Germaine Greer - for better or worse

Mar 11 11:37am

- Firebrand feminist returns to Australia

“Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.” Germaine Greer

Professor Germaine Greer is back in Australia and is as fired up as ever.

In previous years, Greer, who comes to Australia for four months a year, has railed against many elements of society.

On this trip to Sunrise, she is happy to declare she stands by her criticisms of Steve Irwin and Princess Diana.
Greer the footballer

According to Sandra Lee from the Sunday Telegraph, “She's a relic from the past basking in the euphoria of adulation from her devoted followers, like some old footballer reliving his glory days over a few beers at the pub.”

She loves Gen Y kids ‘thinking for themselves’ and Greer says, unexpectedly, that Australia is slightly more advanced than Britain when it comes to women’s issues.

Women’s issues are Greer’s bedrock concern.

 


Feminist first

Greer is the firebrand author of the significant feminist book, The Female Eunuch, released 1970.

The book has sold over one million copies and never been out of print. But despite this success, Greer has made a career of irritation, articulating her anger in what can be entertaining vitriol across newspapers, radio, TV and books. And if you think she won’t complain about the media, you can read that here.


Best Germaine Greer Quotes
  1. Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
  2. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?
  3. You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
  4. I have always been principally interested in men for sex.
  5. The house wife is an unpaid employee in her husband's house in return for the security of being a permanent employee

 

 

Her writing tends, as she herself would say, to “uncoil with ferocious energy.”

For example; of her time in the UK Big Brother house, she said, “This is a racist country; to the vast majority of couch potatoes out there, [inmate] Shilpa is a "Paki bird".

Still writing

greerLiving in Queensland when she is here, Greer says feminism is as relevant today as ever, because she says women never got the things they fought for.

Her concerns for Australia, however, are never very far from the surface.

Greer says Australia’s progressive stance on things like assisted reproductive techniques have created a lot of confusion and anger.

Her latest book is ‘Shakespeare’s Wife’, the story of Ann Hathaway who married William Shakespeare when she was pregnant with his child aged 26 and when he was just 18.

More info
Buy Shakespeare’s Wife

 

 

 


What do you think of Ms Greer's opinions? And should we care? Tell us below...

 

 

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