"Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy"
About this Quote
Paglia portrays male sexuality as a condition of exile: a restless homelessness that drives a ceaseless search for fulfillment. Exile implies separation from a homeland, and here the homeland is erotic belonging, a sense of being at home in the body and in intimacy. Men, she suggests, feel cast out from that ground and therefore wander through desire like nomads, propelled by a chronic lack rather than arriving at satisfaction.
“Craving and despising” captures the volatile oscillation often bound up with pursuit: idealizing what is sought and then recoiling from the reality of it, or from oneself after attaining it. The despising may aim outward, at partners, at the messy facts of embodiment, or inward, as shame and self-disgust. That pendulum produces motion without rest: appetite reignites as soon as it is appeased, and contentment remains postponed, a horizon that recedes with every step. Desire becomes a circuit of intensity rather than a destination.
The passage also rebukes the notion that men’s sexual liberty is enviable. The mobility, variety, and apparent freedom associated with male desire are framed as a burden, anguish disguised as adventure. Paglia’s larger view often links this turmoil to culture-making: men, alienated from nature and the maternal ground, externalize their erotic unease into art, conquest, systems, and monuments. Sublimation becomes both achievement and symptom, the grand compensation for an inner homelessness.
By contrast, the claim that there is nothing for women to envy implies a different relation to eros, less exilic, more rooted in bodily cycles and the power of sexual selection. It does not deny female desire but suggests it is less defined by perpetual flight. The observation is provocative and schematic; contemporary experience shows fluidities that transcend such binaries. Still, the metaphor illuminates a recognizable pattern: when desire is severed from belonging, pursuit easily hardens into compulsion, and freedom without rest becomes its own cage.
“Craving and despising” captures the volatile oscillation often bound up with pursuit: idealizing what is sought and then recoiling from the reality of it, or from oneself after attaining it. The despising may aim outward, at partners, at the messy facts of embodiment, or inward, as shame and self-disgust. That pendulum produces motion without rest: appetite reignites as soon as it is appeased, and contentment remains postponed, a horizon that recedes with every step. Desire becomes a circuit of intensity rather than a destination.
The passage also rebukes the notion that men’s sexual liberty is enviable. The mobility, variety, and apparent freedom associated with male desire are framed as a burden, anguish disguised as adventure. Paglia’s larger view often links this turmoil to culture-making: men, alienated from nature and the maternal ground, externalize their erotic unease into art, conquest, systems, and monuments. Sublimation becomes both achievement and symptom, the grand compensation for an inner homelessness.
By contrast, the claim that there is nothing for women to envy implies a different relation to eros, less exilic, more rooted in bodily cycles and the power of sexual selection. It does not deny female desire but suggests it is less defined by perpetual flight. The observation is provocative and schematic; contemporary experience shows fluidities that transcend such binaries. Still, the metaphor illuminates a recognizable pattern: when desire is severed from belonging, pursuit easily hardens into compulsion, and freedom without rest becomes its own cage.
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| Topic | Deep |
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