thing, and to assume that a woman bearing a child is like an automaton, “Yes, here is the baby. Here, to my husband, you are equally fit to be able to nurture this three-month-old child.” As a child gets a little older and turns into a real human being with a personality and so on, it’s not so dependent, then is when men can do more. I believe personally, from my observation of human life, that there is something going on. An infant doesn’t want the father, hello. The infant wants the mother. You want the nice, cushy — the smell is the mother. “Who is this person coming closer? Go away.” Freud talked about that. This distraction comes in, the father. “Get out.” Remember? [laughter] This is why Freud said every child wants to kill the father and marry the mother. They don’t want men, and men don’t know what to do. Men are clumsy, and they have the big hands and so on. [laughter] This is why Freud said every child wants to kill the father and marry the mother. They don’t want men, and men don’t know what to do. Men are clumsy, and they have the big hands and so on. [laughter] What I have seen from my own observation is that women — because I have a child who I adopted from my former partner and so on. What I have seen is the world of the moms. I have seen the world of the moms from the inside, and what I see is that the minute our children are born, it’s the woman who biologically, I believe, has the master strategist mind. She is the generalissimo of the household. The man, her husband, who was lasonce her equal, shrinks down to merely one counter. [laughter] Becomes one. It is she who issues the master plan for the week. He is hopeless. She has the multiple levels. She assigns. She knows what — she’s the one who makes the schedule and so on, and the good father is the one who says, “OK, yes, I will do. OK, give me the plan, give me the sheet,” and so forth. To ask men to do more, seems to me to ask them to do something that they are not biologically prepared to do. Our next question is from a man.…

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