Mailer Battles Feminists
Jack E. Swift's Tampa Times report on Mailer's University of South Florida appearance, where he called Women's Liberation 'totalitarian' and 'the exact equivalent of fascism.'
“Mailer Battles Feminists,” an article by Jack E. Swift in the Tampa Times (4 February 1972), reports a sharp exchange with feminists at a University of South Florida appearance. Women’s Liberation is “totalitarian,” Mailer says, because feminists “won’t allow criticism,” which “leads to the exact equivalent of fascism.” The reporter notes Mailer “came across as a man submerged in debt, tired of crowds and the entourage” around him: “I hate these things,” he said quietly. The first of many such campus encounters during Mailer’s 1972 tour.