Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer (/ɡrɪər/; born 29 January 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]
Germaine Greer
- Dr. G (for Oz magazine)
- Rose Blight (for Private Eye)
- Earth Rose (for Suck magazine)
Writer
1970–present
The Female Eunuch (1970)
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.[2]
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name.[3] 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.[4][5]
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.[6]
Greer is a liberation (or radical) rather than equality feminist.[a] 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".[b]
Later writing about women[edit]
The Change (1991 and 2018)[edit]
Natalie Angier, writing in The New York Times, called The Change: Women, Ageing, and the Menopause (1991) a "brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book ... tantalizingly close to being a potential feminist classic on a par with The Female Eunuch." In it, Greer writes of the myths about menopause—or as she prefers to call it the "climacteric", or critical period.[172] "Frightening females is fun", she wrote in The Age in 2002. "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".[173] The book, including the medical information, was updated and reissued in 2018.[174]
Slip-Shod Sibyls (1995)[edit]
Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet (1995) is an account of women who wrote poetry in English before 1900, and an examination of why so few have been admitted to the literary canon.[175] Her conclusion is that women were held to lower standards than men (hence the "slip-shod" sibyls of the title, quoting Alexander Pope), and the poetic tradition discouraged good poetry from women.[176] The book includes a critique of the concept of woman as Muse, associated with Robert Graves and others; a chapter on Sappho and her use as a symbol of female poetry; a chapter on the 17th-century poet Katherine Philips; two chapters on Aphra Behn and one on Anne Wharton; and material on Anne Finch, Letitia Landon and Christina Rossetti. It includes an epilogue on 20th-century female poets and their propensity for suicide: "Too many of the most conspicuous figures in women's poetry of the 20th century not only destroyed themselves in a variety of ways but are valued for poetry that documents that process."[177]
Controversial views[edit]
Writer Yvonne Roberts referred to Greer as "the contrarian queen".[238] 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".[239] The Sydney Morning Herald has labelled her a "human headline".[240] British actor and comedian Tracey Ullman has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops.[239] 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."[241]
Greer said that the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses (1988)[242] was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support.[243] 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".[242]
In May 1995, in her column for The Guardian (which the newspaper refused), she referred to Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore's "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes".[244] She called her biographer, Christine Wallace, a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, Untamed Shrew (1999), "a piece of excrement".[178][245] (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about Dickens, read his fucking books.")[246] Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister, John Howard, called her remarks patronising and condescending.[247] After receiving a fee of £40,000,[248] she left the Celebrity Big Brother house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "fascist prison camp".[249][250][224] 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".[251][252] 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,[253][254] 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".[255]
Later life[edit]
In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy.[256]
In 2021 Greer had returned to Australia to sell her home and put herself into aged care in Castlemaine, Victoria. 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.[257][258]
Germaine Greer archive[edit]
Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne.[259] As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space.[260][261][145] 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 A$3 million 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.[262]