Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and

public intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or ...

, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...

and

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millic ...

, and in the United States at the

University of Tulsa The University of Tulsa (TU) is a private research university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has a historic affiliation with the Presbyterian Church and the campus architectural style is predominantly Collegiate Gothic. The school traces its origin to ...

. 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. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as

womanhood A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardle ...

and femininity, arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed. 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 Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...

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 Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'', ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...

'', ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'', and '' The Oldie'', among others. Greer is a

liberation Liberation or liberate may refer to: Film and television * ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War * "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode * "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode Gaming * '' Liberati ...

(or

radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics * Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe an ...

) rather than equality feminist. 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".

Early life and education

Melbourne

Greer was born in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metro ...

to a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

family, the elder of two girls followed by a boy. Her father, Eric Reginald ("Reg") Greer, told her he had been born in South Africa, but she learned after his death that he was born Robert Hamilton King in

Launceston, Tasmania Launceston () or () is a city in the north of Tasmania, Australia, at the confluence of the North Esk and South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River (kanamaluka). As of 2021, Launceston has a population of 87,645. Material was copie ...

. He and her mother, Margaret ("Peggy") May Lafrank, had married in March 1937; Reg converted to Catholicism before the wedding. Peggy was a

milliner Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter. Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of ...

and Reg a newspaper-advertising salesman. Despite her Catholic upbringing and her father's open

antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

, Greer became convinced that her father was secretly of Jewish heritage. She believed her grandmother had been a Jewish woman named Rachel Weiss, but admits that she probably made this up out of an "intense longing to be Jewish." Despite not knowing whether she had any Jewish ancestry, Greer "felt Jewish" and began to involve herself in the Jewish community. She learned

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

, joined a Jewish theatre group, and dated Jewish men. In addition to English, Greer had learnt three European languages by the age of 12."Germaine Bloody Greer", https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6q27f (subscription required The family lived in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood, at first in a rented flat in Docker Street, near the beach, then in another rented flat on the Esplanade. In January 1942 Greer's father joined the Second Australian Imperial Force; after training with the

Royal Australian Air Force "Through Adversity to the Stars" , colours = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = RAAF Anniversary Commemoration ...

, he worked on ciphers for the British

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

and

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

. Greer attended St Columba's Catholic Primary School in Elwood from February 1943—the family was by then living at 57 Ormond Road, Elwood—followed by Sacred Heart Parish School, Sandringham, and Holy Redeemer School,

Ripponlea Ripponlea is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Port Phillip local government area. Ripponlea recorded a population of 1,532 at the 202 ...

. In 1952 Greer won a scholarship to

Star of the Sea College (Deeds Not Words) , established = 1883 , type = Independent, Catholic, day school , years = 7–12 , gender = Girls , denomination = Roman Catholic (Presentat ...

Gardenvale Gardenvale is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Glen Eira local government area. Gardenvale recorded a population of 1,019 at the 2021 census. History ...

, a convent school run by the

Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary The Presentation Sisters, officially the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, are a religious institute of Roman Catholic women founded in Cork, Ireland, by the Venerable Honora "Nano" Nagle in 1775. The Sisters of the cong ...

; a school report called her "a bit of a mad-cap and somewhat erratic in her studies and in her personal responses". Greer described her childhood as a "long remembered boredom", and has said it was her Catholic school that introduced her to art and music. That year, artwork by her was included in the under-14 section of the Children's Art Exhibition at Tye's Gallery, opened by Archbishop Mannix. Greer achieved the second highest exam results in the state. A year after leaving school, Greer left the Catholic faith, having found the nuns' arguments for the existence of God unconvincing. She left home when she was 18. She had a difficult relationship with her mother who, according to Greer, probably had Asperger syndrome. In 2012 she said that her brother might have forgiven her for "abandoning" them, but she was not so sure about her sister, "whom I love more than anyone else on earth".

University

Melbourne and Sydney

From 1956 Greer studied English and French language and literature at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb ...

on a Teacher's College Scholarship, living at home for the first two years on an allowance of £8 a week. Six feet tall by the age of 16, she was a striking figure. "Tall, loose-limbed and good-humoured, she strode around the campus, aware that she was much talked about", according to the journalist Peter Blazey, a contemporary at Melbourne. During her first year she had some kind of breakdown as a result of depression and was briefly treated in hospital. She told ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

'' magazine, in an interview published in 1972, that she had been raped during her second year at Melbourne, an experience she described in detail in ''The Guardian'' in March 1995. (1) Royal George Hotel

Just before she graduated from Melbourne in 1959 with an upper second, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved with the

Sydney Push The Sydney Push was an intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Its politics were predominantly left-wing libertarianism. The Push operated in a pub culture and included university students, academics, manual w ...

and the

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...

Sydney Libertarians. " ese people talked about truth and only truth", she said, "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." They would meet in a back room of the Royal George Hotel on Sussex Street.

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Christine Wallace, wrote that Greer "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'". Greer already thought of herself as an anarchist without knowing why she was drawn to it; through the Push, she became familiar with anarchist literature. She had significant relationships in the group with Harry Hooton and Roelof Smilde, both prominent members. She shared an apartment with Smilde on Glebe Point Road, but the relationship did not last; according to Wallace, the Push ideology of "

free love Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern ...

" involved the rejection of possessiveness and jealousy, which naturally worked in the men's favour. When the relationship with Smilde ended, Greer enrolled at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

to study

Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

, where, Clive James wrote, she became "famous for her brilliantly foul tongue". One of her friends there,

Arthur Dignam Arthur Dignam (9 September 1939 – 9 May 2020) was an Australian stage and screen actor. Biography Dignam was born on Lord Howe Island. He attended Newington College in Sydney as a boarder in 1955 and 1956 and then the University of Sydney. ...

, said that she "was the only woman we had met at that stage who could confidently, easily and amusingly put men down". She became involved in acting at Sydney and played

Mother Courage Mother Courage (German ''Mutter Courage'') is a character from a Grimmelshausen novel ''Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche'' (''The Runagate Courage'') dating from around 1670. The character had played a cameo r ...

in ''

Mother Courage and Her Children ''Mother Courage and Her Children'' (german: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, links=no) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical ...

'' in August 1963. That year she was awarded a first-class MA for a thesis entitled "The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode", and took up an appointment at Sydney as senior tutor in English, with an office next door to Stephen Knight in the university's Carslaw Building. "She was undoubtedly an excellent teacher", he said. "And one of the best lecturers—one of the few who could command the Wallace Lecture Theatre, with its 600 students. She had a kind of histrionic quality which was quite remarkable, added to her real scholarship."

Cambridge

The MA won Greer a Commonwealth Scholarship, with which she funded further studies at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, arriving in October 1964 at

Newnham College Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millice ...

, a women-only college. She had been encouraged to move from Sydney by Sam Goldberg, a Leavisite, who had been Challis Chair of English Literature at Sydney since 1963. Initially joining a BA course at Cambridge—her scholarship would have allowed her to complete it in two years—Greer managed to switch after the first term ("by force of argument", according to

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

, supervised by

Anne Barton Anne Barton (previously Righter, born Barbara Ann Roesen; 9 May 1933 − 11 November 2013) was a renowned American-English scholar and Shakespearean critic. Life Born in Scarsdale, New York, the only child of Oscar and Blanche (née Williams) ...

, then known as Anne Righter. She said she switched because she "realized they were not going to teach eranything". It was Muriel Bradbrook, Cambridge's first female Professor of English, who persuaded Greer to study Shakespeare; Bradbrook had supervised Barton's PhD. Cambridge was a difficult environment for women. As Christine Wallace notes, one Newnham student described her husband receiving a dinner invitation in 1966 from Christ's College that allowed "Wives in for sherry only".

Lisa Jardine Lisa Anne Jardine (née Bronowski; 12 April 1944 – 25 October 2015) was a British historian of the early modern period. From 1990 to 2011, she was Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and ...

first encountered Greer at a formal dinner in Newnham. The principal had asked for silence for speeches. "As a hush descended, one person continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice":

At the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining with passion 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-
Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius ( ; it, Vesuvio ; nap, 'O Vesuvio , also or ; la, Vesuvius , also , or ) is a somma-stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of ...
es, 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.

As soon as she arrived, Greer auditioned (with

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Sydney Push The Sydney Push was an intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Its politics were predominantly left-wing libertarianism. The Push operated in a pub culture and included university students, academics, manual w ...

) for the student acting company, the Footlights, in its club room in Falcon Yard above a Mac Fisheries shop. They performed a sketch in which he was

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...

and she was Gertrude Lawrence. Joining on the same day as James and Russell Davies, Greer was one of the first women to be admitted as a full member, along with Sheila Buhr and Hilary Walston. The ''Cambridge News'' carried a news item about it in November 1964, referring to the women as "three girls". Greer's response to being accepted was reportedly: "This place is jumping with freckle-punchers. You can have it on your own." She did take part in its 1965 revue, ''My Girl Herbert'', alongside

Eric Idle Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943) is an English actor, comedian, musician and writer. Idle was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band The Rutles, and is the writer of the music and lyrics for the Broad ...

(the Footlights president), John Cameron, Christie Davies and

John Grillo John Martin Grillo (born 29 November 1942, in Watford, Hertfordshire) is an English actor. Biography Grillo was educated at Watford Grammar School for Boys and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and while there was actively involved in student theatre. H ...

. A critic noticed "an Australian girl who had a natural ability to project her voice". Other members of the Footlights when she was there included

Tim Brooke-Taylor Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor OBE (17 July 194012 April 2020) was an English actor and comedian best known as a member of The Goodies. He became active in performing in comedy sketches while at the University of Cambridge and became president ...

John Cleese John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and ...

, Peter Cook and

David Frost Sir David Paradine Frost (7 April 1939 – 31 August 2013) was a British television host, journalist, comedian and writer. He rose to prominence during the satire boom in the United Kingdom when he was chosen to host the satirical programme ...

. Greer lived for a time in the room next to Clive James at Friar House on Bene't Street, opposite The Eagle. Referring to her as "Romaine Rand", James described her room in his memoir of Cambridge, ''May Week Was In June'' (1991): cmglee Cambridge Friar House from The Eagle

cmglee Cambridge Friar House from The Eagle

Greer, who speaks fluent Italian, finished her PhD in

Calabria , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, Italy, where she stayed for three months in a village with no running water and no electricity. The trip had begun as a visit with a boyfriend, Emilio, but he ended the relationship so Greer had changed her plans. Rising before dawn, she would wash herself at a well, drink black coffee and start typing. She was awarded her PhD in May 1968 for a thesis entitled ''The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies''. Her family did not fly over for the ceremony. "I had worked all my life for love, done my best to please everybody, kept going till I reached the top, looked about and found I was all alone." ''The Female Eunuch'' relies extensively on Greer's Shakespearean scholarship, particularly when discussing the history of marriage and courtship.;
. In 1986 Oxford University Press published her book ''Shakespeare'' as part of its Past Masters series, and in 2007 Bloomsbury published her study of Anne Hathaway, ''Shakespeare's Wife''.

Early career and writing

Teaching, marriage and television

From 1968 to 1972, Greer worked as an assistant lecturer at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...

in Coventry, living at first in a rented bedsit in

Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

with two cats and 300 tadpoles. In 1968 she was married for the first and only time, a marriage that ended in divorce in 1973. She met Paul du Feu, a

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

English graduate who was working as a builder, outside a pub in Portobello Road, London, and after a brief courtship they married at Paddington Register Office, using a ring from a pawn shop. Du Feu had already been divorced and had two sons, aged 14 and 16, with his first wife. The relationship lasted only a few weeks. Apparently unfaithful to du Feu seven times in three weeks of marriage, Greer wrote that she had spent their wedding night in an armchair, because her husband, drunk, would not allow her in bed.Greer, Germaine (29 May 2004)
"Country notebook: drunken ex-husband"
''The Daily Telegraph'' Eventually, during a party near

Ladbroke Grove Ladbroke Grove () is an area and a road in West London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, passing through Kensal Green and Notting Hill, running north–south between Harrow Road and Holland Park Avenue. It is also a name given to ...

, "' turned to me and sneered (drunk as usual): 'I could have any woman in this room.' 'Except me,' I said, and walked away for ever.'" In addition to teaching, Greer was trying to make a name for herself in television. In 1967 she appeared in the BBC shows ''Good Old Nocker'' and '' Twice a Fortnight'' and had a starring role in a short film, ''Darling, Do You Love Me'' (1968), by

Martin Sharp Martin Ritchie Sharp (21 January 1942 – 1 December 2013) was an Australian artist, cartoonist, songwriter and film-maker. Career Sharp was born in Bellevue Hill, New South Wales in 1942, and educated at Cranbrook private school, where one ...

(the Australian artist and co-editor of '' Oz'' magazine) and Bob Whitaker. From 1968 to 1969 she featured in a

Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its ...

slapstick show, ''Nice Time'', with

Kenny Everett Kenny Everett (born Maurice James Christopher Cole; 25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995) was an English comedian, radio disc jockey and television presenter. After spells on pirate radio and Radio Luxembourg in the mid-1960s, he was one of the fi ...

Sandra Gough Sandra Gough (born 2 August 1943, in Manchester, Lancashire) is an English actress, best known for her role as Irma Ogden in the soap opera '' Coronation Street'', which she played from 1964 to 1971. Other roles have included Nellie Dingle in ...

and

Jonathan Routh Jonathan Routh, born John Reginald Surdeval Routh,Dennis Barker"Jonathan Routh: Television presenter who brought Candid Camera to Britain" ''The Guardian'', 9 June 2008. (1927–2008) co-starred in the British version of the television show ''C ...

. One set of outtakes found in Greer's archive at the University of Melbourne features her as a housewife bathing in milk delivered by Everett the milkman.

''Oz'' and ''Suck''

Greer began writing columns as "Dr. G" for '' Oz'' magazine, owned by Richard Neville, whom she had met at a party in Sydney. The Australian ''Oz'' had been shut down in 1963 after three months and the editors convicted of obscenity, later overturned. Neville and his co-editor, Martin Sharp, moved to London and set up ''Oz'' there. When Neville met Greer again, he suggested she write for it, which led to her article in the first edition in 1967, "In Bed with the English". Keith Morris photographed her ("Dr G, the only groupie with a PhD in captivity") for issue 19 in early 1969; the black-and-white images include one of her posing for the cover with

Vivian Stanshall Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall; 21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper ...

and another in which she pretends to play the guitar. The July 1970 edition, ''OZ 29'', featured "Germaine Greer knits private parts", an article from ''Oz''s Needlework Correspondent on the hand-knitted Keep it Warm Cock Sock, "a snug corner for a chilly prick". As "Rose Blight", she also wrote a gardening column for ''

Private Eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised for its prominent critici ...

''. In 1969 Greer was co-founder of an Amsterdam-based pornography magazine, '' Suck: The First European Sex Paper'' (1969–1974), along with Bill Daley, Jim Haynes, William Levy, Heathcote Williams and Jean Shrimpton, the stated purpose of which was to create "a new pornography which would demystify male and female bodies". The first issue was reportedly so offensive that

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and intelligence in British, Commonwealth, Irish, and other police forces. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, usu ...

raided its London office in the Arts Lab in

Drury Lane Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster. Notable landmarks T ...

and closed its postbox address. According to

Beatrice Faust Beatrice Eileen Faust (19 February 1939 – 30 October 2019) was an Australian author and women's activist. In 1966 she was president of the Victorian Abortion Law Repeal Association. She was also a co-founder of the Women's Electoral Lobby i ...

, ''Suck'' published "high misogynist SM content", including a cover illustration, for issue 7, of a man holding a "screaming woman with her legs in the air while another rapes her anally". One of Greer's biographers, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, wrote that almost nothing was off limits for ''Suck'', including descriptions of child abuse, incest and bestiality. Greer's column, "Sucky Fucky" by "Earth Rose", included advice to women about how to look after their genitals and how they ought to taste their vaginal secretions. She published the name of a friend, someone she knew from her time with the

and to whom she later dedicated ''The Female Eunuch'': "Anyone who wants group sex in New York and likes fat girls, contact Lillian Roxon." During a 1970 Amsterdam film festival organized by ''Suck'', the judging panel, which included Greer, gave first prize to

Bodil Joensen Bodil Bjarta Joensen (; 25 September 1944 – 3 January 1985) was a Danish pornographic actress born in the village of Hundige, near Copenhagen. She ran a small entrepreneurial farm and animal husbandry business, and enjoyed celebrity status fr ...

for a film in which a woman has sex with animals. ''Suck'' reproduced one interview with Greer (first published in ''

Screw A screw and a bolt (see '' Differentiation between bolt and screw'' below) are similar types of fastener typically made of metal and characterized by a helical ridge, called a ''male thread'' (external thread). Screws and bolts are used to ...

'', another pornographic magazine), entitled "I Am a Whore". In parallel with her involvement in ''Suck'', Greer told

Robert Greenfield Robert Greenfield (born 1946) is an American author, journalist and screenwriter. Career Greenfield began his career as a sports writer. He has published book reviews in '' New West'' magazine and ''The New York Times Book Review''. From 1970 t ...

of ''Rolling Stone'' in January 1971 that she was an admirer of the Redstockings, a radical feminist group founded in New York in January 1969 by Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone. Criticized by feminists for her involvement with ''Suck'', in May 1971 she told an interviewer for ''Screw'': Greer parted company with ''Suck'' in 1972 when it published a naked photograph of her lying down with her legs over her shoulders and her face peering between her thighs. The photograph had been submitted on the understanding that nude photographs of all the editors would be published in a book about a film festival. She resigned, accusing the other editors of being "counter-revolutionary". Greer said later that her aim in joining the editorial board had been to try to steer ''Suck'' away from exploitative, sadistic pornography.

''The Female Eunuch'' (1970)

Writing

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 A bedsit, bedsitter, or bed-sitting room is a form of accommodation common in some parts of the United Kingdom which consists of a single room per occupant with all occupants typically sharing a bathroom. Bedsits are included in a legal category ...

in The Pheasantry on King's Road. When she first moved to London, she had stayed in

John Peel John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...

's spare room before being invited to take the bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under

's; accommodation there was by invitation only. She was also writing ''The Female Eunuch''. On 17 March 1969 she had had lunch in Golden Square,

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was deve ...

, 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. 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. 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. 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." 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 Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, '' Uncle Tom's Cabin''. The character was seen by many readers as a ground-breaking humanistic portrayal of a slave, one who uses nonresistance and gives his life to prot ...

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 Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. ...

sings at Albert Hall. Yesterday the title was Strumpet Voluntary—what shall it be today?" She told the ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' 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". 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." Several British feminists, including Angela Carter,

Sheila Rowbotham Sheila Rowbotham (born 27 February 1943) is a British socialist feminist theorist and historian. Early life Rowbotham was born on 27 February 1943 in Leeds (in present-day West Yorkshire), the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company a ...

and

Michelene Wandor Michelene Dinah Wandor (née Samuels; born 20 April 1940), known from 1963 to at least 1979 as Michelene Victor, is an English playwright, critic, broadcaster, poet, lecturer, and musician. Birth and education She was born Michelene Samuels i ...

, responded angrily. 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.

Publication

Launched at a party attended by editors from ''Oz'', ''The Female Eunuch'' was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970, dedicated to Lillian Roxon and four other women. The first print run of thousand copies sold out on the first day. 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. According to Greer,

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...

paid $29,000 for the American rights and Bantam $135,000 for the paperback. 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". Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly, and it has never been out of print. 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. By 1998 it had sold over one million copies in the UK alone. The year 1970 was an important one for second-wave feminism. In February 400 women met in

Ruskin College Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is an independent educational institution in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) ...

, Oxford, for Britain's first Women's Liberation Conference. In August Kate Millett's ''

Sexual Politics ''Sexual Politics'' is the debut book by American writer and activist Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation. It was published in 1970 by Doubleday. It is regarded as a classic of feminism and one of radical feminism's key texts. ''Sexu ...

'' was published in New York; 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 Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psyc ...

was on the cover of ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' 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). September and October saw the publication of ''

Sisterhood Is Powerful ''Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement'' is a 1970 anthology of feminist writings edited by Robin Morgan, a feminist poet and founding member of New York Radical Women. It is one of the first widel ...

'', edited by Robin Morgan, and Shulamith Firestone's '' The Dialectic of Sex''. 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. By that month ''The Female Eunuch'' had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing. McGraw-Hill published it in the United States on 16 April 1971. 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 The Algonquin Hotel is a hotel at 59 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. The 181-room hotel, opened in 1902, was designed by architect Goldwin Starrett for the Puritan Realty Company. The hotel has hosted numer ...

where her publisher had booked her; her book launch had to be rescheduled because so many people wanted to attend. A ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' book review described her as " x feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and a profile reminiscent of Garbo". Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear". A Paladin paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by René Magritte, showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip.

Clive Hamilton Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA (born 12 March 1953) is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles ...

regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created".. 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". The book was reissued in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux at the instigation of

Jennifer Baumgardner Jennifer Baumgardner (born 1970) is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and lecturer whose work explores abortion, sex, bisexuality, rape, single parenthood, and women's power. From 2013 to 2017, she served as the Executive Director/Publisher at The Fe ...

, a leading

third-wave feminist Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-w ...

and editor of the publisher's Feminist Classics series. According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist".

Arguments

''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. 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." 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. 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"): 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?" Germaine Greer, Amsterdam, June 1972

Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to ''Sex and Destiny'' 14 years later, namely that the

nuclear family A nuclear family, elementary family, cereal-packet family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, the larg ...

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. "Like beasts", she told ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' 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." The book argues that " men have very little idea of how much men hate them", while " n do not themselves know the depth of their hatred." 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 ..." The American feminist

Betty Friedan Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book '' The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...

, 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. 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). 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

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".. Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at the

Town Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

in New York, she famously debated

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Maile ...

, 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 Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

, Sargent Shriver,

Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...

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 Jill Johnston (May 17, 1929 – September 18, 2010) was a British-born American feminist author and cultural critic who wrote '' Lesbian Nation'' in 1973 and was a longtime writer for ''The Village Voice''. She was also a leader of the lesbian ...

Diana Trilling Diana Trilling (née Rubin; July 21, 1905 – October 23, 1996) was an American literary critic and author, one of a group of left-wing writers known as the New York Intellectuals. Background Born Diana Rubin, she married the literary and c ...

and

Jacqueline Ceballos Jacqueline "Jacqui" Michot Ceballos (born September 8, 1925) is an American feminist and activist. Ceballos is the former president of New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America organi ...

.. Several feminists declined to attend, including Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kate Millett, Robin Morgan and

Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steinem was a c ...

. Filmmakers

Chris Hegedus Chris Hegedus (born April 23, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker. She and her husband, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, founded the company Pennebaker Hegedus Films. Hegedus was nominated for an Academy Award for ''The War Room'', a behind-t ...

and

D. A. Pennebaker Donn Alan Pennebaker (; July 15, 1925 – August 1, 2019) was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci ...

captured the event in the documentary ''Town Bloody Hall'' (1979). 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 Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

'' magazine on 7 May 1971, under the title "Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like"; there were five more photographs of her inside. 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. (In 2016 the coat, now in the

National Museum of Australia The National Museum of Australia, in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. It was formally established by the ''National Muse ...

, got its own scholarly article, and the photograph by Lord Snowdon is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.) On 18 May Greer addressed the

National Press Club Organizations A press club is an organization for journalists and others professionally engaged in the production and dissemination of news. A press club whose membership is defined by the press of a given country may be known as a National Pre ...

in Washington, the first woman to do so; she was introduced as "an attractive, intelligent, sexually liberated woman". She also appeared on '' The Dick Cavett Show'', and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape. Greer was in a relationship at the time with Tony Gourvish, manager of the British rock band

Family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

, one that began while she was writing ''The Female Eunuch''. Kleinhenz writes that they lived together for a time, but Greer ended up feeling that he was exploiting her celebrity, a sense she developed increasingly with her friends, according to Kleinhenz. In June 1971 she became a columnist for the London ''Sunday Times''. Later that year her journalism took her to Vietnam, where she wrote about "

bargirl A bargirl is a woman who is paid to entertain patrons in a bar, either individually or, in some cases, as a performer. The exact nature of the entertainment varies widely from place to place; depending on the venue this can be individual enterta ...

s" made pregnant by American soldiers, and to Bangladesh, where she interviewed women raped by Pakistani soldiers during the 1971

Bangladesh Liberation War The Bangladesh Liberation War ( bn, মুক্তিযুদ্ধ, , also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, or simply the Liberation War in Bangladesh) was a revolution and armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali ...

Tuscany

In the summer of 1971, Greer moved to

Cortona Cortona (, ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the main cultural and artistic centre of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo. Toponymy Cortona is derived from Latin Cortōna, and from Etruscan 𐌂𐌖� ...

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

, where she rented ''Il Palazzone'', a cottage near the town, then bought a house, ''Pianelli''. She told Richard Neville that she had to spend time away from England because of its tax laws .She spent part of that summer in Porto Cervo, a seaside resort, with Kenneth Tynan, artistic director of the

Royal National Theatre The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...

, as guests of Michael White, the impresario. The group had dinner one evening with

Princess Margaret Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, (Margaret Rose; 21 August 1930 – 9 February 2002) was the younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the younger sister and only sibling of Queen Elizabeth ...

, Lord Snowdon and

Karim Aga Khan Shāh Karim al-Husayni (born 13 December 1936), known by the religious title Mawlānā Hazar Imam by his Ismaili followers and elsewhere as Aga Khan IV, is the 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailis, a denomination within Shia Islam. He ...

. Greer had arrived with little luggage, and before dinner found her hair had been blown about by the wind on the ferry. Princess Margaret sat Greer down at her dressing table and spent five minutes brushing out her hair. The point of the visit for Greer was to discuss Tynan's commission of a translation of

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his ...

's ''

Lysistrata ''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponne ...

''. First performed in 411 BCE, the play explores an attempt by women to force the end of the

Peloponnesian War The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Greek world. The war remained undecided for a long time until the decisive intervention of ...

by going on sex strike. The project was not produced; Greer and Tynan fell out during the trip, and Greer left Porto Cervo in tears.Dean, Katrina (1 November 2013)
"Why Germaine Greer's life in letters is one for the archives"
''The Conversation''. Her adaptation of the play found belated appreciation in 1999, when the script was re-worked and produced by Phil Willmott as ''Germaine Greer's Lysistrata: The Sex Strike''. Greer has described the freedom she felt at her home in Italy, which had no electricity when she first moved there. While living in Italy, Greer interviewed

Primo Levi Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...

Luciano Pavarotti Luciano Pavarotti (, , ; 12 October 19356 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who during the late part of his career crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most acclaimed tenors of all time. He made numero ...

and

Federico Fellini Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most ...

(with whom she was romantically involved) in Italian. (Greer is a polyglot, and can write or speak German, French, Spanish and Latin, in addition to English and Italian). In or around July 1971 Greer was interviewed by Nat Lehrman, a member of ''

''s editorial board, who flew from the United States to Italy to conduct the interview in her home. ''Playboy'' published the article in January 1972: "Germaine Greer – a Candid Conversation with the Ballsy Author of ''The Female Eunuch''". It was during this interview that she first discussed publicly that she had been raped in her second year at the University of Melbourne. Busy with her journalism and publicity tours, she resigned her teaching position at Warwick that year. In March 1972, she was arrested in New Zealand for saying "bullshit" and "fuck" in a speech during a tour, which she had done deliberately because

Tim Shadbolt Sir Timothy Richard Shadbolt (born 19 February 1947) is a New Zealand politician. He was the Mayor of Invercargill and previously Mayor of Waitemata City. Early life Shadbolt was born in the Auckland suburb of Remuera in 1947. His father died ...

, who was elected mayor of

Invercargill Invercargill ( , mi, Waihōpai is the southernmost and westernmost city in New Zealand, and one of the southernmost cities in the world. It is the commercial centre of the Southland region. The city lies in the heart of the wide expanse ...

in 1993, had recently been arrested for the same thing. Six hundred people gathered outside the court, throwing jelly beans and eggs at the police. After defending herself, she was "acquitted on 'bullshit' but convicted for 'fuck'", Kleinhenz writes. Given a jail sentence, she offered to pay a fine instead, then left the country without paying it. In August 1973 Greer debated William F. Buckley Jr. at the

Cambridge Union The Cambridge Union Society, also known as the Cambridge Union, is a debating and free speech society in Cambridge, England, and the largest society in the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1815, it is the oldest continuously running debati ...

on the motion "This House Supports the Women's Liberation Movement". "Nothing I said", Buckley wrote in 1989, "and memory reproaches me for having performed miserably, made any impression or any dent in the argument. She carried the house overwhelmingly." Greer, then 37, had an affair in 1976 with the novelist

Martin Amis Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir ' ...

, then 26, which was discussed publicly in 2015 after she sold her archives to the University of Melbourne. In them

Margaret Simons Margaret Simons (born 1960) is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She has written numerous articles and essays as well as many books, including a biography of Senate leader of the Australian Labor Party Penny Wong. Her essa ...

discovered a 30,000-word letter to Amis which Greer had begun writing on 1 March 1976 while in the British Airways Monarch lounge at Heathrow Airport, and continued during a lecture tour in the United States, though apparently never sent: "As the miles add up, I find this letter harder and harder to write. My style falters and whole paragraphs emerge as dry as powder. Yesterday I left this book in a taxi cab and would have lost it if the driver hadn’t driven back ... with it. As for you, my darling, I see you very rarely. Even in my dreams you send me only your handmaidens."

Tulsa

Greer's second book, ''The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work'' (1979), covered its subject until the end of the 19th century, and speculated on the existence of female artists whose careers were not recorded. That year Greer was appointed director of the Center of the Study of Women's Literature at the

, Oklahoma, and in 1982 she founded the ''Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature'', an academic journal that highlights unknown or little-known women writers. In the first issue Greer wrote that she wanted the journal to focus on the "rehabilitation of women's literary history". She would spend five months a year in Tulsa and the rest in the UK. She continued working as a journalist. In 1984 she travelled to

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

to report on the 1983–1985 famine for the ''

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...

'' and again in April 1985 for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

''. For the latter, she took photographs with an Olympus automatic camera and drove 700 km to Asosa, a city to which the

Ethiopian government The government of Ethiopia () is the federal government of Ethiopia. It is structured in a framework of a federal parliamentary republic, whereby the prime minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the governmen ...

was moving people from the famine areas. The ''Observer'' did not publish the two 5,000-word articles she submitted; in her view, the editors did not agree with her pro Mengistu government perspective. '' The New Worker'' published them instead. In September 1985 she travelled again to Ethiopia, this time to present a documentary for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

in the UK.

''Sex and Destiny'' (1984)

''Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility'' (1984) continued Greer's critique of Western attitudes toward sexuality,

fertility Fertility is the capability to produce offspring through reproduction following the onset of sexual maturity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born by a female during her lifetime and is quantified demographically. Ferti ...

, and family, and the imposition of those attitudes on the rest of the world. Her targets again include the nuclear family, government intervention in sexual behaviour, and the commercialisation of sexuality and women's bodies. She argued that the Western promotion of birth control in the Third World was in large part driven not by concern for human welfare but by the traditional fear and envy of the rich towards the fertility of the poor. The birth control movement had been tainted by such attitudes from its beginning, she wrote, citing

Marie Stopes Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and coal classificati ...

and others. She cautioned against condemning life styles and family values in the developing world.

Great Chesterford

In 1984 Greer bought The Mills, a Georgian farmhouse on three acres of land in

Great Chesterford Great Chesterford is a village and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. The village is north from Bishop's Stortford, south from Cambridge and about northwest from the city and Essex county town of Chelmsford. The Ickn ...

, Essex, where she planted a one-acre wood, which she said made her prouder than anything else she had done, and tried to keep "as a refuge for as many other earthlings" as she could. The Mills was still Greer's home for part of the year when she put it up for sale in 2018;Greer, Germaine (11 March 2018)
"Germaine Greer offers advice for the next owner of her Essex home"
''The Sunday Times''.
as of 2016 she was spending four months a year in Australia and the rest in the UK. Germaine Greer and Lewis Wolpert on After Dark on 30 May 1994

Germaine Greer and Lewis Wolpert on After Dark on 30 May 1994

Her book ''Shakespeare'' (her PhD topic) was published in 1986 by Oxford University Press as part of its Past Masters series. ''The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings'', a collection of her articles written between 1968 and 1985, also appeared that year. In June 1988, along with

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that span ...

Antonia Fraser Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, (' Pakenham; born 27 August 1932) is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and ...

Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...

Margaret Drabble Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, (born 5 June 1939) is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer. Drabble's books include '' The Millstone'' (1965), which won the following year's John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and '' Je ...

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and ...

, David Hare and others, she became part of the "20th of June Group", which supported civil liberties in England that the group felt were being eroded; this was shortly after Section 28 was introduced, which prevented schools from teaching homosexuality as a normal part of family life. In 1989 she wrote ''

Daddy, We Hardly Knew You ''Daddy, We Hardly Knew You'' is a 1989 book by feminist academic Germaine Greer. The book is a biography about her father who was an Australian intelligence officer during World War II. According to Penguin Random House, the book took three yea ...

'', a diary and travelogue about her father, whom Greer portrayed as distant, weak and unaffectionate, which led to the criticism that in her writing she was projecting her relationship with him onto all other men. She became a special lecturer and

bye-fellow A Bye-Fellow is a position in academia and post-secondary education at several British and Commonwealth universities for a Fellow who is not a member of the foundation of a college, or "may or may not have fewer privileges when compared to a full f ...

that year of Newnham College, Cambridge, a position she held until 1998. Greer founded Stump Cross Books, based at The Mills, which published the work of 17th- and 18th-century female poets. She returned to the University of Warwick, accepting a personal Chair as Professor in the English and Comparative Studies department. She was appearing regularly on television in the UK and Australia during this period, including on the BBC's '' Have I Got News for You'' several times from 1990. On 22 July 1995 she was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil on his one-on-one interview show ''Is This Your Life?'' In 1998 she wrote an episode, "Make Love not War", for the television documentary series ''

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

'', and the following year sat for a nude photograph by the Australian photographer Polly Borland. A 1994 interview with Greer in '' The Big Issue'', in which she said she would share her home with anyone willing to follow her rules, was interpreted as an open invitation to the homeless, and led to her being swamped by reporters and low-flying aircraft. One of the journalists, an undercover '' Mail on Sunday'' reporter, managed to gain entry and avail himself of her hospitality for two days, which included Greer washing his clothes and teaching him how to bake bread. After the newspaper published a three-page spread, the

Press Complaints Commission The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC closed on Monday 8 September 2014, and was replaced by the Inde ...

found it guilty of subterfuge not in the public interest.

Later writing about women

''The Change'' (1991 and 2018)

Natalie Angier, writing in ''

'', 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 Menopause, also known as the climacteric, is the time in women's lives when menstrual periods stop permanently, and they are no longer able to bear children. Menopause usually occurs between the age of 47 and 54. Medical professionals often d ...

—or as she prefers to call it the "climacteric", or critical period. "Frightening females is fun", she wrote in ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'' in 2002. "Women were frightened into using hormone replacement therapy by dire predictions of crumbling bones,

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, h ...

, loss of

libido Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act u ...

, depression, despair, disease and death if they let nature take its course." She argues that scaring women is "big business and hugely profitable". The book, including the medical information, was updated and reissued in 2018.

''Slip-Shod Sibyls'' (1995)

''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. Her conclusion is that women were held to lower standards than men (hence the "slip-shod" sibyls of the title, quoting

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

), and the poetic tradition discouraged good poetry from women. The book includes a critique of the concept of woman as

Muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in ...

, associated with

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celt ...

and others; a chapter on

Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...

and her use as a symbol of female poetry; a chapter on the 17th-century poet Katherine Philips; two chapters on

Aphra Behn Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...

and one on

Anne Wharton Anne Wharton (née Lee, 20 July 1659 - 29 October 1685) was an English poet and verse dramatist. Little of her work was published in her lifetime, but some 45 pieces have been ascribed to her. Life Anne Lee was born 20 July 1659 at Ditchley Pa ...

; and material on Anne Finch,

Letitia Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. The writings of Landon are transitional between Romanticism and the Victorian Age. Her first major breakthrough ...

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."

''The Whole Woman'' (1999)

Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman, Waterstone's, 1999

A sequel to ''The Female Eunuch'', ''The Whole Woman'' was published in 1999 by Doubleday, one of seven publishers who bid for the book; Greer was paid an advance of £500,000. In the book Greer argued that feminism had lost its way. Women still faced the same physical realities as before, but because of changing views about gender identity and post-modernism, there is a "new silence about omen'svisceral experiences hatis the same old rapist's hand clamped across their mouths". She wrote: "Real women are being phased out; the first step, persuading them to deny their own existence, is almost complete." Her comments on

female genital mutilation Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found ...

(FGM) proved controversial, particularly that opposition to it is an "attack on cultural identity", just as outlawing male circumcision would be viewed as an attack on Jews and Muslims. Greer wrote that feminists fighting to eliminate FGM in their own countries should be supported, but she explored the complexities of the issue and the double standards of the West regarding other forms of bodily mutilation, including that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended surgery at that time on baby girls with clitorises over three-eighths of an inch long. She questioned the view that FGM is imposed by men on women, rather than by women on women, or even freely chosen.

On gender

In ''The Whole Woman'', Greer argued that, while sex is a biological given,

gender role A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cen ...

s are cultural constructs. Femininity is not

female Female ( symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Fema ...

ness. "Genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity", she wrote. 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. "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." Greer's writing on gender brought her into opposition with the

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

community. 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." 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 A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and s ...

, arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college. She reiterated her views several times over the following years, including in 2015 when students at

Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

tried unsuccessfully to "no platform" her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century". Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with Kirsty Wark for BBC ''

Newsnight ''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availa ...

'', that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of

Caitlyn Jenner Caitlyn Marie Jenner (born William Bruce Jenner; October 28, 1949) is an American media personality and retired Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete. Jenner played college football for the Graceland Yellowjackets before incurring a knee ...

for Glamour Woman of the Year had been misogynist. Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to ''

'' 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 Catherine Hall (born 1946) is a British academic. She is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London and chair of its digital scholarship project, the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of Briti ...

, Liz Kelly,

Ruth Lister Margot Ruth Aline Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett, (born 3 May 1949), is currently Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. She has written or contributed to a number of books, pamphlets and articles on poverty, social secur ...

, and the Southall Black Sisters.

On rape

Arguments

Greer wrote in ''The Female Eunuch'' (1970) that

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

is not the "expression of uncontrollable desire" but an act of "murderous aggression, spawned in self-loathing and enacted upon the hated other". 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." 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." 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. She suggested in 1995 that the crime of rape be replaced by one of

sexual assault Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...

with varying degrees of seriousness and swifter outcomes. 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. "There is no way that the law of rape fits the reality of women's lives", she said in 2018. Her book, ''On Rape'', was published by

Melbourne University Press Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) is the book publishing arm of the University of Melbourne. History MUP was founded in 1922 as Melbourne University Press to sell text books and stationery to students, and soon began publishing books itself. ...

in September 2018.

Personal experience

During an interview with ''Playboy'' in 1971, and again during an interview with Clyde Packer in the 1980s, Greer discussed how she had been raped as an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne. Two weeks after her March 1995 ''Guardian'' column about rape provoked controversy, she again recalled her own experience, which took place in January 1958 when she was 19. A rugby player she had met at a barbecue dragged her into a car, punched her several times in the head, forced her to repeat what he wanted her to say, then raped her. Afterwards, he walked back to the party as though nothing had happened. Her male flatmates found her at home hours later, bruised, swollen and semi-conscious. She believed that reporting it would be pointless; she had danced with him at the party, had left with him voluntarily, and he was a pillar of the community. The flatmates brought the man to the flat days later and warned him in front of her that they would break his legs if they saw him at any of the places they frequented. She argued, in two ''Guardian'' columns, that it was not the rapist's penis that had hurt her, but his fists and "vicious mind", and the loss of control, invasion of self, and "being made to speak the rapist's script". "To insist", she wrote, "that outrage by penis is worse than outrage by any other means is to glorify and magnify that tag of flesh beyond reason." She suggested that perhaps women should "out" their rapists rather than take a chance with a legal system that does not work for them. Her views were strongly criticized by

Women Against Rape Women Against Rape (WAR) is a UK organisation founded in 1976. In their original Statement of Aims, they demanded: recognition of rape of every kind; not just by strangers but by husbands, fathers and stepfathers. They demanded that every woman ...

, which at the time was campaigning for more prosecutions.

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. 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." 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 agreement A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wis ...

s, but then had spoken out once the statute of limitations had lapsed and they had nothing to lose.

Other work

''The Boy'' (2003)

A book of art history, ''The Boy'' (2003)—published in the United States as ''The Beautiful Boy''—was illustrated with 200 photographs of what ''The Observer'' called "succulent teenage male beauty".Merritt, Stephanie (5 October 2003)
"Danger mouth"
''The Observer''. Greer described the book as an attempt to address modern 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". The cover photograph, by

David Bailey David Royston Bailey (born 2 January 1938) is an English photographer and director, most widely known for his fashion photography and portraiture, and role in shaping the image of the Swinging Sixties. Early life David Bailey was born at Wh ...

, was of 15-year-old

Björn Andrésen Björn Johan Andrésen (born 26 January 1955) is a Swedish actor and musician. He is best known for playing the 14-year-old Tadzio in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of the 1912 Thomas Mann novella '' Death in Venice''. He also played a ...

in his character of Tadzio in the film '' Death in Venice'' (1971). The actor complained about Greer's use of the photograph. Some writers characterised the book's nature as paedophilic.

"Whitefella Jump Up" (2003)

Greer has published several essays on Aboriginal issues, including "Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood", first published in '' Quarterly Essay'' in August 2003, and later as a book in the UK. In the essay she wrote that she had understood little about Aboriginal issues in her early years, but in England she saw from the perspective of distance that "what was operating in Australia was

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

". On returning to Australia in late 1971 she made an effort "to see as much as I could of what had been hidden from me", travelling through the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

with activist

Bobbi Sykes Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes (16 August 194314 November 2010) was an Australian poet and author. She was a lifelong campaigner for Indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women's rights. Early life and education Born Roberta Barkley Patt ...

. Greer argued that Australians should re-imagine the country as an Aboriginal nation. "Jump up" in Australian creole can, she wrote, mean "to be resurrected or reborn"; the title refers to occasions when Aborigines apparently accepted whites as reincarnated relatives. Suggesting that whites were mistaken in understanding this literally, she argued that Aborigines were offering whites terms on which they could be accepted into the Aboriginal kinship system. The essay argues that it may not be too late for Australia as a nation to root itself in Aboriginal history and culture. She wrote: Greer's essay ''On Rage'' (2008) dealt with the widespread rage of Indigenous men. Aboriginal academic

Marcia Langton Marcia Lynne Langton (born 1951) is an Australian academic. she is the Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Regarded as one of Australia's top intellectuals, L ...

argued that she was making excuses for bad behaviour. Greer returned that year to Newnham College, Cambridge, as a special supervisor.

''White Beech'' (2013)

In 2001 Greer bought of land in Australia for $500,000 at Cave Creek in the Numinbah Valley, near the Natural Bridge section of

Springbrook National Park The Springbrook National Park is a protected national park that is located in the Gold Coast hinterland of Queensland, Australia. The park is situated on the McPherson Range, near Springbrook, approximately south of Brisbane. The park is part ...

in South East Queensland. Formerly rainforest, the land had been used as a dairy farm, banana plantation and timber source. In 2013 she published ''White Beech: The Rainforest Years'' about her Cave Creek Rainforest Rehabilitation Scheme, her effort to restore the land to its pre-European-settler state. Friends of Gondwana Rainforest, a charity Greer registered in England in 2011, funds and oversees the project. Germaine Greer Sydney Writers Walk plaque

Germaine Greer Sydney Writers Walk plaque

The book describes about how she discovered an uncommon White Beech tree ('' Gmelina leichhardtii''), and that the chemical 2,4,5-T (an

Agent Orange Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide and defoliant, one of the "tactical use" Rainbow Herbicides. It was used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. It ...

ingredient) had been sprayed in the area for years to thin the hardwood and control the weeds. She wrote that "entering fully into the multifarious life that is Earthling's environment, while giving up delusions of controlling it, is a transcendental experience". Her sense of space, time and self changed: "My horizons flew away, my notion of time expanded and deepened, and my self disappeared." Although she divides time between Australia and England annually, she will not settle permanently in Australia until the country has a treaty with its indigenous people.

Awards and honours

Greer has received several honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Letters from

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and sta ...

in 1999, a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2005. 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. She was selected as an Australian National Living Treasure in 1997, and in 2001 was inducted into the

Victorian Honour Roll of Women The Victorian Honour Roll of Women was established in 2001 to recognise the achievements of women from the Australian state of Victoria. The Honour Roll was established as part of the celebrations of Victoria's Centenary of Federation. Public nom ...

. In 2011 she was one of four feminist "Australian legends" (along with Eva Cox,

Elizabeth Evatt Elizabeth Andreas Evatt (born 11 November 1933), an eminent Australian reformist lawyer and jurist who sat on numerous national and international tribunals and commissions, was the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, the fi ...

and Anne Summers) represented on Australian postage stamps. In the UK she was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971, and in 2016 BBC Radio 4's ''

Woman's Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History Created by Norman Collins and originally presented ...

'' 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 Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

, Helen Brook, Barbara Castle, Jayaben Desai, Bridget Jones, and

Beyoncé Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...

Contrarian views

Writer Yvonne Roberts referred to Greer as "the

contrarian A contrarian is a person who holds a contrary position, especially a position against the majority. Investing A contrarian investing style is based on identifying, and speculating against, movements in stock prices that reflect changes in th ...

queen". 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". ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' has labelled her a "human headline". British actor and comedian Tracey Ullman has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops. In response to criticism of Greer,

Polly Toynbee Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1 ...

wrote in 1988: "Small minds, small spirits affronted by the sheer size and magnetism of the woman." Greer said that the 1989 fatwa against

for his novel '' The Satanic Verses'' (1988) was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support. In 2006, she supported activists trying to halt the filming in London's

Brick Lane Brick Lane ( Bengali: ব্রিক লেন) is a street in the East End of London, in the borough of Tower Hamlets. It runs from Swanfield Street in Bethnal Green in the north, crosses the Bethnal Green Road before reaching the busiest ...

of the film ''

'' (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". In May 1995, in her column for ''

'' (which the newspaper spiked), she referred to ''Guardian'' journalist Suzanne Moore's "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes". She called her biographer, Christine Wallace, a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, ''Untamed Shrew'' (1999), "a piece of excrement". (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about Dickens, read his fucking books.") Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister,

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...

, called her remarks patronising and condescending. After receiving a fee of £40,000, she left the '' Celebrity Big Brother'' house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "

fascist Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the ...

prison camp".

Kevin Rudd Kevin Michael Rudd (born 21 September 1957) is an Australian former politician and diplomat who served as the 26th prime minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and again from June 2013 to September 2013, holding office as the leader of the ...

, 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 ''The Crocodile Hunter'' was a wildlife documentary television series hosted by Steve Irwin and his wife, Terri. The show became a popular franchise due to Irwin's unconventional approach to wildlife. It spawned a number of separate projects ...

'', she concluded that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge". She criticized the wife of the newly-elected American president

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is married t ...

, for her dress on the night of the 2008 U.S. election, and in 2012 she advised Australia's first female prime minister,

Julia Gillard Julia Eileen Gillard (born 29 September 1961) is an Australian former politician who served as the 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013, holding office as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). She is the first and only ...

, to change the cut of her jackets because she had "a big arse".

Later life

In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the

Museum of Australian Democracy Old Parliament House, formerly known as the Provisional Parliament House, was the seat of the Parliament of Australia from 1927 to 1988. The building began operation on 9 May 1927 after Parliament's relocation from Melbourne to the new capit ...

. 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.

Germaine Greer archive

Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne. As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space. 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 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.

Selected works

*(1963). *(1968). *(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: Harpercollins. *(1986). ''Shakespeare''. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past Masters series). *(1986). ''The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings''. London: Picador. *(1988), ed. ''Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Women’s Verse''. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. *(1989). ''

''. New York: Fawcett Columbine. *(1989) 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) (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''. *(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''. *(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). ''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

Works cited

:''Websites and news articles are listed in the

References Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' ...

section only.'' * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (Edited extract from ''White Beech'') * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* *
The University of Melbourne Archives
*, University of Melbourne, 8 March 2017. * * *, Talks & Ideas, Sydney Opera House, 9 October 2013. * *, Leeds Beckett University, March 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Greer, Germaine 1939 births 20th-century atheists 21st-century atheists 20th-century Australian non-fiction writers 21st-century Australian non-fiction writers 20th-century Australian women writers 21st-century Australian women writers Academics from Melbourne Academics of the University of Warwick Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge Atheist feminists Australian atheists Australian conservationists Australian essayists Australian expatriates in England Australian feminist writers Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge Feminist studies scholars Former Roman Catholics Liberal Democrats (UK) people Living people Radical feminists Shakespearean scholars Australian socialist feminists University of Melbourne alumni University of Melbourne women University of Sydney alumni Writers from Melbourne Ecofeminists People from Elwood, Victoria People educated at Star of the Sea College, Melbourne