Camille Paglia‘s trangender rap, taped last April, in a nutshell: Youthful alienation has been a constant in American culture for decades. In the late ’40s and ’50s it was being a Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg-styled beatnik. In the mid ’60s to early ’70s it was becoming a hippie taking psychedelic adventures or a political radical. Today you’re encouraged to think that your alienation is possibly because you don’t identify with your inherited gender, and so young people are being encouraged to surgically change genders. It’s all part of general leftist academic thinking about sexual fluidity, and it’s not only ominous but a sign of cultural collapse. 

If some rightwing guy on Fox were to say this, I would dismiss it. But because I’m a longtime Paglia worshipper, I feel differently.