Paglia & Peterson: Rape and Victimhood
In January 1991 Camille Paglia published an op-ed on date rape in New York Newsday entitled "Rape and Modern Sex War." A quarter of a century later, writing in 2017, Paglia said that this 1991 op-ed "remains the most controversial thing I have ever written."[1] The portion that gets the most objections is the following paragraph:
"College men are at their hormonal peak. They have just left their mothers and are questing for their male identity. In groups, they are dangerous. A woman going to a fraternity party is walking into Testosterone Flats, full of prickly cacti and blazing guns. If she goes, she should be armed with resolute alertness. She should arrive with girlfriends and leave with them. A girl who lets herself get dead drunk at a fraternity party is a fool. A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot. Feminists call this 'blaming the victim.' I call it common sense."[2]
Traditional feminists say that men are the problem, not women; in an ideal world a woman should be able to feel safe in any enviroment. But the world isn't ideal, and betting your physical well-being upon sentimental, feel-good bromides like that is unrealistic.
Since the op-ed is available on-line (see the link in the References section, below), I won't repeat the arguments made there. But Paglia has written extensively about the subject of rape in other essays and op-eds over the years, and I quoted some passages from her and others in my blog in my own essays on violence and victimhood (mostly in the Sensing chapter, in the section entitled "Extreme One-sidedness at the S Level" and the related supplemental essays). I decided to put a few of those quotes together in the current essay, to focus specifically on Paglia's general principles on the subject of rape and victimhood.
In a genuine rape scenario, Paglia doesn't forgive the male rapist: She sees rape as "a failure of socialization" that needs to be punished. At the same time she also sees the female victim as part of the problem, insofar as she makes bad choices and doesn't take responsibility for her own actions.
Paglia sees the archetypes of Femininity and Masculinity as a dichotomy, that is, as interrelated opposites existing on a spectrum. When both sides coexist in moderation, they work together. But when taken to extremes, they work against each other.
In her book Sex, Art, and American Culture Paglia compares extremes of "maleness" to extremes of "femaleness" as follows: "Maleness at its hormonal extreme is an angry, ruthless density of self, motivated by a principle of 'attack' (cf. 'roid rage,' produced in male bodybuilders by anabolic steroids). Femaleness at its hormonal extreme is first an acute sensitivity of response, literally thin-skinned (a hormonal effect in women) and secondly a stability, composure, and self-containment, a slowness approaching the sultry. Biologically, the male is impelled toward restless movement; his moral danger is brutishness. Biologically, the female is impelled toward waiting, expectancy; her moral danger is stasis. Androgen agitates; estrogen tranquilizes--hence the drowsiness and 'glow' of pregnancy. Most of us inhabit not polar extremes but a constantly shifting great middle. However, a preponderance of gray does not disprove the existence of black and white."[3]
Elsewhere Paglia sees the potential for conflict between the sexes even at the best of times. She says, “The sexes are eternally at war. There is an element of attack, of search-and-destroy in male sex, in which there will always be the potential for rape. There is an element of entrapment in female sex, a subliminal manipulation leading to physical and emotional infantilization of the male.”[4]
Of course, the most extreme points of this dichotomy would be the rapist (male) versus the victim (female).
In her book Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia suggests a type of "synergy" between the archetypes of rapist and victim. She says that victimhood calls down upon itself the attention of the sadist. "Weakness inspires attack. Vulnerability generates its own entrapments, creating a maelstrom of voracity around itself. Nature abhors a vacuum." It's like the enabler and the narcissist seeking each other out. Paglia says, "Sadism and masochism engender one another in dizzy oscillation. Caught on the swing of the sexual dialectic, the rapist vainly strives to obliterate his opposite."[5]
A dichotomous interpretation of the relationship ("synergy") between the rapist and the victim suggests that the opposite extremes of criminality/rape and weakness/victimhood are both equally neurotic and "evil": Clearly the male rapist is a manifestation of evil; but a woman's abdication of personal agency and adoption of a victimhood stance when one should reasonably be expected to take some responsibility for one's own fate and conduct also represents a type of "evil" in its own way. In her book Vamps & Tramps Paglia says, "Naiveté evokes its own destruction. This is not 'blaming the victim'; it is saying victimhood cannot become a vocation."[6]
Thus, with regard to general principles for things like date rape, where consent gets blurred and things get out of hand: There are two parties to any interaction, and they both share some responsibility for what happens. According to Paglia, victimhood doesn't automatically shift all the blame away from one party and onto the other. Rape is a sin of commission, while victimhood is a sin of omission; the former is a crime due to lack of proper socialization, while the latter is an abdication of agency and choice unworthy of a grown adult.
The psychologist Jordan Peterson makes a similar point. In his book 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos Peterson talks about the need for both men and women to practice personal agency. In Rule 9, Peterson tells a story from back when he had a private practice: He was working with a female patient who repeatedly got intoxicated and found herself in compromising situations with strangers. As Peterson listens to her talking, he says that he could legitimately call her either a victim or the cause of her own misfortunes: Was she taken advantage of in a drunken state and raped, or was she responsible for what happened to her? He describes his own internal monologue as he listens to her:
"Miss S came to talk to me about her sexual experiences. When she recounted her trips to the single bars and their recurring aftermath, I thought a bunch of things at once. I thought, 'You're so vague and so non-existent. You're a denizen of chaos and the underworld. You are going ten different places at the same time. Anyone can take you by the hand and guide you down the road of their choosing.' After all, if you're not the leading man in your own drama, you're a bit player in someone else's--and you might well be assigned to play a dismal, lonely and tragic part. After Miss S recounted her story, we sat there. I thought, 'You have normal sexual desires. You're extremely lonely. You're unfulfilled sexually. You're afraid of men and ignorant of the world and know nothing of yourself. You wander around like an accident waiting to happen and the accident happens and that's your life.'"[7]
Peterson goes on to ponder the responses he might give her: "I thought, 'I could simplify Miss S's life. I could say that her suspicions of rape were fully justified, and that her doubt about the events was nothing but additional evidence of her thorough and long-term victimization.' [...] But I also thought, 'I could tell Miss S that she is a walking disaster. I could tell her that she wanders into a bar like a courtesan in a coma, that she is a danger to herself and others, that she needs to wake up, and that if she goes to singles bars and drinks too much and is taken home and has rough violent sex (or even tender caring sex), then what the hell does she expect?'"[8]
Peterson goes on to point out that, as a psychologist, his job isn't to indict Ms. S; nor is it to let her off the hook with facile justifications for her actions. Rather, Peterson's point is that he needs to withhold judgment and instead let Miss S figure out for herself what has happened. The development of personal agency requires that people work out their own narratives and make their own choices. Peterson explains: "The people I listen to need to talk, because that's how people think. People need to think. Otherwise they wander blindly into pits. When people think, they simulate the world, and plan how to act in it. If they do a good job of simulating, they can figure out what stupid things they shouldn't do. Then they can not do them. Then they don't have to suffer the consequences. That's the purpose of thinking."[9]
In other words, people need to develop agency, a personal narrative, an agenda of their own that they can pursue rather than walking blindly through the world entrusting their fate to others, at the risk of their own destruction.
Modern life offers us many freedoms. But the more freedoms that we enjoy, the more we are free to fall into traps. When that happens, it's not enough to proclaim our victimhood (as appropriate as that may be); we also need to examine the choices we ourselves make (or refuse to make) that get us into that predicament.
~Posted October 25, 2026
References
[1] Camille Paglia, Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism (Pantheon Books, 2017), p. xx.
[2] Ibid., pp. 53-54. The op-ed can also be found on-line; for example, it was reprinted in February 1991 in The Seattle Times under the title "Perspective Needed -- Feminism's Lie: Denying Reality About Sexual Power And Rape." Link: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19910217/1266788/perspective-needed----feminisms-lie-denying-reality-about-sexual-power-and-rape
[3] Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (Vintage Books, 1992), p. 108.
[4] Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (First Vintage Books Edition, 1991), p. 26.
[5] Ibid., pp. 186-187.
[6] Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (Vintage Books, 1994), p. 35.
[7] Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Penguin Books, 2019), p. 238.
[8] Ibid., p. 239.
[9] Ibid., p. 240.