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The Current Transcript for April 26, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I am not scared of the Trump administration and I am not scared of the rich American union bosses who want to get their way.

LAURA LYNCH: BC Liberal leader Christy Clark campaigning for re-election in the province has a new opponent south of the border. US President Donald Trump is now presiding over a new trade skirmish with Canada that's part of a decades-old battle over softwood lumber. And that's not all—Trump is also taking shots at the Canadian dairy industry. Does it signal the start of a broader trade war? After that—

SOUNDCLIP

When I began shooting the film, I was completely bedridden. And so I hired camera crews around the world, would conduct interviews from bed by Skype.

LL: Jennifer Brea I went from being a vigorous woman—studying for her PhD, hiking mountains—to a sickly debilitated patient suffering from an illness many thought was all in her head. So she decided to film her life with unflinching honesty and make a film featuring herself and others with what's commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome. The result is a compelling, at times painful portrait of the struggles and triumphs of those who often cannot even get out of bed. And then—

SOUNDCLIP

I'm calling for a moratorium on this anti-male stuff. Okay? Feminism has gotten very contaminated with anti-male rhetoric. It's completely unnecessary. Okay? All the problems in the world are not due to men.

LL: Camille Paglia is to many feminists the bete noire of the movement. More than 40 years after she first began writing about what she believes are the failings of feminism. She is unrepentant on everything from campus sexual assault to the way women dress in the workplace, to Hillary Clinton who Paglia says never succeeded at anything—she's nothing if not provocative. As Paglia releases a new collection of her writings, we sit down for a conversation, a very spirited conversation. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Trump targets Canada's lumber with tariffs, dairy industry may be next

Guests: Jamie Lim, Murray Sherk, Janyce McGregor

SOUNDCLIP

Canada—what they've done to our dairy farm workers is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. I spent time with some of the farmers in Wisconsin. And as you know rules, regulations, different things have changed. And our farmers in Wisconsin and New York State are being put out of business, our dairy farmers. And that also includes what's happening along our northern border states with Canada having to do with lumber and timber. The fact is, NAFTA, whether it's Mexico or Canada is a disaster for our country.

LL: That of course is US President Donald Trump railing against NAFTA and trade agreements between our two countries for dairy products and softwood lumber. His rhetoric on the matter has been growing more heated in recent days and last night Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on the telephone about the brewing disputes. Trudeau detailed a conversation that featured him “refuting baseless allegations.” The White House's take? It was a “very amicable call.” Despite the conversation, the US Commerce Department is imposing tariffs on Canadian softwood entering the states. Imports will face duties as high as 24 per cent and Canadian dairy could be feeling the squeeze next. Jamie Lim is the president and CEO of the Ontario Forest Industries Association and she is with us from our studio in Thunder Bay. Hello.

JAMIE LIM: Hi, good morning.

LL: What was your reaction when you heard Donald Trump announce tariffs on softwood lumber?

JAMIE LIM: Well, you know I mean we weren't surprised. We knew the determination was going to be made but that doesn't make it easier. And I can tell you as a former mayor of the city of Timmins and working for the forest sector now for over 13 years, I know how these unjust and unlawful duties that were announced are going to impact families and hard-working men and women across every region of the province of Ontario. Our sector employs 57,000 people and this is going to have a devastating impact on them. So for me, this isn't just you know a trade dispute or a trade war. This is real. These are people that I've grown up with. This is real to me.

LL: As you noted, we have been here before and that's why you weren't surprised because the Americans have gone after softwood lumber imports time and again, over the decades even. How exactly do you think knowing what the history of this is it's going to affect the Canadians in the industry? Are people going to lose their jobs?

JAMIE LIM: That's a great question. You know you had federal ministers yesterday saying you know there is going to be job losses. I couldn't believe that on the first day of this file, people in Ottawa are already saying there's going to be job losses? To me that's unacceptable. Having said that though, we did think there might be something different here with President Trump because he did campaign on wanting to do more for his American middle class and by putting tariffs on Canadian wood, he's actually hurting his own American middle class because 3.8 million Americans make their living in the residential construction sector. And the price of wood going up is not a good thing for them and people will be priced out of the housing market in the United States. Again, not a good thing for the American middle class. So I'm not sure President Trump really understands what's going on here. But he has certainly conformed to the same practices, the same tactics that former presidents have used and these baseless allegations in 35 years, Laura, have never stood up in a court of law.

LL: And yet they keep coming back and trying again and again and they make the same argument that Canadian lumber benefits from unfair subsidies. What do you say to that?

JAMIE LIM: Because it's a recipe that's worked for them. So for 35 years they make these baseless misinformed allegations. They slap on these unlawful duties. They starve the Canadian forest sector of cash, a billion dollars a year and then we fall to our knees, we capitulate and we agree to a bad deal. And in lumber four, you know it was a bad deal for Ontario. Ontario paid the biggest price. So for me, I'm focusing on the 57,000 families in Ontario that need the federal government to take some genuine action. For months we've been talking to the federal government, writing letters to Prime Minister Trudeau, saying you need to put in a loan guarantee program because that will do two things: one, it'll keep our mills running and it'll keep Canadians, Ontarians working. Secondly, it will send a loud message to President Trump that it's not the same old-same old and that we're not going to let the United States starve our forest sector of cash.

LL: I want to ask you about another aspect of this. The Canadian government is trying to make moves to expand the market beyond the US into countries like China. How effective would that be?

JAMIE LIM: Well, that was a really convenient message that was dropped on last Friday. And you know that certainly is a long-term solution. It's always good to be looking at expanding new markets. It's probably a long-term solution for Western Canada, British Columbia, but it is not a solution for Ontario and it is not a solution for the 57,000 families that need immediate action next week in May when we have to start paying these punishing unlawful duties.

LL: How much do you blame the Canadian government for not coming to an agreement with the US sooner? They had what, 18 months since the last agreement expired?

JAMIE LIM: Oh, there’s no blame to be put on the Canadian government in that sense. I mean they tried to negotiate with the Obama administration and clearly in the United States, not just under President Trump—although his actions have been shameful—you know it honestly doesn't matter which president is there. This 35-year-old recipe of putting out unlawful duties, starving us of money, losing in court and then we get our duties back, but by then we're already on our knees. It has very little to do with the attempts that the Canadian government made over the last 18 months.

LL: Jamie Lim, thank you.

JAMIE LIM: Thanks, Laura.

LL: Jamie Lim is the president and CEO of the Ontario Forest Industries Association. She was in our studio in Thunder Bay. Well, that's the view from the lumber industry. Now let's bring in a voice from the world of dairy products. Murray Sherk is a dairy farmer from Plattsville, Ontario and the vice chair of the board of Dairy Farmers of Ontario. He is with us from Mississauga, Ontario. Hello.

MURRAY SHERK: Good morning, Laura.

LL: So what did you think when you heard President Trump's comments about Canadian dairy farmers last week?

MURRAY SHERK: Well yes. Before we begin, I just want to say you know how badly I feel for those in the softwood lumber industry that we talked earlier and also the 75 dairy farmers in Wisconsin that received letters from their co-op in early April stating that they would no longer take their milk. I just can't imagine that happening on our farm and in fact, it wouldn't happen in Canada because we have a system that shares all markets. So I think when we get to Trump's comments, yeah, we are really trying to understand what they mean because there is quite a massive trade surplus from the United States to Canada in dairy products. So we're not sure where those comments come from.

LL: Why do you think that you're being targeted?

MURRAY SHERK: We're being targeted because Trump was in Wisconsin and he was appealing I think to the farmers that were there. Certainly we think we have nothing to be ashamed of here. We have not changed any border protection measures.

LL: I thought there is a new agreement though about these special proteins that were being brought across the border and that you’ve tweaked things so that those proteins cannot come across the border as easily as they used to. That is one of the complaints.

MURRAY SHERK: Yes, that's right. So I’ll just give a little history there. So a number of years ago— President Trump talks a lot about re-tweaking NAFTA—well, prior to NAFTA, there were certain products that weren't invented yet and concentrated dairy proteins were largely invented to go around any tariffs that were at the border. And so they have been coming into our country eroding our dairy protein markets in cheese and butter for the last number of years. In fact, the trade surplus has probably increased by 50 per cent in the last five years to about 400 million. So we looked at this as a problem for our Canadian farmers. We weren't able to sell to sell all our dairy proteins and so we re-priced these concentrated proteins that would then make them competitive so processors could decide whether they want to choose to buy Canadian or elsewhere and they're still free to do that. And some of them have made the choice to utilize Canadian proteins. And so I think that's the root of the issue.

LL: Regardless of how you explain the importance of the American market to Canadian milk producers, that surplus, the fact is that there is rising rhetoric from the US government about this. How concerned are you about what might happen next?

MURRAY SHERK: Well, we certainly are concerned. We work very well with all levels of government and we certainly are thankful to both provincial and federal governments for their support. Justin Trudeau has spoken out in favour of our system as well as the ambassador to the US. So we're working certainly with politicians and behind the scenes to ensure that we have a strong and stable industry. I mean I think our prime minister made a very telling statement the other day when he essentially said there's no such thing as free trade in agriculture and that every country tends to support agriculture in some fashion. And so these arguments are challenging and complex.

LL: So do you think this is just going to go away? It's all a matter of words and no action?

MURRAY SHERK: We really don't know how this is going to play out and we are certainly very concerned and I mean it's very unlike softwood lumber, we don't know how there would be any barriers put up because of the massive trade surplus on the opposite side of what the softwood lumber issue is.

LL: Mr. Sherk, thank you for your time.

MURRAY SHERK: Okay. Thank you, Laura.

LL: Murray Sherk is a dairy farmer and vice chair of the board of Dairy Farmers of Ontario. He was in Mississauga, Ontario. Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr has responded to the softwood lumber tariff announcement. Here he is at a news conference in Ottawa yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

If we look at the history of these trade actions, there inevitably will be job losses and we will focus our efforts on doing whatever we can to ease the impact of those job losses. That is the reality of this countervail and it is going to result in some tough times for some operators across the country. We’re aware of that.

LL: The natural resources minister, Jim Carr. Janyce McGregor has been following the official reaction to these growing trade tensions/ She covers the trade beat for CBC's parliamentary bureau and she's with us now from Ottawa. Hello.

JANYCE MCGREGOR: Hi. Great to be with you, Laura.

LL: Yesterday the US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross accused Canada of “dumping lumber” in the United States and not playing by the rules. Do you see this as the beginning of a trade war?

JANYCE MCGREGOR: I have to say I don't actually. I think what's going on here is that we have a couple of industries where you have long running disputes between these two countries and at this present time, we have certain people who are seeing opportunity in kind of these longstanding disputes and trying to play them for their own political benefit. So I think it suits Donald Trump right now to look at something like these countervailing duties which I personally believe that even if we had a Democrat in the White House, they would probably still have been levied this week. But you see Donald Trump seeing a way that he can use this to sort of show how he is looking after his industry, fighting back, because his whole kind of political strategy through his campaign and his style of governing to this point is very definitely I think to want to be a champion of people he identifies as victims of this system and wanting to look tough for them, wanting to look like a negotiator. And therefore, you have to find enemies and in terms of these two particular industries, it's not great for Canada. But the fact is I guess it's useful for him to target Canada.

LL: Do you think that he only is trying to signal his displeasure if you will, to Canada or is he trying to send a message to the United States’ other trading partners?

JANYCE MCGREGOR: Good question. I mean I think it's easier and safer for him to pick these fights with Canada because especially you see the way Justin Trudeau and his ministers have responded to this. It's been very calm. They haven't been ranting and raving about the US. Their approach has been to sort of you know meet the arguments with their particular facts—not to say that they're being soft. You know there is a determination in their messaging I think and you know these industries and the ministers that represent them are all big boys and girls and like yesterday, kind of the headline for me is “see you in court guys.” There's no indication that Canada would roll over or anything but we are not an unpredictable trading partner that is prone to doing something rash I think. So for the Americans to sort of pick at us on files where there is a long history between these two countries and the arguments are well known and well understood, the information is all there, it's not lost in translation in any way. You know I think that is a bit of a safe fight for them to pick if that makes sense.

LL: Well, let's back it up a little bit. What was happening behind the scenes between the US and Canada in the lead up to this tariff on softwood lumber?

JANYCE MCGREGOR: Well, it's interesting because the thing you have to understand about the path to managed trade, which is what a softwood lumber deal is. This is not about free trade in lumber. Canada would love free trade in lumber. That's not what this is. The US would not give us that. And so here we are. But the path to this is not necessarily just through a government to government negotiation. In order to get a softwood lumber agreement, the lobby, the industry in the United States has to give up its right to pursue Canada in trade actions. It has to basically not do what it has just done in these recent months, which is petition the Department of Commerce to put duties on. It has to agree to not do that in order for a softwood lumber agreement to hold. So it doesn't matter whether you have someone friendly in the White House like Canada did when Barack Obama was there. The real question is whether the US industry is prepared to give up this fight, whether it feels that it has received enough from Canada that it will back off for a duration of time. And each time it has gotten a deal, it has reached a point where it has said nope, not good enough for us anymore. We are going to come back to Canada and seek more. So you can't really say that this is something that the two groups of politicians could work out on their own. This particular dispute is very caught up in that particular lobbying dynamics, if you will, of the lumber business in Washington.

LL: So the accusations that the Trudeau government didn't do enough to try to get a deal, you don't think are exactly accurate.

JANYCE MCGREGOR: I think there were a lot of efforts to really get this deal and you know certainly they did have some friendly players there but there was nothing the former US Trade Representative Mike Froman could do if his industry was hell-bent, if you will, on filing this petition anyway this fall as soon as the litigation standstill expired. Sorry, last fall I should say. So yeah. That was the situation in the end. And I think it didn't help as well I should say. When Ms. Lim was talking to you, you heard the determination in her voice that said they wouldn't get a bad deal this time. There were some hard feelings I think in Canada's industry and in the aftermath of the previous softwood lumber agreement negotiated by the former Conservative government, a sense that that was maybe a better deal for Western Canada producers than it was in the east. And I was told in looking at this you know a year ago that there was a real diversity of opinion across Canada's industry that the eastern Canadian lumber industry didn't want the same things as the Western industry did. The Western industry might have been willing to settle for things like caps and different arrangements like that that wouldn't have been palatable in the east. The east was more inclined to take a harder line, not deal and perhaps litigate. So until Canada could come up with a unified position, it’d be very difficult for them to get a deal.

LL: We'll have to leave it there, Janyce. Thanks very much for this.

JANYCE MCGREGOR: No problem.

LL: Janyce McGregor covers the trade beat in the CBC parliamentary bureau and she is in Ottawa. Donald Trump has put Canadian trade in his sights just ahead of the 100 day mark of his presidency. And tomorrow, Anna Maria Tremonti will host a special edition of The Current from Washington, DC, taking measure of the Trump administration's first hundred days. That's tomorrow on The Current from Washington, DC. The CBC News is next. I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Unrest director documents debilitating life with chronic fatigue syndrome

Guests: Jennifer Brea

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, she's one of the most provocative public intellectuals in America and she's never afraid to speak her mind, even when it rankles feminists. Camille Paglia joins me in half an hour to talk about men, women, gender, feminism and much more. But first, taking stock of Trump at 100 days.

SOUNDCLIP

We have made incredible progress. I don't think there's ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we've done. No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days. I think we are going to have a big win soon. We're going to have some great legislative victories in the very near future.

LL: This Saturday will mark 100 days of the Donald Trump US presidency and the American leader has both dismissed the importance of the traditional 100-day marker for assessing presidential progress and boasted that his first 100 days have been the best. So as the 100 day mark nears, Anna Maria Tremonti will host a full edition of The Current from the heart of Washington, DC. Her guests will include an anonymous federal government employee who's running a rogue Twitter account as part of the civil service resistance against the Trump administration. Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the outcome of each presidential election since 1984 will talk about his latest prediction that President Trump will be impeached. Also some young Republicans who are excited by the fresh approach of this new president and Anna Maria will host a panel of Washington journalists to talk about the reality of covering a White House like no other in living memory. That is all coming up tomorrow when The Current comes to you from Washington, DC. Next though, the unrest of a debilitating disease.

SOUNDCLIP

That first year, I had six infections. I would basically get out of bed, go to class, and then I was in bed again. I'd go to the doctor and he would tell me you're just rehydrated. Everyone gets stressed.

LL: That's Jennifer Brea and what she first experienced as a university student wasn't dehydration or stress. Jennifer Brea was eventually diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis. It's also known as ME or chronic fatigue syndrome. About 800,000 Canadians live with ME. More than 17 million people do around the world. But in her new documentary film, Jennifer Brea may be doing more than any other ME sufferer to share with the world what the experience is truly like.

SOUNDCLIP

Sometimes I wouldn't be able to speak. I'd have no thoughts. No words. I would be sensitive to light and the slightest sound could cause excruciating pain.

LL: Jennifer Brea documents her struggle to function and find the right help and it was shot in large part from her own bed. It's called Unrest and it has its Canadian premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto this week. And Jennifer joins me now. Hello.

JENNIFER BREA: Hi, Laura. Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Oh, I'm happy to have you come in. I mean you did come into our studios and the first thing I have to ask you is how are you feeling today?

JENNIFER BREA: It's hard and every day I still have to make choices. But I've been getting better and better over the last few years, thanks to everything I learned from my community and access to treatment.

LL: Oh, that's good to hear. You still have to I guess pay a price for days like this though when you head out and go around the city, come into the studio.

JENNIFER BREA: Yes, definitely. I think I've learned over time how to understand what my limits are and try my best to stay within them, but it's impossible to know exactly and so I still can crash and be bedridden if I do too much.

LL: It really is remarkable to watch your documentary—see you doing all of this research and actual interviews from your bed with a laptop propped up on your knees and when you quite literally can't get out of bed. What was that like for you?

JENNIFER BREA: Well, it was a really scary and isolating experience to have my body fall apart and to not have anyone be able to explain to me what was happening to me or what I could expect. I went to doctor after doctor and was often told that I was just stressed or depressed and it took me quite some time to get a proper diagnosis which is not uncommon. And I think you know from that place of isolation, I had a real need, both to try to understand what was happening to me and to connect with other people. And so I became a voracious reader of scientific research and also found this whole community online of people who were similarly homebound and bedridden and it was really connecting with them that helped me get through this.

LL: And I want to get to that. But first, I wonder if you could describe for us how ME makes you feel.

JENNIFER BREA: I think the best way to describe it is: it's like your battery is broken and mine only overcharges to about 40 per cent. And so even though I do have to use a wheelchair now when I leave the house, I can look and sound completely normal as long as I stay within those boundaries. But if I cross them—and I often don't know that I've crossed them until I have—then I have this cascade of symptoms: inflammation, sometimes pain, muscle weakness, sometimes I will just collapse on the floor in the middle of the hallway and I won't be able to lift my head. And so it really affects people somewhat differently. But the basic kind of core symptom is this thing called post-exertional malaise which is that if we exceed our limits, all of our symptoms get worse and it affects my immune system, my nervous system, my heart, my gastrointestinal system—every system in my body that has mitochondria and produces energy.

LL: In the film we do see you in those moments when you suddenly just fall down. What exactly is happening to you in that moment?

JENNIFER BREA: So I don't really know but what I think it is and I think what researchers think it is is a sort of temporary muscle weakness, potentially because you don't have enough energy to actually use your muscles and contract your muscles and that's really what it feels like. And what it is is it's a protective state essentially because their body is trying to preserve what it has for my brain and for my heart. And so my peripheral muscles and nervous system just sort of shut down and it's similar to fainting, but it's my body saying you have to get on the floor and not move because we need what you have for your vital systems. Essentially.

LL: It must be frightening.

JENNIFER BREA: It was really scary, especially at the beginning because I didn't know what was wrong with me and I had a lot of days where I thought that I was dying and it was terrifying. It was really truly terrifying.

LL: Now in the film too, you show aspects of your life before ME, if I can put it that way. And you're obviously a fit, energetic, vibrant young woman who has found the love of her life as you say and everything is just going great and then it all changes. And I'm wondering what it is like for you to have to live with this illness. Take me inside your head as you end up spending day after day and month after month unable to carry on with the things in your life that matter to you.

JENNIFER BREA: I spent a lot of time in bed really wondering what value my life still had. I describe this disease as a perfect custom prison. I think that's really what it is because it doesn't matter what you once were and what you could once do. It takes it away from you. So for me, as you said I was a PhD student and I had arrived a lot of my identity and sense of self from my ability to read and write and to think and I was in a state where you know I would write a sentence of an email and then my brain would suddenly turn off. In this cascade of inflammation, I would have to sleep for four hours just from writing a sentence. I would make mistakes and I couldn't read. And I looked around me and I know of people who've been bedridden for 10 more years and I was afraid I would never get out of bed. And I thought a lot about what value my life had if I couldn't do the things that once made me who I was. And that was that was really scary—to sort of still be alive, to still be here but to no longer feel like I was human.

LL: So how did you cope with that then?

JENNIFER BREA: I cried a lot and I picked up my camera. I started to film myself not really with the intention initially of making a documentary but I was really alone. I had my husband and I was very grateful and lucky to have that support but I needed a space, a creative space to try to process my experience and as I said, I couldn't read or write so I turned to this new medium which was what I could carry and what I could hold, which was my phone and started documenting my symptoms and also what I was going through. And as I started to make the film and reach out to patients around the world, I started to realize that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't just sort of you know struck down by fate with a rare disease, but that I was actually a part of a community. Learning that really gave me a sense of hope. In particular, one woman named Jessica Taylor in the UK who you meet in the film who became bedridden when she was 14 and had already been in bed for a decade by the time that I met her.

LL: I'm just going to stop you there because in fact, we do have some tape of Jessica. You asked her what keeps her sane. Let's listen to what she said.

SOUNDCLIP

I stay sane because I can do lots of things in my mind and I go to many different places all over the world in my mind.

[Sound: Seagulls]

I love Australia because I love the water and I’d love to go scuba diving there. As I jump into the water and have that freedom of my body moving but there being no sound, and multitude of different colours of fish calm you down and relax you. It becomes more and more magical and still there’s that silence.

LL: What listeners can't see is that Jessica is in bed and at one point you or she referred to the fact that her bones are apparently the equivalent to a 100-year-old woman's bones so there's very little that she can do. So she said she travels in her mind. How did that response affect you?

JENNIFER BREA: I mean I definitely related to it because one of the things that I found when I was bedridden was that my dreams became much more kinetic and when I was dreaming I would climb mountains and I would fly and I would travel. And then I would wake up and I would still be in that same room that I had been in for all of those months and so I connected to her way of coping. And I think what I learned from her really was I think we all have to find our own way through experiences like this, seeing that she hadn't made a life for herself even in that context gave me hope that I would also be able to find my own way. And that connection and that mirroring that I felt you know talking with her and spending time with her was really everything in those days when I didn't know if I would ever leave my home again.

LL: She has had this since she was 14. How old is she now and how is she?

JENNIFER BREA: I believe she's 25. She's in her mid-twenties now and she's doing a little better. She can leave her home in a reclining wheelchair. And the big news is that she is getting married in a few weeks.

LL: Wow.

JENNIFER BREA: Yes. So she met a young man online named Sam who is a sweetheart and they are just madly in love and are really excited to take this journey together.

LL: Remarkable. You also showed us an emotional Facebook video by a young man named Ren Gill and I just want to play again a bit of what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

I can’t do it for much longer. It’s like I’m just watching my life disappear. I’m watching everybody else grow up and do all the things that people do when they grow up. I spend all my life in a house watching the world just pass.

LL: Now as Ren said there, he can't do it for much longer, which is obviously a reference to suicide or ending it. How often do you hear people with ME speak of suicide?

JENNIFER BREA: It's become a part of my life. Many of us wrestle at different times with thinking of taking our own lives. This disease is not depression but it can definitely make you depressed. I think a lot of people consider euthanasia because the pain of the disease and the stamina it requires to live with this is is immense. And I often thought when I was bedridden that I wasn't going to find the stamina to live with this, especially when you have to live with this sense of the research that we need is not happening. And I think many of us have grappled with that and even since I started making the film, I've seen a lot of people that I could probably name five to seven people that I knew in the online community who have taken their lives in the last three years. So it is a very, very big problem and I think one that could stop if this disease got the attention and the research that it deserves.

LL: Tell me where the research is at. How does the medical science explain ME?

JENNIFER BREA: So we do have a research literature going back for decades. And I think that part of the challenge is a lot of what we do know hasn't yet been translated into clinical care. There have been a lot of new studies that show that this is a disease that is a kind of metabolic dysfunction that limits a patient’s ability to properly create energy and to metabolize sugar, glucose, and that's a part of what causes this array of symptoms. We don't know why that your body does that. Some scientists think it's part of actually a protective mechanism in response to an infection. And we know that about 80 per cent of people with this disease find that their illness is triggered by an acute infection like the one that I had. And so what we do know is that oftentimes patients can find some relief for treatments that relate to either that initial infection or sort of secondary infections. There are treatments dealing with modulating the immune system and part of the problem is that one of the sort of standard kind of treatments that most doctors prescribe is exercise and exercise can actually cause real harm if you're taking a patient and pushing them beyond their limit. And so I think there is a kind of medical education piece that needs to happen. And right now there is such a low amount of funding, both public and private, for research really all around the world that has to do with the long run stigma surrounding the disease that I think has kept a lot of people from looking at it in the way that we deserve.

LL: You just used that word stigma and I'm thinking that what you're speaking of there is the long running belief of some that this is all in your head. And you were initially diagnosed with something called convergence disorder. What's that?

JENNIFER BREA: So conversion disorder is actually sort of the modern day name for hysteria. So in 1980, hysteria, because it was associated with sexism and a long history of disbelieving woman, was renamed conversion disorder. But it's really part of the same long kind of Freudian idea of symptoms that if we can't measure it in a commercial lab test, it means that it doesn't exist and must be being caused by something in the patient's mind which is I think a very strange historical way to look at this or really any disease because the fact is that whether it's multiple sclerosis or epilepsy, there were moments with diseases that are now much better understood when we also thought that they were psychological. We used to institutionalize patients with epilepsy, with MS until we were able to have technological advancements that allowed us to see inside of their bodies. And it's very, very hard to visualize a living brain or living immune system and so there are limits to what we can measure directly. But there are a lot of amazing scientists around the world at Harvard, at Stanford University who are really on the hunt for a commercial biomarker. I think that's going to be game changing.

LL: I just also want to play another clip from the film because you interviewed Nancy Klimas who's an immunologist who researches ME and she said it was commonly seen as a kind of hysteria.

SOUNDCLIP

We're still graduating class after class of medical students that haven't even heard of this illness and where to even look for. It’s diagnostic criteria. The name, this chronic fatigue syndrome name, has been part of it. And let may be a feminist for a moment. Being a woman is part of it. Eighty-five per cent of the people with this illness are female.

LL: Did your research show that too, that the medical community treats it differently because it's mainly women who have the illness?

JENNIFER BREA: It is impossible for me to say that for certain. But as a class of diseases—so we don't exactly know if this is an autoimmune disease but it has a lot of the features of an autoimmune disease, often post-infectious and about 80 per cent of patients who have it are women. And that's really true across the board for a wide array of autoimmune diseases. You know multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia—these all disproportionately affect women and we know in aggregate that for those diseases they are grossly underfunded and that patients often take years to get a diagnosis. And there was a study that roughly half of patients who eventually get diagnosed with an auto immune disease are initially told they're hypochondriacs. So I do think that men are also disbelieved. But there's a different layer in the way that gender plays into this in the case of women.

LL: Jennifer, how many years have you lived with this now?

JENNIFER BREA: I forget. I've been sick for about five years now.

LL: What has helped you get through?

JENNIFER BREA: I believe three things—being an artist, being a person who has a medium and the privilege of being able to express myself and create and to have made this film, that has really helped me a lot. Having the love and support of my family and my husband. I think that there are many patients who don't have that love and support and care and that is absolutely crucial for health. And I think really just being able to fight. You know this is a social justice issue. And to have the privilege to be able to fight for myself and my friends, I mean that has really helped me to find meaning in the midst of all of this.

LL: I just want to go back to your husband, Omar. In a point you talk about feeling guilty for having the disease. Why is that?

JENNIFER BREA: I think that you know there's this feeling when something like this happens to you. And I have heard people who've seen the film who are wrestling with other chronic illnesses, disabilities, cancer really convey the same thing, which is that you know when something like this happens to you, it is awful and it's terrible, but you can kind of—I felt at least like I could carry that myself. The worst thing was having to bring someone down to the experience with me and to feel like you're someone, you are healthy, you have a life, you don't have to be homebound with me. You don't have to be up in the middle of the night with me. You don't have to be caring for me and fearing for me and experiencing this with me. But you're choosing to. And I had so much guilt and I still do about the ways that being married to someone who is this profoundly ill would limit his life. And I have seen how stressful that is on him. And so that's really where that feeling came from.

LL: Is your ME something you expect to live with forever or do you expect to be able to put it in the past someday?

JENNIFER BREA: So it's taken a long time. But the way that I see it is every day I fight to get better and I am getting better. It's really slow and it's really up and down. But every year, I'm a little better. And at the same time I also accept that I will probably live with this for the rest of my life unless we are able to find treatments.

LL: Jennifer, it is a compelling film and worth watching and I thank you for coming in to talk to us about it.

JENNIFER BREA: Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Jennifer Brea is the director and subject of the new documentary film, Unrest. She spoke to us from New York City. Unrest has its Canadian premiere at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto this week and it will screen at the DOXA Festival in Vancouver in May. As I mentioned, about 800,000 Canadians are afflicted with ME. If you'd like to read about resources in Canada, we will put a link to the National ME/FM Action Network on our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Well, earlier this week, Anna Maria spoke with Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook chief operating officer has written a book called Option B. It's about how she and her family coped after her husband Dave Goldberg died suddenly while the couple vacationed in Mexico in 2015.

SOUNDCLIP

In the early days, people told me it would not feel this way forever and I did not believe them. The grief was so overwhelming and all-consuming that I just thought it would always be there. And years later, while the sadness lingers, it's not what it was then and I want so much for other people to know that.

LL: It was a story that many of you related to. Claudia Hayward writes from Maple Ridge, BC: “I too lost my spouse several years ago. I can remember the moments dissolving into tears with no way of controlling it. One never ‘gets over it’ despite what people expect, and to this day, after 15 years on my own, I still deal with the grief, the loss and the emptiness.” Leora Eisen tweeted: “Having lost my soulmate, good to hear someone say it's important to allow yourself to find joy despite grief.” Howard Mednick in Thornhill, Ontario writes: “My wife is in a long-term care facility because she suffers physically and cognitively from a rare form of Parkinson’s disease. For the last three years, I have been in ‘grief’ mode. You have to move on, but you still don't forget the wonderful experiences you had in the past with your loved one who is either severely incapacitated or gone. Deena Ropp-Reis writes from Kelowna, BC: “My husband died in a very similar way to Sheryl's. It was sudden, unexpected and completely devastated our family. Our little girl was six years old at the time. In the years that followed, I existed. I felt no real joy and just went through the motions. About two years after he died, I decided I couldn't be this sad anymore. Like Sheryl, I felt guilty—guilty for still being here, for being able to raise our daughter when he couldn't, and a million other things that really made no sense. Four years later, I feel alive again. I am in a new relationship and understand that there is enough space and love in my heart for my new family, and the family my husband and I were a part of.”

LL: If you want to respond to anything you hear on the show, you can always tweet us. We're @thecurrentCBC or me, I’m @lauralynchCBC, or you can email us through the website which is www.cbc.ca/thecurrent or find us on Facebook. And if you missed hearing Anna Maria’s conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, listen on our website, our podcast or on the CBC Radio app. Well, coming up in our next half hour, I'll sit down with the outspoken feminist intellectual who says that modern feminism needs to stop hating men—the ever-provocative Camille Paglia. I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Modern feminism needs to 'stop blaming men,' says Camille Paglia

Guests: Camille Paglia

Hello. I’m Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Camille Paglia. By title, professor of humanities at Philadelphia's University of the Arts. By growing reputation, the scourge of American feminism. By self-assessment, America's leading female intellectual. She considers herself a passionate feminist, a champion of opportunity, individuality and choice but contends that modern feminism has fast descended into dogma, intolerance and male bashing.

LL: That is a typical televised introduction to Camille Paglia from 25 years ago back in the early 1990s and everything that was true then is true of her still today. The pugnacious public intellectual has been a disruptor for decades in academia and the arts and especially amongst feminists. Her outspoken views on hot button topics from date rape to free speech on campus have riled her critics including many fellow feminists. She's even been called out by none other than Madonna who namechecked Camille Paglia while receiving Billboard’s Woman of the Year award in 2016.

SOUNDCLIP

I remember wishing that I had a female peer that I could look to for support. Camille Paglia, the famous feminist writer said that I set women back by objectifying myself sexually. Oh, I thought, so if you're a feminist, you don't have sexuality. You deny it. So I said, [expletive] it. I'm a different kind of feminist. I'm a bad feminist.

[Sound: Crowd cheering and applauding]

LL: Well, today as part of The Current’s project, The Disruptors, Camille Paglia is with us to offer a rejoinder. Her newest book is a collection of writings from 1992 today called Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender Feminism. She is the university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Camille Paglia joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: It's wonderful to be here.

LL: Watching you listen to the tape going by, I saw a smile with that first bit of tape and a bit of a throwing up your hands in frustration with the second one. Back in 1990, you actually called Madonna the future of feminism exactly for her upfront sexuality. She seems to say the opposite in that speech. What did you think when you heard that?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, poor Madonna. She's rather confused. She's mixed me up with Gloria Steinem and the other anti-porn feminists. Madonna foregrounded pornography and glamour and all kinds of things that I celebrated. And this idea that there was no female peer who would work with her, she turned down one invitation after another to collaborate with me. Esquire magazine wanted me to interview her for a cover story. She declined. Penthouse magazine wanted to feature us together. She declined. Listen, Madonna is a genius. The retrospective of her life is seen. She changed the world so profoundly that people think she's completely unnecessary right now.

LL: You say she mixed you up with other feminists.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Yes.

LL: So I'm wondering how much of a gap do you see between your actual arguments and the way your arguments are perceived by the public?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: You know obviously I have a huge fan base and also a huge army of detractors. But the reason that I've always been out of sync with current feminism is because my feminism began before second wave feminism was born with Betty Friedan's co-founding of NOW, National Organization for Women in 1966. In my new book, I quote the letter to the editor that I wrote to Newsweek magazine when I was 16—1963—where I protest the exclusion of women from the American space program. First wave feminism after women gained the right to vote did not bash men. The great women like Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn and so many women of the 1920s and 30s, all they asked for was equal opportunity for women to show that they could achieve at the same level as men had. I am on a crusade to get the male bashing out of feminism. It's absolutely unnecessary. At this point it’s turned into a neurosis.

LL: At this point you've been saying much the same thing for how many years now? What, 40 years?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, I burst on the scene with my first book Sexual Personae in 1990. But that book had been rejected. It took forever to get into print. And then the feminist establishment in the United States had its usual reflex attitude which was someone disagrees with us, trash her. Destroy her. They could not destroy me. And they found that they couldn't disrupt me in person because I'm a comedian. I do improv like Joan Rivers. So anything anyone threw at me, I could throw back.

LL: Okay. So let's deal with some labels here. You've been called the anti-feminist feminist. What do you think of that?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Yes. Well, this is true that I'm a feminist who disagrees with current feminist ideology. I am a reformer within feminism. Too many independent minded women have turned their backs on feminism because there was no place for them within the culture. I had quarrels, almost fisticuffs with early feminists. From the late 1960s, you know into the early 1970s, I was literally drummed out of the women's movement because you know I refuse to bash men. I was pro-sex. For example, the Bond girls of the James Bond movies, I loved them. Meanwhile the other feminists were occupying the offices.

LL: Are you a feminist?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Absolutely. The current definition of feminism is far too limited. I subscribe to first wave feminism. I'm an equal opportunity feminist by which I mean that all barriers to women's advance in the professional realm and political realm must be removed. However, I also say that the private realm is far too complex spiritually and psychologically for regulation from government. So I call for a very strict line between the public and private realms.

LL: That's your libertarian philosophy working into things.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Yes.

LL: Now the question I think for a lot of people when you say that is if there are obstacles that exist for women and have existed for many, many decades, how do you remove them without legislating them?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, in my philosophy I call street-smart Amazon feminism by which I mean that every woman is responsible for what she will tolerate in every situation including professional. For example, I support sexual harassment guidelines and indeed I pioneered that at my own university. However, I disagree with a hostile workplace category that has to do with someone telling an off-colour joke merely because someone feels uncomfortable is not enough to call in the power of the state. Now my family is an Italian immigrant family. All four of my grandparents and my mother were born in Italy. Whatever job my family had, despite the fact that they had no power in the workplace, they would not tolerate any kind of undignified or sexualized comment on themselves. They risked their jobs by saying firmly it from the start that is not acceptable. Now what I'm criticizing in current feminism is a kind of bourgeois entitlement. There's an upper middle class girly thing. Young women are demanding a continuation of the protected environment of their bourgeois living room on a college campus and the workplace. I think it's profoundly infantilizing. Right now we have an entire generation of young people, both male and female, who are disabled from even recognizing the dangers of real life.

LL: I wanted to challenge a couple of these points though because when it comes to the workplace, you and I both know that younger people—this generation who are moving into the workplace now—live in precarious times. We call about precarious employment where jobs aren't secure and because of that, younger women may feel intimidated by the idea of standing up to the bad remarks or the bad behaviours. Don't they deserve to have some kind of avenue to go to get help?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Not from above. Not paternalistic rules which say that whatever problems you're having, they'll be mommy and daddy afterward to protect you. No.

LL: So what do they do?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: They should model their persona on me and on feminism of the 1960s, which is that you are responsible for how people treat you. If you just smile and comply and say oh, I'm afraid of getting fired. Your dignity as a human person is more important than job success.

LL: So take a stand and lose your job.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: You're not going to lose your job. You'll be respected more. The men will recognize the strength in you. Stand up for yourself. Be responsible.

LL: Let me raise another point. How does that street smart feminism tackles systemic problems like pay inequity?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, if there are cases where a woman is being paid less for the same job that a man does, that is illegal and it has been illegal in the United States since John F. Kennedy passed that legislation.

LL: So you support that legislation.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Absolutely. However, I do not accept what has happened now which people are looking at charts of the earnings of women and the earnings of men and demanding pay equity without looking at the kinds of jobs that women are choosing. Many women choose safe clean jobs in offices doing clerical work that pays less for whatever reason, okay. For their sense of personal comfort and safety or the fact that it's more adaptable and flexible for their own family and childcare needs. It’s the men who are doing some of the most dangerous but also high-paying work that's out there. The figures are something like 92, 94 per cent of the fatalities on jobs are male. You never hear about that. What I'm saying in my work is that the cause of their unhappiness is not necessarily men or the career system but rather a brand new world that they now inhabit where they are working side by side with men. This is an experiment. Okay? It's never happened in human history. Now I, coming from an Italian immigrant family, experienced the end of the agrarian era in this whole town of Italians that emigrated to work in a shoe factory in upstate New York. The solidarity of women was extremely sustaining multi generations of women together. Women are now lonely. This is not the life that they had for tens of thousands of years before. Stop blaming men. Women now have the ability to support themselves thanks to this new post-industrial capitalist system. We don't have to depend on men any longer for income. At the same time, people are lonely and there's a sense of dislocation.

LL: But again, I go back to this idea of how do you remove the obstacles. We know that there are very few women occupying seats in the boardrooms of the United States and Canada and other countries. How do you accomplish that? Is it just something that's going to take care of itself over the years?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I think that women need to present themselves with a persona of strength and reliability. I think that the way women dress is ultimately also undermining the seriousness with which men take them.

LL: What? Really?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Yes. If I see a picture of men who every inch of their body is covered in a professional situation, you know I love sexy clothing. But I'm saying that women really need to look at themselves and to realize when you are dressing with short skirts, bare legs and stiletto heels in a professional workplace, you are saying that your sexuality is part of your power and the blindness—

LL: That sounds so antiquated to me.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: No, no. The blindness that professional women have to the sexual fantasies that they arouse—as a lesbian, okay, I’m telling you. This is my analysis. Okay. If I can see the sexuality, the men are seeing it 10 times more. I'm not saying stop wearing that sexualizing clothing. I'm saying you cannot just offer yourself as an ornament.

LL: Is that why Hillary Clinton wore pantsuits through the campaign?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: The fashion statements of Hillary Clinton have been given to her by others. Alright. So let's not get into that. She's never been a sexual being. Hillary has always had a persona problem.

LL: While we're on Hillary Clinton, you labelled her a disaster during the 2016 election. Why?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, I've been writing on Hillary Clinton for like 25 years. Hillary is not an ideal candidate for the first woman president. I was pounding the drum about the first woman president issue from the mid-1990s on. I always said that Senator Dianne Feinstein of California was the ideal model. She has true gravitas, true political experience, knows all about military intelligence issues and so on. Hillary Clinton has written her husband's coattails her entire life. She has had a whole series of jobs—

LL: How can you say that when she was a senator in her own standing?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: She did not get that position without her attachment to her husband.

LL: And secretary of state?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I am a native of the state of New York. It's an outrage. This woman, she had never lived in New York. She's never accomplished a thing.

LL: She was a secretary of state.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: She was a terrible—

LL: She won the popular vote in the election.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: She was a terrible secretary of state who destabilized North Africa and caused that refugee influx into Italy. Benghazi was a disaster. The woman has not one single accomplishment on her record.

LL: She did have some success. She did win the popular vote.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Concentrated in two large areas—metropolitan New York and Los Angeles. Most people were scared to death about Trump.

LL: But you didn't support Trump.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: No. No, I did not.

LL: So do you see his administration in its first 100 days as a better result for women?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: You know I don't judge everything that happens in human existence by the standard of women and feminism. I think that is a kind of parochialism and that kind of microscopic view of the totality of human life and of current political affairs.

LL: So you don't want to answer that question?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I'm sorry.

LL: Has the Donald Trump administration been better for women?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: This is not my issue. I voted for Jill Stein. I'm a supporter of Bernie Sanders. I voted for Jill Stein because part of my agenda would be to destroy the present corrupt structure of the Democratic Party.

LL: Okay. We could go on about this, but there's so many other things to talk to you about. I want to move on now to date rape, sexual assault. You've generated a lot of controversy over the years on your on your views on that. Can you summarize your argument?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Yes. Well, first of all I want to say that I have been teaching as a classroom professor for 46 years. So I am very close to women undergraduates. I see them every day and the people who disagree with me rarely have that kind of in-person experience with women undergraduates. My philosophy is that of the women of the sexual revolution. I arrived in college in 1964. We women were required to sign in at night at 11 o'clock. The male undergraduates could run free the whole night. It was my generation that revolted against that. We demanded the freedom that men had. The colleges responded: The world is dangerous. You could be attacked. You could be injured. You could be raped. So my generation of the sexual revolution said give us the freedom to risk rape. Each woman now must realize the extent of this great gift of freedom that she has. She must negotiate her sexual identity, her sexual choices at every moment of every day.

LL: Let's get to words here because for a lot of people, a lot of feminists, words matter. What’s your argument against no means no and yes means yes?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: The sentence “no means no”, it's nonsense. It's absolute nonsense. It does not conform to anything in sexual behaviour. Sex is something that is happening in your body. Words do not correspond. The verbal realm of the brain does not correspond to what's going on in the body. Men know when they're sexually aroused because they have an erection. Okay? Women do not know often that they are giving signals of sexual interest or readiness. I, as a lesbian—

LL: You’re making women make quite stupid.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I, as a lesbian have hit this wall so many times in my life. I've seen it with my own eyes. Okay. Women are maddening. Because I have this kind of crossed sexual experience, I know that what I'm saying is true.

LL: But shouldn't the onus be on men not to sexually assault women?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: We're not talking about sexual assault. Often in case of undergraduates, we’re talking about both individuals are drunk. The men are looking for sexual experience. The women aren't sure what they want. Sometimes they don't really want to have sex. Sometimes they want a boyfriend. But the confusion that's going on, undergraduates drinking and flirting and so on—

LL: But there are cases though. There was a reason one in California where a woman was unconscious and sexually assaulted.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, obviously this is an atrocity. Obviously we're not talking about that. We're not talking about the stupidity—an evil man having sex with an unconscious woman. We're talking about the complex area of a young woman arriving at a fraternity party. Okay. And in their own pleasant way of talking with the young man, both are drunk. The man thinking okay, that she is sexually interested when she's just merely flirting. Now what I said from the start—and I maintain I'm correct—a girl who goes to a fraternity party and is asked by a young man would you like to go to my room. I still maintain to this day that a woman who says yes is signaling she is ready for sex. I'm sorry. I follow the system of gay men. For thousands of years, gay men have gone out into the streets, into the shadows and risked being beaten up and killed in the interest of sexual adventure. You don't see gay men complaining, complaining, complaining about this and that and how they were abused and so on. But I know perfectly well from my own friends how often the dangers of your encounters with a potential psychotic is there.

LL: But you’ve already stated clearly that you support guidelines in universities on sexual harassment. What do you see as the role of universities when it comes to dealing with sexual assault?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Okay. What I'm saying is that the universities have the right and indeed obligation to regulate the faculty's interactions with the students. However, I am calling very radically for all universities to stay completely out of supervision of student life. Universities have no right to be observing even what students say to each other, what students do with each other. If a crime is committed, that crime must be immediately reported to the police and the universities must stand back. No more grievance committees. No more this nanny state intrusion. Universities have become simply nursery schools and I said that in 1992—the nursery school campus. I was the first probably to predict what has come to pass: the absolute end of any kind of intellectual life and universities probably everywhere in North America because of this incredible administrator bureaucratic intrusion, fascist intrusion into student life. Leave the students alone. Get out completely.

LL: What should women be fighting for today?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, I think that women must decide what they want. And I think too few young women have been given the opportunity to even think about these matters because of a combination of feminist attitudes and university attitudes and so on, the denial of sexual difference. I believe there are biological differences and at the same time, my work is sexual personae. It's about sexual mass. It’s about the acculturation of role playing by men and women over time. But I did the research, massive research into the history of anthropology and science and so on, and world history, world cultures. There are biological differences. There are hormonal differences. It is absolutely atrocious that we have gender studies, women's studies programs and courses being taught without any reference whatever to biology. I'm not saying that you need to accept any kind of biological explanation but the ignorance about biology is outrageous. Most men have anywhere from eight to 10 times the level of testosterone that women have in their own bodies. You don't think that causes some difference in the brain and instincts and in the way we approach the world? So hormones are back when it comes to the transgender lobby, but not in regard to male and female sex differences?

LL: You've been unyielding in all of these years. I don't think you've budged even—to use the metric system—a centimetre on your views. Am I right?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I'm trying to think of where there's any point where—I think perhaps the only one point I might regret is I was a little bit mean to Naomi Wolf. Okay. And I called her Little Miss Pravda and so on. I used my Joan Rivers tongue on her and so on. But aside from that, no because you have to realize that my first book was published when I was 43 years old and I had been at this point point teaching and writing and researching for all those decades. So by the time I burst on the scene, my system was fairly well coherent.

LL: But my point is that in all of these years, the goalposts haven't shifted too much in your direction from what I can see, from the arguments you've been making all these years. And in fact, you lament that things are coming back around again. So what's your relevance? What is the relevance of your arguments in today’s world?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, I'm a leader of the dissident wing of feminism and I see you know many young people who want a more free speech-centered kind of philosophy. I mean I get mail all the time. I hear from people in England and in Germany and Italy, everywhere. What's happened is actually an institutional kind of a fossilization, that is institutions have fossilised a certain kind of feminist rhetoric from the early 1970s. And what's happened is that freethinking feminists or just free freethinking scholars of any kind have been driven out of the colleges and universities. I mean I've gotten letters from them for decades: I can't take it anymore. There's no future for me in academia. So what we have are these like to me, these cells of reaction which are the colleges and the universities and I might point out the mainstream media. The major media—probably some of my bitterest enemies have been upper middle class women journalists in London, in Toronto, in New York, certainly in Washington, et cetera. They are absolutely with their claws into this ideology. And I think it's because of some bitterness that they have through personal experiences with men. I do feel that I'm going to win in the long run. Alright. Because my system is so well worked out in terms of its research from the Stone Age on and that I will be seen to have been a prophet of my time.

LL: Well, then let's end by going sort of back to where we started and that was with Madonna. In 1990, you did describe her as the future of feminism. Who represents feminism's new future?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Well, I think it's the young people will determine what feminism will be.

LL: Do you see anyone out there?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: I don't see any figures of the dimension of let's say, Germaine Greer. Germaine Greer is the woman I admire most in the world, a person I admire most in the world. She's a completely independent thinker. People don't even recognize what an independent thinker is anymore. Why don't you believe like everyone else? It's like the hive. I think people are looking for a religion. That's what I keep on saying. Okay? I'm an atheist but people need a religion. They need a creed. And so when they got rid of Judeo-Christianity, they've locked on to feminist ideology. That's what makes it very difficult to argue with anyone because they're so locked into the commandments that they absorbed.

LL: Camille Paglia, thank you very much.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Thank you.

LL: Camille Paglia’s new book is Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism. She is the university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and she joined me in Toronto. Now you may want to respond to what she had to say. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC or me @lauralynchCBC, email us from our www.cbc.ca/thecurrent or find us on Facebook and comment or share our post. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Tom Power speaks with The New Yorker magazine's long-time cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff. Finally, Anna Maria Tremonti is in Washington where she'll be hosting a special edition of The Current tomorrow. Her guests include a rogue civil servant, a prescient historian who's predicting US President Donald Trump's impeachment and a panel of hardworking journalists. It's all about Trump's first 100 days, so we'll leave you today with his predecessor. Barack Obama gave his first public speech this week since leaving the White House. He was in Chicago speaking with young people about community engagement. Here's one exchange with a student named Tiffany. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: Tiffany, you were going to say something?

TIFFANY: Yeah. So just to add on to this about you being in the community and what Ayanna said about meeting the officials, I actually met you before in high school.

BARACK OBAMA: Is this another story about how old I am?

TIFFANY: No, no, no. No, but I was singing with the concert choir. We were at a breakfast downtown. I actually walked up to one official and tapped him because I recognized him being on TV and he just put his finger up to me and said no, he can't talk to me right now. And then I saw you and I tapped you. Hi, Mr. Obama. Can I please take a picture with you? And you said no. And I was like what’s going on? They say on TV they care about people and then in person they don’t want to talk to me? But you said no, not until you tell me your name first.

BARACK OBAMA: Ohh. Whew.

TIFFANY: And then you shook my hand.

[Sound: Applause]

TIFFANY: And you shook my hand and you talked to me a little bit and all of that helped inspire me too, that he's not just a face on TV. You know what Ayanna was saying. They may shake your hand in public but then you don't feel connected. So that helped me too want to be involved and listen to what she had to say because I did feel that you cared about someone, a little black girl from Chicago like me.

[Music: Ending theme]

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