Ugh, As If! - contemporary art and culture podcast · Lisa Fevral

2 vamps 1 tramp: Camille Paglia - 3x22

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Paglia says masculinity is "risky and elusive" and is confirmed only by other men.

The episode opens in that familiar chaotic way, with banter, side-eye, and a promise to take a piss out of everyone. Camille Paglia is the main target, and the hosts do not treat her like a sacred cultural object that needs careful handling. They keep asking what her reputation is actually built on, and whether publishing books by itself means much of anything. The mood is impatient from the start. They pull in Jordan Peterson as a comparison point and use that frame to sketch the kind of public intellectual they are suspicious of. From there the conversation turns into a blunt argument about women's rights, bodily autonomy, and how badly Paglia misses basic historical context. They bring up Soviet-era legal rights as a corrective and use that to show how thin some of the commentary sounds. The point is not just that she is wrong, but that she is wrong in a way that brushes past actual history. They keep pushing on the idea that freedom and equality are somehow complete just because women can wear different clothes now. That claim gets treated as absurd on its face. The show then widens out into how little real power people have over their own bodies, their health, and the systems that govern them. They talk about contraception, bodily control, and the way constraints are still dressed up as choice. The tone stays dry, profane, and blunt. At one point they also pivot into the old feminist line about fashion, and they do it with enough bite that the argument feels alive instead of academic. The hosts are interested in how dress codes work on different bodies, and how gendered conventions never land evenly. Their back-and-forth keeps the episode moving even when the subject gets dense. They are not trying to deliver a clean lecture. They are trying to corner an idea until it either holds up or falls apart. That makes the episode feel jagged in a good way. It has the rhythm of people who know their references but are not interested in sounding reverent about them. The swearing is part of the method, not decoration. So is the self-correction. They think out loud, change lanes, and keep returning to the same core question: does the argument make any sense once you strip off the performance? By the end, the episode has turned into a wider critique of cultural authority itself. It is less about one public figure than about the habits that let certain bad arguments keep getting dressed up as brave thought. The show lands on irritation, but it is a productive irritation. It gives the listener a sharp, messy, very human way into art, gender, and power.

As heard by us

A blunt, funny run at Camille Paglia, fashion, gender, and power that stays sharp by moving fast.

Ugh, As If! spends this stretch going after Camille Paglia, legal double standards, and the rules that police dress and gender. The hosts move fast enough that the talk never freezes into a tidy thesis, but it still has a clear edge: gossip slides into argument, then into…

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Why you'd press play

If you want Camille Paglia skewered with jokes and sharp cultural arguments, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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