"SM/SJ So what about the position of women in your work. Are they experts in seduction?

I am not in agreement with hardline feminist ideology which says that woman as seducer is a degrading role. In my view the strategy of seduction is a happy, liberating power for women. It feeds into the simulation. Unfortunately, in feminism everything that happens to be female is defended - l'écriture féminine, poetry, any kind of artistic creation, and this makes it a kind of mirror of masculine simulation. This is a negative simulation, an unfortunate simulation. It seems to me that the feminine strategy of seduction is not an alienation of woman, as the feminists believe. One must rise above the battle of the sexes and get away from sexist alienation. Men and women shouldn’t oppose each other. I believe one can regain feminine seductiveness as a positive virtue and that this is one way to rise above it. But of course I risk being misunderstood.

SM/SJ Isn’t that just a romantic view of woman as transcendent? A lot of feminists have already criticized the essentialism that you criticize.

It’s important to make a critique of woman as woman. Seduction is not just a sexual strategy and it’s not one-sided. More a complicity. There are rules to the game. It’s a very physical game and one of equality. Both sides are deeply involved and the stakes are high. It’s almost an ideology played out to the detriment of democracy. Right now men are striving themselves to find an ideology which defines them and I think that femininity should go beyond its narrow confines, beyond the way that it sees itself at the moment."

--- The Politics of Seduction, Baudrillard's interview with Suzanne Moore and Stephen Johnstone