Discuss Germaine Greer's views towards feminism from the 1970's to the 1990's.

Discuss Germaine Greer’s views towards feminism from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. To What extent does she reflect the ideas of other contemporary feminist writers?

Germaine Greer was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1939. She had a strict catholic upbringing and appeared not to be supported very well by her parents. Because of this her childhood experiences could be seen as instrumental and this may have caused to question her role in life.

From an early age Greer began to question many things, for example at home her mother favoured her brother over her and she began to notice that boys were treated better than girls. Also whilst attending the Star of the Sea convent she was once dismissed from class for disagreeing with a nun who said that communism was the devil’s work.

Upon leaving school Greer soon dropped her catholic faith although it is still viewed by many today that she still holds many of their beliefs. After her education at the convent Greer enrolled at Melbourne University in 1956 and graduated with a BA honours in 1958. From here Greer moved to Sydney in 1959 where she went on to study and graduate with a 1st class honours MA in 1963. Upon arriving in Sydney Greer joined a group known as ‘the Push’ and became a very active member. They provided Greer with a Philosophy to emphasize the attitudes and lifestyle she had already acquired in Melbourne. Instead of being like the group she had joined in Melbourne known as ‘the Drift’ who mainly referred to art, truth and beauty as their main ideology, the push ‘talked about the truth and only truth, insisting that most of what we were exposed to during the day was ideology, which was a synonym for – or bullshit, as they called it.’ (Wallace:1997:p87). Greer believed this group helped her realise what she wanted to achieve in life, she believed she was already an anarchist although she didn’t know why. The push gave her the backbone of what she needed to realise how she felt and thought about life.

In the late 1960’s Greer emigrated to England where she gained an PHD from Cambridge in 1968. She also started writing for the London magazine, ‘Oz’ a magazine that became quite controversial for the time it was written. Oz featured Germaine’s explicit views about her care-free and heavily sexed lifestyle. The magazine even featured her hand-knitted fashions such as the cock sock, ‘a snug corner for a chilly prick’.

In 1970 Greer went on to publish The Female Eunuch, it was known as the feminist book of the seventies, a worldwide best seller and was translated into more than twelve languages. It became so popular because many found her feminism ideology less hostile and more attractive than Kate Millet’s openly lesbian and antagonistic variety. Men were also more amenable towards Greer’s views in that women were incomplete and stunted and needed to do something to change this (hence the title). The Female Eunuch argued that ‘a women has the right to express her own sexuality’ and that ‘the rejection of the concept of female libido as merely responsive is essential to female liberation’ was very much likely to attract a large audience of ‘enlightened men’. It also attracted women into thinking that they too could become sexually assertive, although upon reading the book she supplies little evidence of this and whether it is actually possible at all.

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Greer’s most famous quote comes from the Female Eunuch, she quotes ‘Women have very little idea of how much men hate them’. The book itself gives many references to women being ‘forced to’ to do all kinds of things such as accepting false accounts of themselves from people such as psychologists, religious leaders, women’s magazines and in particular men. She claims that women are a sexual object for the use and appreciation of men. Although Greer added very little gist to already existing feminist thoughts, she was more populist and easier to read than other’s before her. Feminists in the past had been known as very harsh and often seen as masculine where as Greer became known as sexy and ‘the saucy feminist that even men like’. Greer believed the first wave of feminism was now practically dead and she had brought about the second wave of feminism which, called for sexual liberation which went down well with those who had just lived through the swinging sixties and she also appealed to housewives asking them to take a stance as they were not liberated in their lives. However, this view had already been upheld by Betty Friedan and Greer just simply agreed with it.

The problem with the book as Greer found was that many people failed to read between the lines of it. Her main understanding of the root cause of the sexually castrated women was masculinity. She believed the essence of masculinity was a large split of thought and feeling and gave a predisposition towards violence and the degradation of women. In later life she want on to describe her book as an analysis of sex oppression and it is clear to see in the eunuch who the sexual oppressors and who the sexually oppressed are. In Greer’s book The Change, published in 1993, she argued that female sexuality is misrepresented and denied because it is identified with submissiveness. She believed women had been castrated in terms of masculine-feminine polarity, ‘in which men commandeered all the energy and streamlined it into an aggressive conquisatorial power, reducing heterosexual contact to a sadomasochistic pattern’ (Greer:1993:p18).

Greer has also adopted Marxist ideology (set out earlier by Kate Millet) and argues that women are the true proletariats in society, and that a revolution can only occur if women withdraw their support for the capitalist system.

In 1984 after her great success of the female eunuch which challenged women to change the way they thought about themselves, sex, love and society Greer published ‘Sex and Destiny’ in which she questions many aspects of women’s lives which follows on from the Eunuch with the concepts of the family, child-rearing, contraception, sexual activity, the ethics of family, the idea of over-population and where it all may be leading us.

Greer holds very strong views throughout this book particularly on the section on abortion and infanticide where she excessively gives an account research in one of the first main forms of contraception which she calls the ‘biggest hazard’ in order for pregnancy to occur which was known as the Intrauterine Device (the IUD). During the chapter she heavily criticises it’s use and the problem’s it has caused around the world because it does not stop women becoming pregnant which means from that a human life has already started growing (from Greer’s point of view anyway) and what the IUD does is once the egg has become fertilised and tries to implant itself into the womb the IUD stops this from occurring. ‘People who might be exasperated by the humbug of disguising the real nature of IUD’s, suspicious of the blurring of logic in such arguments, more respectful of their own bodies than to bury abortionist’s tools in them, are also unreasonable and to be ridden over, smooth-shod.’ (Greer:1984:p172).

Greer also holds radical views on nature, the differences between the sexes, and science. She refers to the ‘dogmatism of science’ a theory adopted by feminists during the eighties, which specifies that modern science, maths, philosophy and logic were developed by males, and that they were oppressive and so they need to be re-placed by feminist forms of science. They also believed that nature, the human body and society are infinitely plastic, in that they can be easily changed. In her arguments regarding the differences between the sexes, Greer implies that if women only exercised as much as men do then they would develop equally big muscles! Although during this research Greer only looked upon Ann Oakley who claims than in societies where the labour is more physical and intensive and where women do the heavy work and men do not, she exclaimed that there is almost no difference between the physique of men and women.

From this Greer extended her views of the physical (as infinitely plastic) to behaviour and the workings the mind, ignoring well-known evidence (which she actually referred to) Greer argued that fifty years of complete and thorough testing had failed ‘to discover any pattern of differentiation in male and female intellectual powers’.

In conjunction with the release of Greer’s latest book, The Whole woman (1999), she explained in an interview that it’s time again for women to stop being so grateful and to start getting angry again. In the interview she identifies herself as an anarchist, ‘I’m an anarchist basically, I don’t think the future lies in constraining people into doing stuff they are not good at and don’t want to do.’ (The Observer:March:1999)

In the whole woman she once again describes woman as sexual objects as that we are all doomed to fail because she believes that sexual attraction between men and women gradually decreases through time particularly on the male’s part and so the marriage becomes doomed. ‘Modern marriage is fragile because the demands made upon it exceed the tensile strength of the initial sexual bond’. (Greer:1999:p258). Also showing once again that women are the weaker sex because a man requires novelty from a women and if he’s not receiving this he may move on meaning once again women have to fight to keep their man’s attention as it’s now common for man to leave his wife and fall for a woman twenty years younger simply because she holds the novelty that his wife used too, but now doesn’t.

Greer also gives a follow up to her famous men hating women quote from the female eunuch this time exclaiming that now: ‘ a few men hate all women all the time, some men hate women all of the time, and all men hate some women some of the time.’ (Greer:1999:p281).

Throughout Greer’s life her view’s of feminism have remained very popular amongst people although the original feminist’s such as the suffragettes do not consider her to be a feminist at all. It would seem through Greer’s work that she does not hold one single view of feminism and does not class herself within the brackets of each of them, instead she continues with ideas originally set out by other feminists and simply makes them more plausible for people to understand and agree. For example, she agreed with some of Kate Millet’s original ideas on Marxist feminism but not all of it, she then latched on to another set of feminist’s in the eighties but in general it would seem that she agrees with a some of the views by each of the types of feminism.

Today, a new third wave of feminism has come about by modern feminists mostly popular amongst young women or women who have not directly experienced discrimination. They question the need for further effort for women and think that feminism is no longer viable and they often view feminism as embarrassing (although it’s thought there are the ones most likely to espouse feminist ideas and thoughts while denying being ‘feminist’).

Contemporary feminists still believe society is not equal for women although we have come along way over the last century by feminists fighting hard for us and now we still need to continue with this idea. Kimberely Yuracko, author of Perfectionism and Contemporary Feminist values believes that feminists today do not criticise women for the choices that they make in life but simply for how the choices were made. For example if the women was put under pressure to make that choice then it wasn’t truly hers and they argue that this should not be the case. Greer also agreed with this view but she was more dramatic about trying to make women stop making these choices and it would seem that today contemporary feminists writers continue to uphold the backbone of the original feminist views.

In recent times and coverage of the media press it would seem Greer has changed many of her views she stills claims the advice given by women’s magazine’s is simply wrong although research has shown that most articles today encourage women to stand up for themselves and be independent, to explore their own sexuality and not to put up with the violence or harassment from men. In the late nineties she gave a speech at the writer’s festival in Melbourne which was very ignorant and patronising towards younger women. She talked of the terrible things women do in bed simply because men and popular culture tells them too, she said ‘they have a duty to say yes to whatever their partners may desire’ (Lumby:2005:p1). Claiming that they would take part in this act no matter how much it disgusted them, arguing that this kind of behaviour is bred by women’s magazine’s which encourage readers to go to any length to accommodate male desires (although she has little evidence to support this view).

She also give criticisms over Big Brother famously quoting that the kind of people who watch it are the same kind of people who would enjoy watching torture. And yet research has shown that it’s audience mainly consists of teenage girls making her view’s pretty damaging to young women. Research also showed that it appeals to young women because most of them face the same dilemmas as the housemates as they are also constantly under surveillance from their parents, teachers and experts.

Professor Catharine Lumby at Sydney university who conducted this research also found that when talking to young women about the media they consume, young women are ‘not value-free or brainwashed. In fact, they’re very aware that people see them that way and they resent the assumptions’. It’s seems a real shame that someone like Germaine Greer and her status would rely on stereotypical generalisations about today’s young women and the culture they endure. ‘If younger women are expected to find feminism relevant, then all feminists need to show they are open to understanding the lives young women live and the culture they embrace.’

Even though Greer has been heavily criticised because she was so popular with the press she was able to questions things from rape to abortion, from marriage to employment, from harassment to discriminations, because of her and other second wave feminists they have helped changed the society young women now enter by getting laws enforced to stop women becoming degraded. Women today now have much more power in society and a full menu of legal options to redress fundamental wrongs due to feminists like Germaine Greer.

In Christine Wallace’s autobiography of Germaine Greer (the untamed shrew) she believes that throughout Greer’s life it has been tough for her but she has remained strong and learnt from her experiences which has made her who she is and why she is that way. ‘…..She has been an inspiration to so many other women. She has never surrended her sovereignty. Germaine Greer was never tamed.’