Germaine Greer

Writer

• Born: January 29, 1939
• Place of Birth: Near Melbourne, Australia

AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST

Biography

A leading feminist, Germaine Greer has made a career of speaking, writing, and teaching English literature. She is the daughter of an English Royal Air Force officer who suffered “battle shock,” now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, in World War II, and her Australian mother seemed unable to deal with the demands of motherhood. Greer earned a B.A. and an M.A. in Australia and a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, England (on a scholarship). She was married once (in 1968, for about three weeks) to Paul du Feu (the first male nude centerfold for the British Cosmopolitan), and in the early 1990s, she lived in Europe and had several godchildren.

Greer has written for numerous publications, including TheSunday Times, Harper’s, the Guardian, the New Republic, and Esquire. In the 1970s and 1980s, she frequently appeared on television talk shows, where she was touted as a beautiful, vivacious symbol of the “sexual revolution” and a “feminist even men could like.” In 1971, at the height of the feminist argument that alarmed so many men, Greer joined in a debate with Norman Mailer, a contemporary writer and antifeminist who was known to recommend violence against women to “keep them in line.” Greer founded the Tulsa Center for the Study of Women’s Literature, one of the first women’s study programs in the United States.

Greer is known for writing The Female Eunuch (1970) and the later Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), the first considered a classic in the early feminist movement, flamboyantly advocating sexual freedom while dismissing traditional attitudes toward women’s sexuality, and the latter a renunciation of the same sexual permissiveness in favor of chastity and arranged marriages. Greer uses the concept of the “female eunuch” as a metaphor for the lives of women all over the world; the term is suggestive of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s view of women as castrated males, sexless men called eunuchs. Greer employs this image to clarify her point that for too long and too often, women have allowed themselves to be mere impotent imitations or shadows of men—with no rights, no legal status, and no voice but an echo of what men think, mean, and feel. She argues that women cannot wait for men to give them rights; instead, they must aggressively carve out their rightful place in society.

This book was one of the most influential works of the women’s movement and is a good example of “images of women” criticism. Greer engages characteristic images of women to reveal the negative stereotyping of women as a class, which effectively silences them and reinforces male supremacy. Greer argues that women have been castrated by the male-female polarity, which makes “all heterosexual contact” a pattern of male power contracting female power. She logically calls for women to reject traditional marital relationships to become self-sufficient: A woman’s duty, she says, is to herself alone. She is responsible for her happiness—and for her orgasm as well.

Sex and Destiny, published some fourteen years later, seems to contradict Greer’s earlier theories as she examines the apparent organization and control of women’s fertility, contraception, sexuality, chastity, and childbirth by worldwide patriarchal societies to enforce power over females. She argues that this phenomenon does not affect women in developing countries alone, for it is manifested even more vigorously in the Western, “civilized” nations. Greer argues that female chastity has nothing to do with morality but everything to do with controlling women’s sexuality by enforcing prescriptive and proscriptive rules and laws to distort natural responses. She points out that rape and adultery laws, for example, often penalize women while allowing men to escape punishment.

Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989) chronicles Greer’s quest to discover the truth about her weak-willed biological father. The book is a mystery, memoir, and travel piece. Still, many critics believe the writing is better than the story, capable of filling the reader’s psyche with her “radically romantic, individualistic feminism.” Greer’s search for her father is meant to explain his emotional distance from her. Some critics have taken issue with her demonization of her abusive, narcissistic mother in this work.

Greer’s scholarly work includes Shakespeare (1986), John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (2000), and Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women’s Verse (1988). The latter is the result of many hours spent poring over original manuscripts and archives. Greer’s The Madwoman’s Underclothes (1986) demonstrates her rapier wit and outrageous notions of sexual independence.

Greer returned to the spotlight with the publication of The Change: Aging, Women, and Menopause (1991), her detailed examination of the physical effects of menopause and medical responses to its discomforts. In it, she also explores the treatment of female aging through literature and the lives of prominent women. Greer makes the case for aging gracefully, with or without the support of medical and cosmetic sciences.

The Whole Woman (1999) is Greer’s indictment of media and multinational corporations' oppression of women’s bodies, hearts, and minds. It gathers together sources on such subjects as reproductive technology, cosmetic surgery, sex changes, cancer, housework, shopping, and violence against women. Her statistics and examples come from England, the United States, and other industrialized countries, as well as from the developing world. Greer argues that liberating women means changing society: redistributing the world food supply, providing clean water for all people, promoting motherhood as an acceptable career, and educating women worldwide, which she sees as a way to curb population growth.

Greer has published several titles in the 2000s and 2010s, including Lysistrata: The Sex Strike (2000; with Phil Willmott); The Boy (2003); Poems for Gardeners (2003); Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood (2004); The Future of Feminism (2004); Shakespeare’s Wife (2007); On Rage (2008); and White Beech: The Rainforest Years (2013).

Greer was criticized in 2015 for her opinion that transgender women are “not women.” Her views prompted three thousand students at Cardiff University to campaign against a 2015 university lecture Greer was scheduled to give. Despite the campaign, Greer gave the lecture under high security. Greer had previously stated her opinion on transgender women in her 2009 Guardian article about a South African athlete, Caster Semenya, who was subjected to gender testing to verify that she was female and temporarily suspended from international competition.

Although Greer has not published since 2013, she remains an outspoken and controversial public figure. In 2016, the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4's Woman's Hour placed her on their list of women who had the most significant impact on women's lives over the previous seventy years. In 2021, Greer returned to Australia, where she entered care for the elderly, providing commentary on what she saw as just another broken system, especially concerning aging women. In 2022, the Museum of Australian Democracy included Greer in its Australian Women Changemakers exhibition. Despite her advanced age, Greer continues to make media appearances, contributing to Louis Theroux’s podcast in 2023 and sitting down for an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

Bibliography

Britain, Ian. Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer, and Robert Hughes. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.

Castro, Ginette. American Feminism: A Contemporary History. Translated by Elizabeth Loverde-Bagwell. New York: NYUP, 1990.

Cohen, Marcia. The Sisterhood: The True Story of the Women Who Changed the World. New York: Simon, 1988.

Finlayson, Lorna. “Germaine: The Life of Germaine Greer by Elizabeth Kleinhenz Review – a Career of Controversy.” The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2018, www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/13/germaine-the-life-of-germaine-greer-by-elizabeth-kleinhenz. Accessed 10 July 2024.

Greer, Germaine. Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. New York: Viking, 1989.

Greer, Germaine. “My Mailer Problem.” The Madwoman’s Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings. New York: Atlantic Monthly P, 1986.

Greer, Germain. “Caster Semenya Sex Row: What Makes a Woman?” The Guardian, 20 Aug. 2009, www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/aug/20/germaine-greer-caster-semenya. Accessed 9 July 2024.

Mailer, Norman. The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, 1971.

Morris, Steven. “Germaine Greer Gives University Lecture Despite Campaign to Silence her.” The Guardian, 18 Nov. 2015, www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/18/transgender-activists-protest-germaine-greer-lecture-cardiff-university. Accessed 10 July 2024.

Plante, David. Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three. New York: Atheneum, 1983.

Sorensen, Rosemary. “Germaine Greer Proves Age Is just a Number.” Independent Australia, 20 Mar. 2024, independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/germaine-greer-proves-age-is-just-a-number,18437. Accessed 10 July 2024.

Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer, Untamed Shrew. New York: Faber, 1999.

Wang, Yanan. “Feminist Germaine Greer still Pummelled for 'Misogynistic Views toward Transwomen.'” The Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/03/feminist-germaine-greer-still-being-pummelled-for-misogynistic-views-toward-transwomen. Accessed 10 July 2024.