Germaine Greer (born January 29, 1939) is an
Australian-born writer, journalist and scholar of early modern
English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the
20th century.[1][2][3]
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female
Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both
adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984); and The
Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), and most recently Shakepeare's Wife (2007).
Biography
Early life
Greer was born in Melbourne in 1939, growing up in the bayside suburb of Mentone. Her father was a leading Australian insurance executive, who served as a Wing Commander in
the wartime RAAF. After attending a private convent school, Star of the Sea
College, in Gardenvale, Melbourne, she won a teaching scholarship in 1956 and enrolled at the University of Melbourne. After graduating with a degree
in English and French language and literature, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved
with the Sydney Push, a group of intellectual left-wing anarchists many of whom practised polygamy. Christine Wallace, in her unauthorised biography, describes Greer at this time:
| “ |
For Germaine, [the Push] provided a philosophy to underpin the attitude and lifestyle
she had already acquired in Melbourne. She walked into the Royal George Hotel, into the throng talking themselves hoarse in a
room stinking of stale beer and thick with cigarette smoke, and set out to follow the Push way of life — 'an intolerably
difficult discipline which I forced myself to learn'. The Push struck her as completely different from the Melbourne
intelligentsia she had engaged with in the Drift, 'who always talked about
art and truth and beauty and
argument ad hominem; instead, these people talked about truth and only truth,
insisting that most of what we were exposed to during the day was ideology, which was a synonym
for lies — or bullshit, as they called it.' Her Damascus turned out to be the Royal George, and the Hume Highway was the road to
it. 'I was already an anarchist,' she says. 'I just didn't know why I was an anarchist. They put me in touch with the basic texts
and I found out what the internal logic was about how I felt and thought.[4] |
” |
By 1972 Greer would identify as an "anarchist communist", close to Marxism. [5]
In her first teaching job, Greer lectured at the University of Sydney, where she
also gained a first class M.A. in romantic poetry in 1963 with a thesis titled The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode. A year later, the thesis won her a Commonwealth Scholarship, which she used to fund her doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England, where she became a member of the all-women's
Newnham College.
Professor Lisa Jardine, who was at Newnham at the same time, recalled the first time she
met Greer, at a formal dinner in college:
| “ |
The principal called us to order for the speeches. As a hush descended, one person
continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice, her strong Australian accent reverberating around the room. At
the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long
as we were required to cram our breasts into bras constructed like mini-Vesuviuses, two stitched white cantilevered cones which
bore no resemblance to the female anatomy. The willingly suffered discomfort of the Sixties bra, she opined vigorously, was a
hideous symbol of male oppression ... [W]e were ... astonished at the very idea that a woman could speak so loudly and out of
turn and that words such as "bra" and "breasts' — or maybe she said "tits" — could be uttered amid the pseudo-masculine solemnity
of a college dinner.[6] |
” |
Greer joined the student amateur acting company, the Cambridge Footlights, which launched
her into the London arts and media scene. Using the nom de plume Rose Blight, she also wrote a gardening column for the
satirical magazine Private Eye, and as Dr. G, became a regular contributor to the
underground London Oz magazine, owned by Australian writer Richard Neville.[7] The
July 29, 1970 edition was guest-edited by Greer, and featured an
article of hers on the hand-knitted Cock Sock, "a snug corner for a chilly prick."
In 1968 she received her Ph.D. in Elizabethan drama with a thesis titled The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's early comedies, and accepted a
lectureship in English at the University of Warwick. The same year, in London, she
married Australian journalist Paul du Feu, but the marriage lasted only three weeks, during which, as she later admitted, Greer
was unfaithful several times.[8] The marriage finally ended
in divorce in 1973.
Prominence
Following her 1970 success with The Female Eunuch, Greer left Warwick in 1972 after flying around the world to promote
her book. She co-presented a Granada Television comedy show called Nice Time
with Kenny Everett and Jonathan Routh, bought a
house in Italy, wrote a column for The
Sunday Times, then spent the next few years travelling through Africa and
Asia, which included a visit to Bangladesh to investigate the
situation of women who had been raped during the conflict with Pakistan. On the New Zealand leg
of her tour in 1972, Greer was arrested for using the words "bullshit" and "fuck" during her speech, which attracted major
rallies in her support.
Later career
In 1989, Greer returned to Newnham College, Cambridge as a special lecturer and fellow, but left after attracting negative
publicity in 1996 for allegedly "outing" Dr. Rachel Padman, a transsexual colleague.
Greer unsuccessfully opposed Padman's election to a fellowship, on the grounds that Padman had been born a man, and Newnham was a
women's college. A June 25, 1997 article by Clare Longrigg in
The Guardian about the incident, entitled "A Sister with No Fellow Feeling",
disappeared from websites on the instruction of the newspaper's lawyers.[9]
Stephanie Merritt wrote in The
Guardian:
| “ |
She has been in the business of shaking up a complacent establishment for nearly 40
years now and was employing the most elemental shock tactic of getting naked in public both long before and long after it ever
crossed Madonna's mind. She has repeatedly written about her own experiences of lesbian sex,
rape, abortion, infertility,
failed marriage (she was married for three weeks to a construction worker in the 1960s) and menopause, thereby leaving herself open to claims that she shamelessly extrapolates from her own condition to
the rest of womankind and calls it a theory ... In part, her ability to remain so prominently in the public consciousness comes
from an astute understanding and well-established symbiotic relationship with a media as eager to be shocked as she is to
shock.[6] |
” |
Greer's last academic appointment had been as a Professor in the Department of English Literature and Comparative Studies at
the University of Warwick.
Works
The Female Eunuch
- See also: The Female Eunuch
The cover to
The Female Eunuch
Greer argued in her book, The Female Eunuch, that women do not realise how much men hate them, and how much they are
taught to hate themselves. Christine Wallace writes that, when The Female Eunuch was first published, one woman had to
keep it wrapped in brown paper because her husband wouldn't let her read it; arguments and fights broke out over dinner tables;
and copies of it were thrown across rooms at unsuspecting husbands (Wallace 1997). It arrived in the stores in London in October
1970. By March 1971, it had nearly sold out its second printing and had been translated into eight languages.
"The title is an indication of the problem," Greer told the New York Times in 1971, "Women have somehow been separated
from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for
example, 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. It's a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one
that's got to be changed."[10]
Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to Sex and Destiny fourteen 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 was demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by
being taught rules that subjugate them, she argued. 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:
| “ |
The ignorance and isolation of most women mean that they are incapable of making
conversation: most of their communication with their spouses is a continuation of the power struggle. The result is that when
wives come along to dinner parties they pervert civilised conversation about real issues into personal quarrels. The number of
hostesses who wish they did not have to invite wives is legion. |
” |
Greer argued that change had to come about by revolution, not evolution. Women
should get to know and come to accept their own bodies, taste their own menstrual blood, and give up celibacy and monogamy. But they should not burn their bras. "Bras are a
ludicrous invention," she wrote, "but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another
repression."
While being interviewed about the book in 1971, she told the New York Times that she had been a "supergroupie."
"Supergroupies don't have to hang around hotel corridors," she said. "When you are one, as I have been, you get invited
backstage. I think groupies are important because they demystify sex; they accept it as
physical, and they aren't possessive about their conquests."
Other publications
Her second book, The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work, was published in 1979. This work
details the life and experiences of female painters until the end of the nineteenth century. It also speculates on the existence
of women artists whoae careers are not recorded by posterity.
Also in 1979, she accepted a post at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma as the director for the Center of the Study of Women's Literature.
Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility, published in 1984, continued Greer's critique of Western attitudes
toward sexuality, fertility, family, and the imposition of those attitudes on the rest of the
world. Greer's target again is the nuclear family, government intervention in sexual behaviour, and the commercialisation of
sexuality and women's bodies. Greer's apparent approval of life styles and family values in the developing world — the world is
over-populated, she argued, only by Western standards of comfortable living — and of poverty in preference to consumerism, led
her to endorse practices frequently at odds with the beliefs of most Western feminists. Female genital mutilation had to be considered in context, she wrote, and might be compared with
breast augmentation in the West. The book consequently attracted a great deal of
criticism. Pamela Bone wrote in The Australian:
| “ |
Consider this: a struggling, screaming little girl is held down by several people
(usually women) while another woman cuts through her clitoris and inner labia, with the intention of ensuring this girl will
never experience sexual pleasure; and the world's most famous feminist, to whom much is owed, I don't deny, can compare this
practice to adult women choosing, for whatever silly reason, to decorate their sexual parts with metal. [2] |
” |
In 1986, Greer published Shakespeare, a work of literary criticism, and The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and
Occasional Writings, a collection of newspaper and magazine articles written between 1968 and 1985. In 1989 came Daddy, We
Hardly Knew You, a diary and travelogue about her father, whom she described as distant and unaffectionate, weak, craven, and
feeble, which led to claims — as she knew it would, according to The Guardian — that in her writing she was projecting her
relationship with him onto all other men.
In 1991, The Change: Women, Ageing, and the Menopause, which the New York Times called a "brilliant, gutsy,
exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book" became another influential book in the women's movement. In it, Greer tries to dispel
myths about the menopause and ill health, advising against the use of hormone
replacement therapy. "Frightening females is fun," she wrote in The Age. "Women were frightened into using hormone
replacement therapy by dire predictions of crumbling bones, heart disease, loss of libido, depression , despair, disease and
death if they let nature take its course." She argues that scaring women is "big business and hugely profitable." It is fear, she
wrote, that "makes women comply with schemes and policies that work against their interest" (The Age, July 13, 2002).
Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet followed in 1995 and, in 1999, the whole woman,
intended as a sequel to The Female Eunuch, in which she attacked both men and women for what she saw as the lack of
progress in the feminist movement, and the whole woman. The chapter titles reveal the theme: "Food," "Breast," "Pantomime
Dames," "Shopping," "Estrogen," "Testosterone," "Wives," "Loathing," "Girlpower", mirroring the arrangement of chapters in the
earlier book. Greer wrote in the introduction: "The contradictions women face have never been more bruising than they are now.
The career woman does not know if she is to do her job like a man or like herself ... Is motherhood a privilege or a punishment?
... [F]ake equality is leading women into double jeopardy ... It's time to get angry again."
In 2003, The Beautiful Boy was published, an art history book about the beauty of teenage boys, which is illustrated with 200 photographs of what The
Guardian called "succulent teenage male beauty", alleging that Greer had appeared to reinvent herself as a "middle-aged
pederast." [2] Greer described the book as an attempt to address women's apparent indifference to the teenage boy as a
sexual object and to "advance women's reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure" (Greer 2003). The boy
pictured on the cover was Björn Andresen, who has said that the use of his picture is
"distasteful", and he was not consulted about its use. [3] [4]
Other media
A biography by Christine Wallace, Germaine Greer, The Untamed Shrew, was published in 1997. Greer responded that
biographies of living persons are morbid and worthless, because they can only be incomplete. She said: "I don't write about any
living women ... because I think that's invidious; there is no point in limiting her by the achievements of the past because
she's in a completely different situation, and I figure she can break the moulds and start again."[11]
In 1999, she sat for a modest nude photograph by the respected Australian photographer Polly
Borland.[5] The photo was part of a National Portrait Gallery exhibition in 2000. It later
appeared in a book titled Polly Borland: Australians.[12]
Belinda Luscombe in Time Magazine called Greer "the ultimate Trojan Horse,
gorgeous and witty, built to penetrate the seemingly unassailable fortress of patriarchy and let the rest of us foot soldiers
in," describing her as "a joy to read, an eloquent maniac." Angela Carter described her as
"a clever fool", while former British Conservative MP Edwina Currie called her "a great
big hard-boiled prat".[6][opinion needs
balancing]
"[Her] mind provokes us like no other," journalist Catherine Keenan wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald, "but for all the wrong reasons." [13]
In early 2000, Greer claimed at a press gathering in London that she never set foot in Australia before receiving the
permission of the "traditional owners of the land" at Sydney Airport. In an embarrassing turn of events, New South Wales
Aboriginal Land Council spokesman Paul Molloy later claimed that she had never asked permission, despite visiting Sydney several
times in recent years, and in any case there was no single group of elders that could give such permission to enter Australia.
[6]
On April 23, 2000, Greer was harassed in her home by a nineteen-year-old student from the
University of Bath who had been writing to Greer. The student broke into her home in
Essex, tied Greer up in the kitchen, and caused damage to Greer's home. Dinner guests eventually
found Greer lying in a distressed state on the floor, with the student hanging onto her legs. BBC
News reported that the student was originally charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and with false
imprisonment, but those charges were dropped and replaced with the harassment charge. She admitted harassing Greer and was
sentenced to two years' probation and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.[14] Greer was not hurt and told reporters: "I am not angry, I am not upset, I am not hurt. I am fine. I
haven't lost my sense of humour. I am not the victim here."[15]
In 2001, she attracted publicity again for a proposed treaty with Aboriginal Australia. In 2004, Australian Prime Minister
John Howard called her "elitist" and "condescending" after
she criticised Australians as "too relaxed to give a damn" and derided her native country as being "defined by suburban
mediocrity."[16]She called Australia a sports-obsessed
suburban wasteland devoid of cerebral stimulation. This prompted a lot of reaction, including reaction from Prime Minister John
Howard who called her comments "pathetic".
Since 1990 she has made eight appearances on the British television panel show Have I Got News For You, a record she holds jointly with Will
Self. Her most memorable appearance was in 1995 when Ian Hislop quoted Greer's spat
with a fellow broadsheet columnist, Suzanne Moore, which included a reference to Moore wearing "fuck me shoes".
Greer was one of nine contestants in the 2005 series of Celebrity Big Brother
UK. She had previously said that the show was "as civilised as looking through the keyhole in your teenager's bedroom
door". She walked out of the show after five days inside the 'Big Brother house', citing the psychological cruelty and
bullying of the show's producers, the dirt of the house, and the publicity-seeking behaviour of
her fellow contestants.[17] However since then she has
appeared on spin-off shows Big Brother's Little Brother and
Big Brother's Big Mouth.
In September 2006, Greer's column[18] in
The Guardian newspaper about the death of Australian Steve Irwin attracted criticism for what was reported as a "distasteful tirade".[19][20]
Greer said that "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin". In an interview with the Nine Network's A Current Affair about her comments, Greer
said "I really found the whole Steve Irwin phenomenon embarrassing and I'm not the only person who did"[21] and that she hoped that "exploitative nature documentaries" would now
end.[22] Queensland
Premier Peter Beattie labelled her
comments "stupid" and "insensitive",[23] one of a number
of Australian political leaders to make similar comments. While several Australian newspapers reproduced part of her column they
also published letters from readers incensed by her comments the following day. Other Australian commentators, such as P. P.
McGuinness, the current editor of Quadrant, supported her comments.[24] In a mixed newspaper opinion piece she repeated her
criticism of Irwin while saying that it was "disgraceful that it has taken the Australian national portrait gallery six months
to" exhibit a portrait of "this most famous Australian". [7]
In October 2006 Greer appeared twice in an episode of Ricky Gervais'
Extras playing herself.
In the same month she presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the life of American composer and rock guitarist Frank
Zappa.[25] She confirmed that she had been a
friend of Zappa since the early 1970s and that his orchestral work "G-Spot Tornado" would be played at her funeral.
In August 2007 Greer made comments regarding Princess Diana, calling her a "devious moron", a "desperate woman seeking
applause", "disturbingly neurotic" and "guileless".[26]
In popular culture
- Greer is the subject of a song called "Mother Greer" by Australian band Augie March.
[8]
- She is referenced in Bridget Jones's Diary.
- Greer is quoted in track one of Sinéad O'Connor's album Universal Mother. The track is called "Germaine" and quotes a Greer oratory about matriarchy and fraternity.
- Greer was also featured in the 1992 Frank Sidebottom song, Germaine's a
Pain, which featured the rhyming couplet, her lips pursed with a sneer, I'm forever troubled by Greer. It did not
chart, but quickly sold out its first vinyl pressing of 36[citation needed]. Every 7" sleeve contained a different glossy black and white photo of
those in the public eye, past and present, that Greer disliked. All were daubed with derogatory words and deliberately misplaced
phalli.
- In 2002, Was the subject of a comedic sketch on satirical news show "CNNNN" in which a mock contest, named "What will that
crazy old Germ say Next?" attempted to say the next crazy comment she would say.
- The 2008 Beeban Kidron film Hippie
Hippie Shake, based on Richard Neville's memoir, features Emma Booth playing Greer, who expressed her displeasure at being depicted in the film in
The Guardian.[27]
Books
- Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way To Nationhood (2004), Profile Books, ISBN 1-86197-739-5
- Chico, El - El Efebo En Las Artes (2004), Grupo Oceano, ISBN 84-494-2600-6
- The Beautiful Boy (2003), Rizzoli, ISBN 0-8478-2586-8
- Libraries (2003), Lemon Tree Press, ASIN B0006S84S6
- Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction (2002), Very Short Introductions series, Oxford University Press, ISBN
0-19-280249-6
- One Hundred Poems by Women (2001), Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-20734-0
- the whole woman (1999), this edition 2000, ISBN 0-385-72003-3
- The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause, this edition 1993, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-449-90853-4
- Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, 1989
- The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings (1986), this edition 1990, Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN
0-87113-308-3
- Shakespeare (1986), Past Masters series, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-287539-6
- Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), this edition 1985, Olympic Marketing Corp, ISBN
0-06-091250-2
- The Obstacle Race:The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work (1980), this edition 2001, Tauris Parke Paperbacks,
ISBN 1-86064-677-8
- The Female Eunuch (1970), this edition, Farrar Straus Giroux (2002), ISBN 0-374-52762-8
References
- Specific
- ^ Jardine, Lisa. "Growing up with Greer", The Guardian, March 7, 1999.
- ^ a b Bone, Pamela. "Western sisters
failing the fight", The Australian, March 8, 2007.
- ^ "Germaine Greer," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
- ^ Wallace, Christine, (1997), Germaine Greer: Untamed
Shrew, this edition, Faber & Faber, 1999, ISBN 0-571-19934-8
- ^ Greer on Revolution Germaine on Love. Overland 50/51 Autumn 1972 (Recorded February
1972). Retrieved on 2007-08-16. “"I am much more political now than I was then [i.e. than
when a Sydney Libertarian] - I'm an anarchist still, but I'd say now I am an anarchist communist which I wasn't then .....The
libertarians may have a good deal of intellectual prestige in Sydney, but seeing that they speak in self-evident truths and
tautologies most of the time it's not difficult for them to get intellectual recognition. What disappoints me most about all the
radical groups in Australia is that they have not yet managed to make the Marxist dialogue a part of the cultural life of the
country as a whole, which it is say for example in India - it's something you expect to see discussed in the daily papers."”
- ^ a b c
- ^ Oz magazine richardneville.com.au
- ^ Enough Rope Andrew Denton, ABC TV, September 15 2003, Retrieved on February
8 2007.
- ^ In the news:1997 Press For Change.org.uk
- ^ New York Times, 22 March 1971
- ^ Four Corners, ABC,
September 1979.
- ^ [1]Polly Borland: Australians
- ^ Catherine Keenan. "A new outbreak of Germ's warfare", Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 2004.
- ^ 'Infatuated' student harassed Greer, BBC News, July 4, 2000. Retrieved on 1 November, 2006.
- ^ Sapsted, David. "Stalker jumped on Greer crying 'Mummy, Mummy'", The Daily Telegraph, July 5,
2000.
- ^ "Outrage as Greer brands Australians dull as Neighbours", The
Scotsman, January 28 2004. Retrieved on 1 November 2006.
- ^ "Germaine
Greer: Filth!", The Sunday Times, January 16 2005. Retrieved on 1 November
2006.
- ^ Greer, Germaine. "That sort of self-delusion is
what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin", The Guardian, 2006-09-05. Retrieved on
2006-06-06.
- ^ Hudson, Fiona. "Feminist Greer slams Steve's
antics", News Limited, 2006-09-06. Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
- ^ "Greer draws anger over Irwin comments", The Age, 2006-09-06.
Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
- ^ "Australian feminist Greer attacks Croc Hunter", Daily News
& Analysis, 2006-09-06. Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
- ^ "Greer not surprised Irwin "came to grief"", Reuters,
2006-09-06. Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
- ^ Holloway, Grant. "Storm breaks
over attack on Irwin", CNN, 2006-09-07. Retrieved on
2006-06-07.
- ^ McGuinness, P. P. "Germaine Greer is right, Irwin took silly risks", Crikey, 2006-09-07. Retrieved on 2006-09-10.
- ^ Freak Out! The Frank Zappa Story, BBC Radio 4, October 7
2006. Retrieved on 1 November 2006.
- ^ Greer launches another attack on Diana. smh.com.au 2007-08-26
- ^ Greer, Germaine. "Hippie
Hippie Shake is back, and the flesh-eating bacteria turn to me", The Guardian, 16
July 2007. Retrieved on 27 September 2007.
- General
- Gibson, Owen. "Greer walks out of 'bullying' Big Brother", The Guardian, January 12, 2005
- Greer, Germaine. "Filth!", The Sunday Times, January 16, 2005
- Jardine, Lisa. Growing up with Greer, The Guardian, March 7, 1999
- Pickering, Charlie. "Nasty Creatures Invading Our Habitat; When a recently deceased crocodile hunter meets a reptile of the
press, it's hardly a fair contest.", City Weekly, September 14, 2006
- Shukor, Steven. "From feminist sister to Big Brother housemate", The Guardian, January 7, 2005
- Weintraub, Judith. "Germaine Greer - Opinions That May Shock the Faithful", New York Times, March 22, 1971
Further reading
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