and she's angry
From: Paul Canning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 20:59:20 +1100
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Sydney Morning Herald
Monday, February 22
Fizzing with PMZ, Germaine boxes some ears
"It would have been inexcusable to remain silent" ... Greer lashes
"lifestyle feminists" in her sequel to The Female Eunuch. Photograph
by ELEANORA BENTALL
Twenty-eight years after The Female Eunuch dragged feminism and
Germaine Greer on to the world stage, the 60-year-old academic is
about to leap back into the fray with the sequel she vowed she would
never write.
The Whole Woman, a scalding rebuke to today's "lifestyle feminists",
for which she received a £500,000 ($1.4 million) advance, was born out
of her despair at the attitude that women can leave the battlefield
because they "have it all".
Greer, who describes herself as brimming with PMZ (post-menopausal
zest), also says "it would have been inexcusable to remain silent"
when her old feminist allies such as the American Betty Friedan were
condoning the actions of President Clinton.
The Whole Woman is a study of issues as diverse as beauty, abortion,
sex,
housework, motherhood, testosterone and teenage magazines.
In it, Greer aims to disabuse readers of the "complacent" assumption
that the feminists' fight is over, its protagonists draped in glory
for the concessions gained over the past three decades.
In an interview before publication of the book, Greer says she feels
betrayed by her old allies, the women who had campaigned for sexual
equality alongside her in the '70s.
"It was not until feminists of my own generation began to assert, with
apparent seriousness, that feminism had gone too far, that the fire
flared up in my belly."
In particular, she pours scorn on the British novelist Fay Weldon.
"She was one of the earliest feminists to speak up in this country.
She understood the mechanism then, and it seems to me that she has
forgotten it now. She sort of chuckles away and says 'Ho ho, poor
men'.
"I know she has had a facelift and I know she's on HRT [hormone
replacement
therapy], but would that have such a devastating effect on the
cerebellum?"
In her recent spat with the British newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore,
which
achieved international notoriety after Greer described her as having
"hair
bird's nested all over the place, f--- me shoes and three fat inches
of
cleavage", Greer claims she was hurt by Ms Moore's assertion that she
had a
hysterectomy at the age of 25 because she did not want children.
"All she had to do was ring up and say, 'I am sorry. I was misquoted'.
Or 'I was drunk'. Anything! But she said nothing, so I decided I would
smack her around the chops. It didn't hurt her at all. Maybe taught
her some respect for these older feminists who, ha, didn't want
children.
"You know, it's pretty painful when you have spent a goodly part of
your life struggling to have children, to have this young woman - who
is lucky enough to have two children of her own - suddenly announce
that I had myself
hysterectomised at 25 because I didn't want kids. How could she be so
stupid? Who did the operation? A vet?"
Greer also claims women have been "sold a lie" about gay men - that
gay
politicians would somehow be more considerate of social issues. "It is
much
easier to be a gay man in politics than it is to be a woman. I think
we have
always been sold a lie about gayness; that it is a mid-way state
between being male and female or masculine and feminine. In reality,
it is ultra-masculine."
Greer describes the British Government of Mr Tony Blair as an
oligarchy of his male friends, in which senior women such as the
Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, do not rate complete access
to the seat of power. Women in politics have "such a difficult life
because they don't have that particular kind of access, that men's
room access, to the Prime Minister. And they never will".
---
FEATURE
THE WHOLE WOMAN
She's back and she's angry
Germaine Greer at home in Essex in her kitchen. Photo by ELEANORA
BENTALL
Germaine Greer said she would never write a sequel to The Female
Eunuch. But
now, enraged by the complacency of 'lifestyle feminists', she has
written a
savage critique of women's lives today. She tells JAN MOIR why.
GERMAINE Greer is bent double by the pond in her wood and she is
screaming,
really screaming. "Eeowwww, my God," she yells. "My God, my God, my
God." Her piercing voice carries over the loamy East Anglia
countryside, drowning out the traffic from the nearby M11. On the
hillock above us, her two poodles, Molly and Margo, cease gambolling
and cock their ears at the commotion. I reach Greer's side, expecting
to see a stoat or somesuch hanging off her nose.
"Look!" she says, and points a quivering finger to the ground. Look at
what?
"Violets! New violets. Tra-la-la! Violets ... for ... her ... furs,"
she sings, then picks one from the tiny clump and hands it to me. "Is
that not the best thing ever? Is that not just too much? Oh, I'm so
pleased they are growing there."
She strides off; a tall, commanding figure dressed today in a grey
check shirt, grey trousers and grey leather lace-ups. "Anyone who
knows me," she says, "knows that I always wear grey." There are
diamonds at her ears, gold on her fingers and her hair is half-looped
up in a crazed bun, stray tendrils flying in the wind. She is
straight-backed, broad-hipped and, despite a slight limp, covers the
ground at a cracking pace.
Greer has several acres here, set to the west of the stone farmhouse
she bought 14 years ago. Besides the 100 mixed trees in her wood, she
has planted an orchard, an ornamental garden, laid one pond and is in
the process of creating another. As a Christmas present to herself,
she hired a mechanical digger and excavated a huge wedge of soil; the
site is now neatly pegged with wooden stakes and twine. She also
treated herself to 30 cubic metres of manure.
"Have you any idea," she asks, in her vibrant Australian accent, "how
expensive manure is?" Without waiting for an answer, she tramps
onwards towards the vegetable plots. An experiment with Chinese
cabbages was a disaster but she points with pride to her artichoke and
asparagus beds. "Very famous, my asparagus," she says, pleased. There
are also orderly rows of lavender, from which she makes and bottles
her own scented oils.
We pass her office, situated on the top floor of a timbered apple
store at the bottom of the garden and head on up to the house. "Smell
that," she commands, reaching up to a bough of honeysuckle. "Look at
this," she says, bending low over a cluster of rocket leaves.
The dogs follow their mistress inside, through the waxed and polished
kitchen and into the breakfast room where they slump gratefully into
their baskets. Here, there are yellow walls, homely rugs and a coal
fire burning merrily in the grate. Greer brings in a bottle of water
and two glasses, then clucks distractedly at a slash in the tablecloth
which she accidentally made with a Stanley knife. Still, the lemony
winter sun is splashing through the window, there is a jaunty jug of
narcissi on the ledge and all seems to be well in her finely ordered
world. Just then, however, the small and pretty room fills up with the
most unbelievably villainous, sulphuric smell.
"Oh dear. It's the dogs," she says, rather gleefully. Right on cue,
Molly lifts a leg and parps gently into the fetid air. In the other
corner, Margo just looks guilty. Greer places an index finger
innocently on her lips, furrows her brow and wonders aloud what on
earth they could have eaten to cause such a reaction.
"Oh, I know," she cries. "I had some seagull eggs which I had kept for
too long, so I boiled them up and gave them to the dogs."
She admonishes them in French - "they understand it better than
English" - then laughs raucously once more.
Although it would take much more then a temporary olfactory faux pas
to spoil this bucolic tranquillity, Greer must be aware that the stone
walls of her period home will provide a much needed sanctuary in the
tumultuous months to come. Since the publication of The Female Eunuch
in 1971, she has been a controversial figure, both inside and outside
feminist circles and - at the age of 60 - is poised to enter the fray
once more. Eunuch, which went on to become a seminal text, was
followed in 1984 by Sex and Destiny, a critique of the methods and
politics of contraception.
Seven years later she wrote The Change, a treatise on the menopause.
Professor Greer, who lectures at Warwick University two days a week,
has written many other books - academic studies, poetry critiques, a
memoir of her father - but these three volumes form the backbone of
her feminist polemic and also chart her own progress from sexual
liberator to unpredictable maverick, still brimming with what she
calls PMZ, post-menopausal zest.
And now, as much to her own surprise as anyone else's, she has done
something she promised she would never do; write a sequel to The
Female Eunuch. The Whole Woman is a scalding and radical work on the
brutal realities, as Greer sees them, of women's lives today. In a
comprehensive study of issues as diverse as beauty, abortion, sex,
housework, motherhood, testosterone and teenage magazines, the author
applies herself to disabusing readers of the "complacent" assumption
that the feminists' conflict is over, and all can now leave the
battlefield, draped in glory for the concessions gained over the past
three decades.
It is the book she did not want to write - despite a £500,000 ($1.25
million) advance - having always believed that each generation of
feminists should write their own manifestos. However, over the past
few years she has found herself increasingly despairing of the
tractable attitude evinced by those she scornfully calls the
"lifestyle" feminists.
"When they claimed that they had gone far enough in the right to have
it all, it would have been inexcusable to remain silent," she explains
in the book's opening pages.
In particular, she was furious about a recent book by Natasha Walter
("I
thought, this isn't what it is about at all"), and angry that
venerable American feminists, such as Betty Friedan, were claiming
that President Clinton hadn't done anything wrong. Even old friends,
such as Fay Weldon, she perceived, were letting the side down badly.
"I am slightly mystified about Fay Weldon," Greer says. "She was one
of the
earliest feminists to speak up in this country. She understood the
mechanism
then, and it seems to me that she has forgotten it now. She sort of
chuckles
away and says 'Ho ho, poor men.' I know she has had a facelift and I
know she's on HRT, but would that have such a devastating effect on
the cerebellum?" There is a deadly pause. "I don't know. I wonder."
On a more general level, Greer saw female pain and unhappiness in all
sections of society; teenagers attempting to come to terms with being
women, women struggling with relationships and mothers trying to cope.
"How much is too much and how much is not enough, you know? So I just
thought, can't anyone see what is going on? And I sat down to write
the book straight away."
That was in the winter of 1997, when Greer would often wake at 2am,
scurry down the pitch black garden path to the apple store and "write
and write and write". Much of this sense of urgency still burns off
the pages, although this is tempered by her scholarly approach and
academic disciplines. Is she dismayed that she felt obligated to write
The Whole Woman in the first place?
"No. Oh no. That would be the height of arrogance if I were to think
in those terms. I have no reason to be disappointed about anything.
And I have always thought that women are bloody amazing. I am always
delighted and astonished by them."
Instead, she gets angry on their behalf.
"The hypocrisy out there is so gross sometimes that I can't breathe,"
she
shouts. "They have just had this eco-summit where the most powerful
people in the world gathered to decide what they were going to do with
the planet in the next few years - and they were all men! Excuse me!"
Even the preponderance of women in the Blair Government does not give
her cause for cheer. "The Labour Party is ruled by an oligarchy. It is
ruled by Tony's friends and Tony's friends include no women.
"It is really interesting for me to watch those strongly motivated,
senior women like Mo Mowlam and Clare Short. They have such a
difficult life because they don't have that particular kind of access,
that men's room access, to the Prime Minister. And they never will.
Never. It is much easier to be a gay man in politics than it is to be
a woman."
In what way?
"In every way. I think we have always been sold a lie about gayness;
that it is a mid-way state between being male and female or masculine
and feminine. In reality, it is ultra-masculine."
MONTHS after the fury of her writing had abated, Greer had an
unsettling moment last week when she received her first finished copy
of The Whole Woman. For two hours after the parcel arrived, she could
not bring herself to open it. "It just sat there," she says, patting
the table. "I thought I was going to be sick. I suppose it's like
watching your children in their school concert. The same kind of
nerves."
Of course, the publication of any polemical work by Greer is always
greeted by a chorus of disapproval, perhaps increasingly so in the
past few years. Many of her compatriots feel that, despite her role as
intellectual matriarch of the British women's liberation movement, she
has lost touch with the modern sisterhood and should shuffle off to
Buffalo and let fresher voices take her place.
The startlingly contemporary sweep of The Whole Woman will surprise
many, while other critics will still find it hard to forgive Greer for
some of her more hard-headed statements of recent years. Her
pronouncement on rape for example - how insignificant the penis is -
still attracts howls of protest.
"But if you go down that road of maximising the penis, you are
repeating the old medieval error," she cries. "A man cannot destroy a
woman with his penis. He cannot do it. And I am here to tell men that
the thing between their legs is not the thing they think it is. It is
not even good for giving people pleasure, except for perhaps
themselves. I think that is an important feminist point and it is one
I will continue to make."
Other charges raised against her are that she has courage and
conviction, but no consistency. "They are always saying that, but it's
not true," she says. "There will always be those people who hate me. I
don't care who they are." Then she contradicts herself. "I do care
about attacks by other feminists. They can be gratuitous, but they can
still keep me awake at night. Still, I suppose a little bit of
treachery is par for the course."
Nevertheless, she is no mean hater herself, as illustrated by her
infamous spat with British columnist Suzanne Moore in 1995. The
difficulty began when Richard Neville incorrectly stated in his
autobiography that Greer had had a
hysterectomy when she was a young woman.
When Moore merely expressed surprise at this news, Greer - who has
always been strident in her abhorrence of "slash and burn" gynaecology
- launched a personal attack using language which might have made a
misogynist blush. She described Moore as having "hair bird's nested
all over the place, f--k-me shoes and three fat inches of cleavage."
Why?
"Because she said such a stupid and hurtful thing. And she now claims
that she apologised to me, but she didn't. All she had to do was ring
up and say: 'I am sorry. I was misquoted'. Or 'I was drunk'. Anything!
But she said nothing, so I decided I would smack her around the chops.
It didn't hurt her at all. Maybe taught her some respect for these
older feminists who, ha, didn't want children," says Greer, with heavy
sarcasm.
"You know, it's pretty painful when you have spent a goodly part of
your life struggling to have children, to have this young woman who is
lucky enough to have two children of her own suddenly announce that I
had myself hysterectomised at 25 because I didn't want kids. How could
she be so stupid? Who did the operation? A vet? I think that level of
incomprehension is inexcusable in someone who calls herself a
feminist."
Although she has constructed a family of sorts around her - her dogs,
a cat,
nine geese and a floating assortment of lodgers - it clearly remains a
private source of grief for Greer that she never had children of her
own.
"I think the real problem of me as a mother is that I would have bound
my child to me with hoops of steel. Oh, I would have loved it so," she
says, her strong, handsome face suddenly looking wan and sad.
Her own family background is bleak and curiously fractured. She was
not nurtured as a child and was brought up to believe that, in spite
of her early academic brilliance, she was worthless. "My mother never
admitted that I could do anything, and still won't. My father
pretended that he came from an intellectual milieu which was much more
elevated than mine."
Her 1989 book, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, was a quest to find out
about the
father - by then dead - who always winced when she tried to hug him.
She hoped she would find a hero, but instead discovered that he was
fostered, barely literate and had lied to his family about almost
everything. Peggy, Greer's mother, treated this news with the same
contempt she has shown for all her daughter's achievements. She has
never read any of Greer's books and appears to treat her daughter with
a malevolence bordering on cruelty.
"I thought I was the child my mother couldn't stand," says Greer, who
has a
younger brother and sister. "Then my uncle told me years later that he
always thought she was mad. Actually, I don't. I have come to the
conclusion that she has something like Asperger Syndrome, a
personality disorder. She doesn't really believe that other people
exist."
Today, Peggy Greer lives alone in "incredible squalor" in a
five-bedroom house in Australia. "It silts up with half-eaten
sandwiches, dirty clothes, newspapers and God knows what. My sister
sends the fire hoses in every three months to clean it up and my
mother abuses her, calls her every name under sun, for it. She'll have
to be locked up sooner or later."
At this point, Greer covers her face with her hands and emits an
incredible
keening noise, making it difficult to ascertain whether she is
laughing or
crying. "Do you know what happened recently? My mother got stuck in
the bath for four days," she shrieks. She pulls her hands away from
her mouth. She is
laughing uproariously.
Does she feel she is like her mother in any way?
"Oh yes," she says crisply. "That is certainly one of my more
lugubrious
thoughts."
In her incredibly active life, however, there is little time for
ponderous
musings. A dedicated scholar and a professor of English and
comparative
literature who has spent most of her life in libraries, Greer remains
impassioned about her studies. "I adore my editorial projects, I treat
them like needlework," she says. "Nothing pleases me more than getting
out Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea and comparing all her poems to
work out which one is the most authentic. Divine."
Over the years, this dedication has been a source of friction between
Greer and her friends. She even made one of them cry recently by
refusing to celebrate her 60th birthday. After being lectured about
her selfishness and self-absorption ("It's true, I am hopeless, far
too preoccupied. I always have such lovely thoughts in my head. When
friends telephone me, I find myself yearning for them to hang up -
even if I love them dearly"), she finally capitulated and threw a
party at the farmhouse.
Her guests feasted upon eight dozen oysters, four kinds of fish -
which they had to eat with their fingers - and a "sinful" amount of
Louis Roederer millesime Champagne. "I couldn't just have a
non-vintage. That would be tacky. That's the stuff I drink on Sunday
morning regular."
One day, she says, she hopes to escape from it all and live in total
solitude in an isolated cottage deep in the Scottish highlands. "That
would be my idea of heaven. I don't think I deserve to live with other
people."
However, she reveals that she is not quite ready yet to slip the bonds
of
society. "Like all women of taste, I am a pederast," she announces.
"Boys rather than men." This is rather surprising news, considering
that in The Change, she wrote convincingly of how the climacteric and
the subsequent loss of her sex drive had given her a new and joyous
freedom.
"I still have that. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Oh yes I
do," she insists. "The funny thing is that when you do feel sexually
attracted to
somebody now, you can just kind of enjoy it.
"And there is one person whom I see occasionally whom I do find
inexplicably
attractive. In a quite unconventional way - although I realise that he
is one of the type I have always found strangely compelling. But I
know that it would just be dreadful if he called my bluff or if I
called his. It would be utter comic opera, although it is quite nice
thinking about it."
It might not be so bad, I say, hardly able to comprehend that I am
having this skittish, schoolgirly conversation with Germaine Greer,
the most famous grande dame of feminism the free world has ever known.
Good Lord; we are discussing whom she fancies.
"Oh, I do know it would be bad. Take if from me, it would be
dreadful," she
hoots. As I gather up my papers, I ask one last question, which was
not the one I had written in my notebook. What is your type of man,
Professor Greer?
"All sorts. Never you mind," she says, then relents. "Older women tend
to like boys or, indeed, effeminate men. This man is not effeminate in
the least. He might be thought to look rather effeminate, except that
you know very well that he is the opposite. An East End hard boy. A
combination of the two."
So, there we have it. Germaine Greer has got a crush on a bit of
rough. Isn't she full of surprises?
The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer is published by Transworld next
month.
end
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