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Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including ''Sex and Destiny'' (1984), ''The Change'' (1991), ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), and ''[[The Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]'' (2003). Her 2013 book, ''[[White Beech: The Rainforest Years]]'', describes her efforts to restore an area of [[Gondwana Rainforests of Australia|rainforest]] in the [[Numinbah Valley]] in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', ''[[The Guardian]]'', ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', ''[[The Spectator]]'', ''[[The Independent]]'', and ''[[The Oldie]]'', among others.<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/> | Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including ''Sex and Destiny'' (1984), ''The Change'' (1991), ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), and ''[[The Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]'' (2003). Her 2013 book, ''[[White Beech: The Rainforest Years]]'', describes her efforts to restore an area of [[Gondwana Rainforests of Australia|rainforest]] in the [[Numinbah Valley]] in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', ''[[The Guardian]]'', ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', ''[[The Spectator]]'', ''[[The Independent]]'', and ''[[The Oldie]]'', among others.<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/> | ||
Greer is a [[Women's liberation movement|liberation]] (or [[Radical feminism|radical]]) rather than [[Equality feminism|equality feminist]].{{efn|Germaine Greer, "All About Women" (2015): "I've always been a liberation feminist. I'm not an equality feminist. I think that's a profoundly conservative aim, and it wouldn't change anything. It would just mean that women were implicated."<ref>{{YouTube|id=Jzcs4ti_bdI&t=1h6m4s|title=How to be a feminist}}, All About Women festival, Sydney Opera House, 8 March 2015 (Greer and others discussing feminism; at 01:06:04)</ref>}} Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting [[Difference feminism|difference]] and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".{{efn|Germaine Greer (''The Whole Woman'', 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. ''The Female Eunuch'' was one feminist text that did not argue for equality." | Greer is a [[Women's liberation movement|liberation]] (or [[Radical feminism|radical]]) rather than [[Equality feminism|equality feminist]].{{efn|Germaine Greer, "All About Women" (2015): "I've always been a liberation feminist. I'm not an equality feminist. I think that's a profoundly conservative aim, and it wouldn't change anything. It would just mean that women were implicated."<ref>{{YouTube|id=Jzcs4ti_bdI&t=1h6m4s|title=How to be a feminist}}, All About Women festival, Sydney Opera House, 8 March 2015 (Greer and others discussing feminism; at 01:06:04)</ref>}} Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting [[Difference feminism|difference]] and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".{{efn|Germaine Greer (''The Whole Woman'', 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. ''The Female Eunuch'' was one feminist text that did not argue for equality." | ||
==''The Female Eunuch'' (1970)== | ==''The Female Eunuch'' (1970)== | ||
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====Transgender identity==== | ====Transgender identity==== | ||
Greer's writing on gender has brought her into opposition with [[transgender]] activists. In a chapter in ''The Whole Woman'' entitled "Pantomime Dames", she wrote: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex."{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=64}} Her position first attracted controversy in 1997, when she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist [[Rachael Padman]], a [[trans woman]], arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.<ref>{{cite news|first=Clare|last=Garner|title=Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html|work=[[The Independent]]|date=25 June 1997}}</ref> She reiterated her views several times over the following years, | Greer's writing on gender has brought her into opposition with [[transgender]] activists. In a chapter in ''The Whole Woman'' entitled "Pantomime Dames", she wrote: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex."{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=64}} Her position first attracted controversy in 1997, when she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist [[Rachael Padman]], a [[trans woman]], arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.<ref>{{cite news|first=Clare|last=Garner|title=Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html|work=[[The Independent]]|date=25 June 1997}}</ref> She reiterated her views several times over the following years, including in 2015 when students at [[Cardiff University]] tried unsuccessfully to [[No Platform|"no platform"]] her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century".<ref>{{cite news|first=Steven|last=Morris|date=18 November 2015|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/18/transgender-activists-protest-germaine-greer-lecture-cardiff-university |title=Germaine Greer gives university lecture despite campaign to silence her|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with [[Kirsty Wark]] for BBC ''[[Newsnight]]'', that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of [[Caitlyn Jenner]] for Glamour Woman of the Year had been [[Misogyny|misogynist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-34625512/germaine-greer-transgender-women-are-not-women|title=Germaine Greer: Transgender women are 'not women'|website=[[BBC News]]|date=24 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Kimiko|last=De Freytas-Tamura|date=24 October 2015|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/world/europe/cardiff-university-rejects-bid-to-bar-germaine-greer.html|title=Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Lehmann|first1=Claire|author-link=Claire Lehmann|title=Germaine Greer and the scourge of 'no-platforming'|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-27/lehmann-greer-and-the-no-platforming-scourge/6887576|work=[[ABC News (Australia)|ABC News]]|date=27 October 2015}}</ref> Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to ''[[The Observer]]'' in 2015 objecting to the use of no-platform policies against Greer and feminists with similar views; signatories included [[Beatrix Campbell]], [[Mary Beard (classicist)|Mary Beard]], [[Deborah Cameron (linguist)|Deborah Cameron]], [[Catherine Hall]], [[Liz Kelly]], [[Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett|Ruth Lister]], and the [[Southall Black Sisters]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Campbell |first1=Beatrix |display-authors=etal |author-link1=Beatrix Campbell |title=We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |work=[[The Observer]] |date=14 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181013014630/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |archive-date=13 October 2018 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=12 October 2018 }}</ref> | ||
===On rape=== | ===On rape=== |
Revision as of 19:55, 31 August 2024
Germaine Greer (1939 - ?) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century.[1]
Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England.
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name.[2] An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed.[3]Template:Sfn
Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including Sex and Destiny (1984), The Change (1991), The Whole Woman (1999), and The Boy (2003). Her 2013 book, White Beech: The Rainforest Years, describes her efforts to restore an area of rainforest in the Numinbah Valley in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Independent, and The Oldie, among others.[4]
Greer is a liberation (or radical) rather than equality feminist.[lower-alpha 1] Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in The Whole Woman (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting difference and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".{{efn|Germaine Greer (The Whole Woman, 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. The Female Eunuch was one feminist text that did not argue for equality."
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Writing
- Further information: The Female Eunuch
When she began writing for Oz and Suck, Greer was spending three days a week in her flat in Leamington Spa while she taught at Warwick, two days in Manchester filming, and two days in London in a white-washed bedsit in The Pheasantry on King's Road.[6] When she first moved to London, she had stayed in John Peel's spare room before being invited to take the bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under Martin Sharp's; accommodation there was by invitation only.Template:Sfn
She was also writing The Female Eunuch. On 17 March 1969 she had had lunch in Golden Square, Soho, with a Cambridge acquaintance, Sonny Mehta of MacGibbon & Kee. When he asked for ideas for new books, she repeated a suggestion of her agent, Diana Crawford, which she had dismissed, that she write about female suffrage.[7] Crawford had suggested that Greer write a book for the 50th anniversary of women (or a portion of them) being given the vote in the UK in 1918.Template:Sfn The very idea of it made her angry and she began "raging" about it. "That's the book I want", he said. He advanced her £750 and another £250 when she signed the contract.Template:Sfn In a three-page synopsis for Mehta, she wrote: "If Eldridge Cleaver can write a book about the frozen soul of the negro, as part of the progress towards a correct statement of the coloured man's problem, a woman must eventually take steps towards delineating the female condition as she finds it scored upon her sensibility."Template:Sfn
Explaining why she wanted to write the book, the synopsis continued: "Firstly I suppose it is to expiate my guilt at being an uncle Tom to my sex. I don't like women. I probably share in all the effortless and unconscious contempt that men pour on women." In a note at the time, she described 21 April 1969 as "the day on which my book begins itself, and Janis Joplin sings at Albert Hall. Yesterday the title was Strumpet Voluntary—what shall it be today?"Template:Sfn She told the Sydney Morning Herald in July 1969 that the book was nearly finished and would explore, in the reporter's words, "the myth of the ultra-feminine woman which both sexes are fed and which both end up believing".[6] In February 1970, she published an article in Oz, "The Slag-Heap Erupts", which gave a taste of her views to come, namely that women were to blame for their own oppression. "Men don't really like women", she wrote, "and that is really why they don't employ them. Women don't really like women either, and they too can usually be relied on to employ men in preference to women."Template:Sfn Several British feminists, including Angela Carter, Sheila Rowbotham and Michelene Wandor, responded angrily.Template:Sfn Wandor wrote a rejoinder in Oz, "On the end of Servile Penitude: A reply to Germaine's cunt power", arguing that Greer was writing about a feminist movement in which she had played no role and about which she knew nothing.Template:Sfn
Publication
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Female_Eunuch_cover.jpeg)
Launched at a party attended by editors from Oz,Template:Sfn The Female Eunuch was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970,[8] dedicated to Lillian Roxon and four other women.[9] The first print run of Template:Frac thousand copies sold out on the first day.[10] Arguing that the suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses and devitalizes women, the book became an international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement.Template:Sfn According to Greer, McGraw-Hill paid $29,000 for the American rights and Bantam $135,000 for the paperback.[11] The Bantam edition called Greer the "Saucy feminist that even men like", quoting Life magazine, and the book "#1: the ultimate word on sexual freedom".Template:Sfn Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly,Template:Sfn and it has never been out of print.[2] Wallace writes about one woman who wrapped it in brown paper and kept it hidden under her shoes, because her husband would not let her read it.Template:Sfn By 1998 it had sold over one million copies in the UK alone.[12]
The year 1970 was an important one for second-wave feminism. In February 400 women met in Ruskin College, Oxford, for Britain's first Women's Liberation Conference.[13] In August Kate Millett's Sexual Politics was published in New York;[14] on 26 August the Women's Strike for Equality was held throughout the United States; and on 31 August Millett's portrait by Alice Neel was on the cover of Time magazine, by which time her book had sold 15,000 copies (although in December Time deemed her disclosure that she was a lesbian as likely to discourage people from embracing feminism).[15] September and October saw the publication of Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan, and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex.Template:Sfn On 6 March 1971, dressed in a monk's habit, Greer marched through central London with 2,500 women in a Women's Liberation March.[16] By that month The Female Eunuch had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing.Template:Sfn McGraw-Hill published it in the United States on 16 April 1971.[17][18] The toast of New York, Greer insisted on staying at the Hotel Chelsea, a haunt of writers and artists, rather than at the Algonquin Hotel where her publisher had booked her; her book launch had to be rescheduled because so many people wanted to attend.[19] A New York Times book review described her as "[s]ix feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and a profile reminiscent of Garbo".[17] Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear".Template:Sfn
A Paladin paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by René Magritte,[20] showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip.[21] Clive Hamilton regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created".[20] Likening the torso to "some fibreglass cast on an industrial production line", Christine Wallace wrote that Holmes's first version was a faceless, breastless, naked woman, "unmistakably Germaine ... hair fashionably afro-frizzed, waist-deep in a pile of stylised breasts, presumably amputated in the creation of a 'female eunuch' based on an assumed equivalence of testicles and mammary glands".Template:Sfn The book was reissued in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux at the instigation of Jennifer Baumgardner, a leading third-wave feminist and editor of the publisher's Feminist Classics series.Template:Sfn According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist".Template:Sfn
Arguments
"When a woman may walk on the open streets of our cities alone, without insult or obstacle, at any pace she chooses, there will be no further need for this book."
The Female Eunuch explores how a male-dominated world affects a female's sense of self, and how sexist stereotypes undermine female rationality, autonomy, power and sexuality. Its message is that women have to look within themselves for personal liberation before trying to change the world. In a series of chapters in five sections—Body, Soul, Love, Hate and Revolution—Greer describes the stereotypes, myths and misunderstandings that combine to produce the oppression.Template:Sfn She summarized the book's position in 2018 as "Do what you want and want what you do ... Don't take it up the arse if you don't want to take it up the arse."[23] Wallace argues that this is a libertarian message, with its background in the Sydney Push, rather than one that rose out of the feminism of the day.Template:Sfn The first paragraph stakes out the book's place in feminist historiography (in an earlier draft, the first sentence read: "So far the female liberation movement is tiny, privileged and overrated"):Template:Sfn
The Eunuch ends with: "Privileged women will pluck at your sleeve and seek to enlist you in the 'fight' for reforms, but reforms are retrogressive. The old process must be broken, not made new. Bitter women will call you to rebellion, but you have too much to do. What will you do?"Template:Sfn
Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to Sex and Destiny 14 years later, namely that the nuclear family is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children, and that the manufacture of women's sexuality by Western society is demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate them. Later, when women embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity, they develop a sense of shame about their own bodies, and lose their natural and political autonomy. The result is powerlessness, isolation, a diminished sexuality, and a lack of joy.[24] "Like beasts", she told The New York Times in March 1971, "who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives—to be fattened or made docile—women have been cut off from their capacity for action."[17] The book argues that "[w]omen have very little idea of how much men hate them", while "[m]en do not themselves know the depth of their hatred."[25] First-wave feminism had failed in its revolutionary aims. "Reaction is not revolution", she wrote. "It is not a sign of revolution where the oppressed adopt the manners of the oppressors and practice oppression on their own behalf. Neither is it a sign of revolution when women ape men ..."Template:Sfn The American feminist Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), wants for women "equality of opportunity within the status quo, free admission to the world of the ulcer and the coronary", she argued.Template:Sfn
Although Greer's book made no use of autobiographical material, unlike other feminist works at the time, Mary Evans, writing in 2002, viewed Greer's "entire oeuvre" as autobiographical, a struggle for female agency in the face of the powerlessness of the feminine (her mother) against the backdrop of the missing male hero (her father).Template:Sfn Reviewing the book for The Massachusetts Review in 1972, feminist scholar Arlyn Diamond wrote that, while flawed, it was also "intuitively and brilliantly right", but she criticized Greer for her attitude toward women:
Celebrity
Debate with Norman Mailer
- Further information: Town Bloody Hall
In the UK Greer was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971, and in the US the following year, she was "Playboy Journalist of the Year".[26] Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at the Town Hall in New York, she famously debated Norman Mailer, whose book The Prisoner of Sex had just been published in response to Kate Millett. Greer presented it as an evening of sexual conquest. She had always wanted to fuck Mailer, she said, and wrote in The Listener that she "half expected him to blow his head off in 'one last killer come' like Ernest Hemingway."Template:Sfn Betty Friedan, Sargent Shriver, Susan Sontag and Stephen Spender sat in the audience, where tickets were $25 a head (c. $155 in 2018), while Greer and Mailer shared the stage with Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling and Jacqueline Ceballos.[2][4]Template:Sfn Several feminists declined to attend, including Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kate Millett, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem.Template:Sfn Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the event in the documentary Town Bloody Hall (1979).[4]
Wearing a paisley coat she had cut from a shawl and sewn herself, and sitting with her feet on a park bench, Greer appeared on the cover of Life magazine on 7 May 1971, under the title "Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like"; there were five more photographs of her inside.[27] Also in May, she was featured in Vogue magazine, photographed by Lord Snowdon, on the floor in knee-length boots and wearing the same paisley coat.Template:Sfn (In 2016 the coat, now in the National Museum of Australia, got its own scholarly article, and the photograph by Lord Snowdon is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.)Template:Sfn On 18 May Greer addressed the National Press Club in Washington, the first woman to do so; she was introduced as "an attractive, intelligent, sexually liberated woman".Template:Sfn She also appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape.Template:Sfn
Later writing about women
On gender
Sex-gender distinction
In The Whole Woman, Greer argued that, while sex is a biological given, gender roles are cultural constructs. Femininity is not femaleness. "Genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity", she wrote.Template:Sfn Girls and women are taught femininity—learning to speak softly, wear certain clothes, remove body hair to please men, and so on—a process of conditioning that begins at birth and continues throughout the entire life span.Template:Sfn "There is nothing feminine about being pregnant", she told Krishnan Guru-Murthy in 2018. "It's almost the antithesis of that. There's nothing feminine about giving birth. It's a bloody struggle, and you've got to be strong and brave. There's nothing feminine about breastfeeding. God knows it drives everybody mad; they want to see nice big pumped-up tits, but they don't want to see them doing their job."[28]
Transgender identity
Greer's writing on gender has brought her into opposition with transgender activists. In a chapter in The Whole Woman entitled "Pantomime Dames", she wrote: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex."Template:Sfn Her position first attracted controversy in 1997, when she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist Rachael Padman, a trans woman, arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.[29] She reiterated her views several times over the following years, including in 2015 when students at Cardiff University tried unsuccessfully to "no platform" her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century".[30] Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with Kirsty Wark for BBC Newsnight, that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of Caitlyn Jenner for Glamour Woman of the Year had been misogynist.[31][32][33] Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to The Observer in 2015 objecting to the use of no-platform policies against Greer and feminists with similar views; signatories included Beatrix Campbell, Mary Beard, Deborah Cameron, Catherine Hall, Liz Kelly, Ruth Lister, and the Southall Black Sisters.[34]
On rape
Arguments
Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch (1970) that rape is not the "expression of uncontrollable desire" but an act of "murderous aggression, spawned in self-loathing and enacted upon the hated other".Template:Sfn She has argued since at least the 1990s that the criminal justice system's approach to rape is male-centred, treating female victims as evidence rather than complainants, and reflecting that women were once regarded as male property. "Historically, the crime of rape was committed not against the woman but against the man with an interest in her, her father or her husband", she wrote in 1995. "What had to be established beyond doubt was that she had not collaborated with the man who usurped another's right. If she had, the penalty, which might have been stoning or pressing to death, was paid by her."[35]
Rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman, she writes; if a woman allows a man to have sex with her to avoid a beating, then arguably she fears the beating more. A woman who has been raped has no reason to feel shame (and therefore no need for anonymity), and a female-centred view of rape will not fashion it as something that can "ruin" a woman. "She may be outraged and humiliated", Greer writes, "but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."[35] If a woman feels she has been destroyed by such an attack, "it is because you've been told lies about who and what you are", she argued in 2018.[36] She suggested in 1995 that the crime of rape be replaced by one of sexual assault with varying degrees of seriousness and swifter outcomes.[35] In 2018 she said she had changed her mind about calling rape "sexual assault", because most rape (in particular, sex without consent within marriage) is not accompanied by physical violence.[37] "There is no way that the law of rape fits the reality of women's lives", she said in 2018.[38] Her book, On Rape, was published by Melbourne University Press in September 2018.[39]
Me Too movement
Greer has commented several times on the Me Too movement. In November 2017, she called for women to show solidarity when other women are sexually harassed.[40] Just before she was named Australian of the Year in Britain in January 2018, she said she had always wanted to see women react immediately to sexual harassment, as it occurs. "What makes it different is when the man has economic power, as Harvey Weinstein has. But if you spread your legs because he said 'be nice to me and I'll give you a job in a movie' then I'm afraid that's tantamount to consent, and it's too late now to start whingeing about that."[41] In May that year, she argued—of the high-profile cases—that disclosure was "dishonourable" because women who "claim to have been outraged 20 years ago" had been paid to sign non-disclosure agreements, but then had spoken out once the statute of limitations had lapsed and they had nothing to lose.[42]
Awards and honours
Template:External media Greer has received several honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Letters from York University in 1999,[43] a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2003,[44] a Doctor of Letters at Anglia Ruskin University in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2005.[45][46]
The National Portrait Gallery in London has purchased eight photographs of Greer, including by Bryan Wharton, Lord Snowdon and Polly Borland, and one painting by Paula Rego.[47] She was selected as an Australian National Living Treasure in 1997,[48] and in 2001 was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.Template:Sfn In 2011 she was one of four feminist "Australian legends" (along with Eva Cox, Elizabeth Evatt and Anne Summers) represented on Australian postage stamps.[49] In the UK she was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971,[26] and in 2016 BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour placed her fourth on its annual "Power List" of seven women who had the biggest impact on women's lives over the previous 70 years, alongside (in order) Margaret Thatcher, Helen Brook, Barbara Castle, Jayaben Desai, Bridget Jones, and Beyoncé.[50]
Controversial views
Writer Yvonne Roberts referred to Greer as "the contrarian queen".[51] Sarah Ditum wrote that Greer "doesn't get into trouble occasionally or inadvertently, but consistently and with the attitude of a tank rolling directly into a crowd of infantry".[52] The Sydney Morning Herald has labelled her a "human headline".[53] British actor and comedian Tracey Ullman has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops.[52] In response to criticism of Greer, Polly Toynbee wrote in 1988: "Small minds, small spirits affronted by the sheer size and magnetism of the woman."Template:Sfn
Greer said that the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses (1988)[54] was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support.[55] In 2006, she supported activists trying to halt the filming in London's Brick Lane of the film Brick Lane (based on Monica Ali's novel of the same name) because, she wrote, "a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name" had portrayed Bengali Muslims as "irreligious and disorderly". Rushdie called her comments "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but ... not unexpected".[54]
In May 1995, in her column for The Guardian (which the newspaper spiked), she referred to Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore's "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes".[56] She called her biographer, Christine Wallace, a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, Untamed Shrew (1999), "a piece of excrement".[57]Template:Sfn (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about Dickens, read his fucking books.")[58] Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister, John Howard, called her remarks patronising and condescending.[59] After receiving a fee of £40,000,[60] she left the Celebrity Big Brother house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "fascist prison camp".[61][62][63] Kevin Rudd, later Australia's prime minister, told her to "stick a sock in it" in 2006, when, in a column about the death of Australian Steve Irwin, star of The Crocodile Hunter, she concluded that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge".[64][65] She criticized the wife of the newly elected American president Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, for her dress on the night of the 2008 U.S. election,Template:Sfn and in 2012 she advised Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, to change the cut of her jackets because she had "a big arse".[66]
Later life
In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy.[67]
In 2021 Greer had returned to Australia to sell her home and put herself into aged care. In 2022 the 83 year old Greer noted more women are in care than men. She described herself as 'not a patient, but an inmate' and spoke frankly about residential aged care being one of the more pressing feminist issues today.[68][69]
Germaine Greer archive
Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne.[70] As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space.[71][72][73] The transfer of the archive (150 filing-cabinet drawers) from Greer's home in England began in July 2014; the university announced that it was raising Template:AUD to fund the purchase, shipping, housing, cataloguing and digitising. Greer said that her receipt from the sale would be donated to her charity, Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.[74]
Selected works
- (1963). Template:Cite thesis
- (1968). Template:Cite thesis
- (1970). The Female Eunuch. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
- (1979) as Rose Blight. The Revolting Garden. HarperCollins.
- (1979). The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. London: Martin Secker and Warburg.
- (1984). Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility. London: Harper & Row.
- (1986). Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past Masters series).
- (1986). The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings. London: Picador.
- (1988) with Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone (eds). Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- (1989). Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
- (1989) (ed.). The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn. London: Stump Cross Books.
- (1990) with Ruth Little (eds). The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, Volume III, The Translations. London: Stump Cross Books.
- (1991). "The Offstage Mob: Shakespeare's Proletariat", in Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanley Wells (eds). Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions. Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 54–75.
- (1991). The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause. London: Hamish Hamilton.
- (1994). "Macbeth: Sin and Action of Grace", in J. Wain (ed.). Shakespeare: Macbeth. London: Macmillan, pp. 263–270.
- (1995). Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet. Viking.
- (1997) with Susan Hastings (eds). The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton. London: Stump Cross Books.
- (1999). The Whole Woman. London: Doubleday.
- (2000). John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. London: Northcote House Publishers.
- (2001) (ed.). 101 Poems by 101 Women. London: Faber & Faber.
- (2003). The Boy. London: Thames & Hudson.
- (2003) (ed.). Poems for Gardeners. London: Virago.
- (2004). Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood. London: Profile Books (first published 2003 in Quarterly Essay).
- (2007). Shakespeare's Wife. London: Bloomsbury.
- (2007). Stella Vine. Oxford: Modern Art Oxford.
- (2008). "Shakespeare and the Marriage Contract", in Paul Raffield, Gary Watt (eds). Shakespeare and the Law. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 51–64.
- (2008). On Rage. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
- (2011) with Phil Willmott. Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes. Samuel French Limited.
- (2013). White Beech: The Rainforest Years. London: Bloomsbury.
- (2018). On Rape. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Sources
Notes
References
- ↑ Magarey 2010, pp. 402–403; Medoff 2010, p. 263; Standish 2014, p. 263; Francis & Henningham 2017. For the date of birth, Wallace 1999, p. 3.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Winant 2015.
- ↑ Saracoglu, Melody (12 May 2014). "Melody Saracoglu on Germaine Greer: One Woman Against the World", New Statesman.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Template:YouTube, All About Women festival, Sydney Opera House, 8 March 2015 (Greer and others discussing feminism; at 01:06:04)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Doctor who refuses to be type-cast", The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1969, p. 19.
- ↑ Kleinhenz 2018, p. 137; also see Packer 1984, p. 98; Wallace 1999, p. 141.
- ↑ "Goodbye love", The Guardian, 28 September 1970, p. 9.
- Shooting down The Female Eunuch, The Sunday Times, 10 October 2010.
- ↑ Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 136–137
- ↑ Germaine Greer on Marriage, Children And Society, The Late Late Show, RTÉ, 24 October 1986.
- ↑ Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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tag; no text was provided for refs namedMcCann25Feb1998
- ↑ Lake 2016, p. 10; The first Women's Liberation Movement Conference, Woman's Hour, BBC, 25 February 2010.
- ↑ Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ Poirot 2004, pp. 204–205; Mosmann 2016, p. 84; Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 166–167.
- ↑ "Women who came out in the cold", The Observer, 7 March 1971, p. 1.
Women's Liberation Movement march, 1971 – in pictures, The Guardian, 3 March 2018.
From the archive, 8 March 1971: Women march for liberation in London, The Guardian, 8 March 2013. - ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Weintraub, Judith. Germaine Greer – Opinions That May Shock the Faithful, March 22, 1971.
- ↑ Books of the Times, The New York Times, 20 April 1971.
- The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, The New York Times, 25 April 1971.
- ↑ Spongberg 1993, p. 407; for the Hotel Chelsea, Kleinhenz 2018, p. 169.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Hamilton 2016, p. 44.
- ↑ Russell, Marlowe (18 October 2011). "John Holmes obituary", The Guardian.
- ↑ "The Female Eunuch first draft", University Library, The University of Melbourne. This quote is the first draft's opening line.
- ↑ Template:YouTube, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Sydney Opera House
- ↑ Template:YouTube, BBC, 9 June 2018
- ↑ Greer 2001, pp. 279, 281–282; also see Greer 1999, p. 359.
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Spongberg 1993, p. 407.
- ↑ Smith 2012, p. 309; Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 171–172.
- ↑ Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:29:54
- ↑ Garner, Clare. Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion, The Independent, 25 June 1997.
- ↑ Morris, Steven. Germaine Greer gives university lecture despite campaign to silence her, 18 November 2015.
- ↑ Germaine Greer: Transgender women are 'not women' (24 October 2015).
- ↑ De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer, 24 October 2015.
- ↑ Germaine Greer and the scourge of 'no-platforming', ABC News, 27 October 2015.
- ↑ We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals, The Observer, 14 February 2015.
- ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 Greer, Germaine. "Call rape by another name", 6 March 1995, p. 20.
- ↑ Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:13:00
- ↑ Template:YouTube, The Wright Stuff, Channel 5, UK, 6 April 2018, at 2m49s
- ↑ Template:Cite AV media How to:Academy and The New York Times.
- ↑ Greer, Germaine (2018). On Rape. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 978-0522874303.
- ↑ Template:Cite AV media
- ↑ Miller, Nick. Germaine Greer challenges #MeToo campaign, 21 January 2018.
- ↑ Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018
- ↑ Manfred Erhardt, Germaine Greer, Golda Koschitzky, Francesca Valente to Receive Hon. Docs. .... York University (1 November 1999).
- ↑ Roll out the honours, The Age, 13 June 2005.
- ↑ Germaine Greer speaks to University of Sydney graduates. The University of Sydney (4 November 2005).; Francis & Henningham 2017.
- ↑ Germaine Greer - ARU (en).
- ↑ Germaine Greer. National Portrait Gallery, London.
- ↑ Australian National Living Treasure. University of Queensland.
- ↑ Feminists feature on Aussie legends stamps, ABC News (Australia), 19 January 2011.
- ↑ "Margaret Thatcher tops Woman's Hour Power List", BBC News, 14 December 2016.
- ↑ Reading Germaine: three generations respond to On Rape, 9 September 2018.
- ↑ 52.0 52.1 Ditum, Sarah. Germaine Greer has always refused to be 'nice' – if only there were more of her, New Statesman, 6 June 2018.
- ↑ Greer given enough rope, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 2004.
- ↑ 54.0 54.1 'You sanctimonious philistine' – Rushdie v Greer, the sequel, The Guardian, 29 July 2006.
- ↑ "World Statement, International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers", The Observer, 5 March 1989, p. 4.
- ↑ "Middle-aged feminist rage shocks and amuses", The Observer, 21 May 1995, p. 12.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Funny, unkind, provocative: please don't make me have an opinion on Germaine Greer, New Statesman, 7 November 2018.
- ↑ Oz outrage at Germaine Greer's attack on 'cultural wasteland', The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2004. Template:Cbignore
- ↑ Greer walks out of 'bullying' Big Brother, The Guardian, 12 January 2005.
- ↑ Greer, Germaine. Filth!, 16 January 2005.
- ↑ Lyall, Sarah. Germaine Greer's Orwellian Ordeal on 'Big Brother', 20 January 2005.
- ↑ Why I said yes to Big Brother's shilling, The Daily Telegraph, 12 January 2005. Template:Cbignore
- ↑ Greer draws anger over Irwin comments, The Age, 6 September 2006.
- ↑ Greer, Germaine. That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin, The Guardian, 5 September 2006.
- ↑ Template:YouTube, Q&A, 2012
- ↑ Haussegger, Virginia (2022-06-18). The incredible women reshaping our nation (en-AU).
- ↑ Females to the fore: The women at this year's Canberra Writers Festival (en-AU) (2022-08-05).
- ↑ The Australian - Germaine Greer's life as an aged-care 'inmate' (1 July 2022).
- ↑ "An introduction to the Germaine Greer collection at the University of Melbourne Archives". University of Melbourne.
- ↑ "The Germaine Greer Collection", University of Melbourne.
- ↑ Gulliver, Penny (23 March 2017). "Friday essay: reading Germaine Greer’s mail", The Conversation.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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tag; no text was provided for refs namedDean1Nov2013
- ↑ University to house Germaine Greer archive. University of Melbourne (28 October 2013).
Works cited
- Websites and news articles are listed in the References section only.
- (1998) Even the Stars Look Lonesome. New York: Bantam Books.
- (2001) “Why the Female Eunuch?”, The Female Eunuch. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1–7.
- (2011) F 'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls. New York: Da Capo Press.
- (2016) Writing Feminist Lives: The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
- (1998) Australian Feminism: a companion. Melbourne and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- (1996) Sex And Anarchy: The Life And Death of the Sydney Push. Viking.
- (Winter–Spring 1972) "Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer". The Massachusetts Review 13 (1/2): 275–279.
- (2002) Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography. London and New York: Routledge.
- Greer, Germaine (1939–). The Australian Women's Register (2017).
- Template:Cite thesis Template:Free access
- Template:Cite thesis Template:Free access
- (1986) “The Slag-Heap Erupts”, The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings 1968–1985. London: Picador.
- (2001) The Female Eunuch. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-52762-8.
- Greer, Germaine (1995). Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet. London: Viking Press. ISBN 9780670849147.
- (1999) The Whole Woman. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd.
- (2004) Whitefella Jump Up. London: Profile Books.
- (2013) White Beech: The Rainforest Years. London: Bloomsbury.
- Greer, Germaine (19 October 2013a). The greening of Greer. The Australian. (Edited extract from White Beech)
- (2011) Lysistrata: The Sex Strike. After Aristophanes. Samuel French Limited.
- (2016) What Do We Want?: The Story of Protest in Australia. Sydney: National Library of Australia.
- (1991) May Week Was In June. London: Pan Books.
- (2018) Germaine: The Life of Germaine Greer. Sydney: Knopf.
- (2016) "'Revolution for the hell of it': the transatlantic genesis and serial provocations of The Female Eunuch". Australian Feminist Studies 31 (87): 7–21. DOI:10.1080/08164649.2016.1174926. Research Blogging.
- (2010) “Germaine Greer”, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 402–403.
- (2010) “Germaine Greer”, Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Routledge.
- (2010) “Prologue: Shulamith Firestone and Sexual Difference”, Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 9–28. ISBN 9780230100299.
- (31 May 2016) "A feminist fashion icon: Germaine Greer's paisley coat". Australian Feminist Studies 31 (87): 78–94. DOI:10.1080/08164649.2016.1174928. Research Blogging.
- (2010) Hippie Hippie Shake. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.
- (1984) No Return Ticket. Angus & Robertson. ISBN 9780207150289.
- (1999) Thatcher's Theatre: British Theatre and Drama in the Eighties. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- (Summer 2004) "Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse: Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, and Feminism's Second Wave". Women's Studies in Communication 27 (2): 204–235. DOI:10.1080/07491409.2004.10162473. Research Blogging.
- (2010) “Female Eunuch”, Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Routledge.
- (Summer 2015) "The Long Letter to a Short Love, or ...". Meanjin.
- (2012) A Concise History of New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- (1993) "If She's So Great, How Come So Many Pigs Dig Her? Germaine Greer and the malestream press". Women's History Review 2 (3): (407–419), 407. DOI:10.1080/09612029300200036. Research Blogging.
- (2014) “Greer, Germaine (1939–)”, The Encyclopedia of Women & Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Melbourne: Australian Women's Archives Project.
- (2012) “Behind the Lines: Ironing in the Soul”, Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism. London: Guardian Books.
- Wallace, Christine (1999). Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. London: Faber and Faber.
- (Spring 2015) "The Meaningful Disappearance of Germaine Greer". Cabinet (57).
- (2010) Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- (January–February 2009) "Review: The Second-Best Bed and Other Conundrums". The Women's Review of Books 26 (1): 29–30.
External links
Template:Wikiquote Template:Commons category Template:Library resources box
- Template:Australian Women's Register
- Template:OL author
- The University of Melbourne Archives.
- Template:YouTube, University of Melbourne, 8 March 2017.
- Germaine Greer. National Portrait Gallery, London.
- Germaine Bloody Greer. BBC Two (15 June 2018).
- Template:YouTube, Talks & Ideas, Sydney Opera House, 9 October 2013.
- Back to the Barricades, The New York Times, 9 May 1999.
- Template:YouTube, Leeds Beckett University, March 2010
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