View source for Germaine Greer

{{Short description|Australian writer and public intellectual (born 1939)}}
{{Pp-move}}
{{Use Australian English|date=August 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2018}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Germaine Greer
| image              = Germaine Greer, 28 October 2013 (portrait crop).jpg
| caption            = Greer at the [[University of Melbourne]] in 2013
| birth_date         = {{Birth date and age|df=y|1939|1|29}}
| birth_place        = [[Melbourne]], [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]], Australia
| alias              = {{plainlist|
*Dr. G (for [[Oz (magazine)|''Oz'']] magazine)
*Rose Blight (for ''[[Private Eye]]'')
*Earth Rose (for [[Jim Haynes#Suck|''Suck'']] magazine)}}
| education          = {{Plainlist|
* [[University of Melbourne]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])
* [[University of Sydney]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]])
* [[Newnham College, Cambridge]] ([[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])}}
<!--
-->{{Infobox|child=yes
| label1 = PhD thesis
| data1  = ''[http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599683 The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies]'' (1968)
}}
| occupation         = Writer
| years_active       = 1970–present
| era                = [[Second-wave feminism]]
| known_for          = 
| notable_works      = ''[[The Female Eunuch]]'' (1970)
| television         = 
| spouse             = {{marriage|[[Paul du Feu]]<br />|1968|1973|end=div}}
| awards             = 
| module             = {{Listen|embed=yes|filename=Germaine Greer BBC Radio4 Bookclub 5 Aug 2007 b007rdly.flac|title=Germaine Greer speaking|type=speech|description={{center|Recorded August 2007 from ''[[Bookclub (radio programme)|Bookclub]]'', BBC Radio 4}}}}
}}

'''Germaine Greer''' ({{IPAc-en|g|r|ɪər}}; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and [[feminist]], regarded as one of the major voices of the [[second-wave feminism]] movement in the latter half of the 20th century.<ref>{{harvnb|Magarey|2010|pp=402–403}}; {{harvnb|Medoff|2010|p=263}}; {{harvnb|Standish|2014|p=263}}; {{harvnb|Francis|Henningham|2017}}. For the date of birth, {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=3}}.</ref>

Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the [[University of Warwick]] and [[Newnham College, Cambridge]], and in the United States at the [[University of Tulsa]]. Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England.{{sfn|Francis|Henningham|2017}}

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, ''[[The Female Eunuch]]'' (1970), made her a household name.<ref name=Winant2015/> An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as [[womanhood]] and [[femininity]], arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed.<ref>Saracoglu, Melody (12 May 2014). [http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2014/05/melody-saracoglu-germaine-greer-one-woman-against-world "Melody Saracoglu on Germaine Greer: One Woman Against the World"], ''New Statesman''.</ref>{{sfn|Reilly|2010|p=213}}

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 Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]'' (2003). Her 2013 book, ''[[White Beech: The Rainforest Years]]'', describes her efforts to restore an area of [[Gondwana Rainforests of Australia|rainforest]] 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 Guardian]]'', ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', ''[[The Spectator]]'', ''[[The Independent]]'', and ''[[The Oldie]]'', among others.<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/>

Greer is a [[Women's liberation movement|liberation]] (or [[Radical feminism|radical]]) rather than [[Equality feminism|equality feminist]].{{efn|Germaine Greer, "All About Women" (2015): "I've always been a liberation feminist. I'm not an equality feminist. I think that's a profoundly conservative aim, and it wouldn't change anything. It would just mean that women were implicated."<ref>{{YouTube|id=Jzcs4ti_bdI&t=1h6m4s|title=How to be a feminist}}, All About Women festival, Sydney Opera House, 8 March 2015 (Greer and others discussing feminism; at 01:06:04)</ref>}} 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 feminism|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".{{efn|Germaine Greer (''The Whole Woman'', 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. ''The Female Eunuch'' was one feminist text that did not argue for equality."{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=JPycAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 2]}}}}

==Early life and education==
===Melbourne===
[[File:Elwood beach and Melbourne skyline.jpg|thumb|[[Elwood, Victoria|Elwood]] beach. The skyline of the [[Melbourne city centre]] is visible in the distance.]]
Greer was born in [[Melbourne]] to a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] family, the elder of two girls followed by a boy. Her father called himself Eric Reginald ("Reg") Greer; he 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]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=292}} She also learned he was christened Robert Henry Eric Ernest Hambert.<ref>{{cite book |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=1989 |title=Daddy, We Hardly Knew You |page=280 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=62iHDwAAQBAJ&q=Daddy+we+hardly+knew+you |location=New York |publisher=Fawcett Columbine |isbn=0449905616 }}</ref> He and her mother, Margaret ("Peggy") May Lafrank, had married in March 1937; Reg converted to Catholicism before the wedding.<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|pp=1–3}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=3}}.</ref> Peggy was a [[Hatmaking|milliner]] and Reg a newspaper-advertising salesman.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=1–3}}{{efn|Greer's maternal grandparents were Alida ("Liddy") Lafrank, née Jensen, and Albert Lafrank.<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=2}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=3}}.</ref>}} Despite her Catholic upbringing and her father's open [[antisemitism]], 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]], joined a Jewish theatre group, and dated Jewish men.<ref>{{cite book |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=1989 |title=Daddy, We Hardly Knew You |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=62iHDwAAQBAJ&q=Daddy+we+hardly+knew+you |location=New York |publisher=Fawcett Columbine |isbn=0449905616 }}</ref> In addition to English, Greer had learnt three European languages by the age of 12.<ref name="bbc.co.uk">"Germaine Bloody Greer"|https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6q27f (subscription required</ref>

The family lived in the Melbourne suburb of [[Elwood, Victoria|Elwood]], at first in a rented flat in Docker Street, near the beach, then in another rented flat on the Esplanade.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=4}} In January 1942 Greer's father joined the [[Second Australian Imperial Force]]; after training with the [[Royal Australian Air Force]], he worked on [[cryptanalysis|ciphers]] for the British [[Royal Air Force]] in [[Egypt]] and [[Malta]].<ref>{{harvnb|Packer|1984|p=86}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|pp=4, 72}}; {{cite web|url=http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au|title=Record Search| publisher=National Archives of Australia |access-date=25 June 2017}}</ref> 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, Victoria|Sandringham]], and Holy Redeemer School, [[Ripponlea, Victoria|Ripponlea]].{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=4, 11, 13}}

In 1952 Greer won a scholarship to [[Star of the Sea College]] in [[Gardenvale, Victoria|Gardenvale]], a convent school run by the [[Presentation Sisters|Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary]]; a school report called her "a bit of a mad-cap and somewhat erratic in her studies and in her personal responses".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=11, 13}} Greer described her childhood as a "long remembered boredom", and has said it was her Catholic school that introduced her to art and music.<ref name="bbc.co.uk"/> That year, artwork by her was included in the under-14 section of the Children's Art Exhibition at [[Tye's Gallery]], opened by [[Daniel Mannix|Archbishop Mannix]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article172527215 |title=High Standard of Children's Art |newspaper=[[The Advocate (Melbourne)|Advocate]] |volume=LXXXV|issue=5071 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=2 October 1952 |page=18 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> Greer achieved the second highest exam results in the state.<ref name="bbc.co.uk"/> A year after leaving school, Greer left the Catholic faith, having found the nuns' arguments for the [[existence of God]] unconvincing.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=16}} 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".<ref>{{YouTube|id=cCzilf_o6fg&t=1m0s|title=Interview with Germaine Greer}}, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Sydney Opera House (00:01:00–00:03:42)</ref>

===University===
====Melbourne and Sydney====
[[File:Old Arts Building. Parkville Campus of University of Melbourne (cropped).JPG|thumb|left|The Old Arts building, [[University of Melbourne]]]]
From 1956 Greer studied English and French language and literature at the [[University of Melbourne]] on a Teacher's College Scholarship, living at home for the first two years on an allowance of £8 a week.<ref>{{harvnb|Packer|1984|p=89}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|pp=27, 49}}.</ref>
{{convert|6|ft|m|1|order=flip|abbr=off}} tall by the age of 16,<ref name=Winant2015/> 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 Fellowship|Peter Blazey]], a contemporary at Melbourne.<ref>Milliken, Robert (28 September 1997). [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/greer-savages-dung-beetle-biographer-1241706.html "Greer savages 'dung beetle' biographer"]. ''The Independent'', citing Blazey, Peter (1997). ''Screw Loose: Uncalled for Memoirs''. Sydney: Picador.</ref> During her first year she had some kind of breakdown as a result of depression and was briefly treated in hospital.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=33}} She told ''[[Playboy]]'' magazine, in an interview published in 1972, that [[#rape|she had been raped]] during her second year at Melbourne, an experience she described in detail in ''The Guardian'' in March 1995.<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=269}}.</ref><ref name=Greer20March1995/>

[[File:(1) Royal George Hotel.JPG|thumb|Royal George Hotel, Sydney, 2010]]
Just before she graduated from Melbourne in 1959 with an upper second, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved with the [[Sydney Push]] and the [[anarchism|anarchist]] Sydney Libertarians. "[T]hese 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."{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=74}} They would meet in a back room of the Royal George Hotel on [[Sussex Street, Sydney|Sussex Street]]. [[Clive James]] was involved with the group at the time. One of Greer's biographers, [[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.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=201}} She had significant relationships in the group with [[Harry Hooton]]{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=57–59}} 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 "[[Open relationships|free love]]" involved the rejection of possessiveness and jealousy, which naturally worked in the men's favour.<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=73}}; also see {{harvnb|Coombs|1996}}</ref>

When the relationship with Smilde ended, Greer enrolled at the [[University of Sydney]] to study [[Lord Byron|Byron]],{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=83}} where, Clive James wrote, she became "famous for her brilliantly foul tongue".{{sfn|James|1991|p=13}} One of her friends there, [[Arthur Dignam]], said that she "was the only woman we had met at that stage who could confidently, easily and amusingly put men down".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=92}} She became involved in acting at Sydney and played [[Mother Courage]] in ''[[Mother Courage and Her Children]]'' in August 1963.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=97}} That year she was awarded a first-class MA for a thesis entitled "The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode",{{sfn|Greer|1963}} and took up an appointment at Sydney as senior tutor in English, with an office next door to [[Stephen Thomas Knight|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."{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=81}}

====Cambridge====
{{see also|List of former Footlights members}}
[[File:Newnham College, Cambridge, March 2008.jpg|thumb|left|[[Newnham College, Cambridge]]]]
The MA won Greer a [[Commonwealth Scholarship]], with which she funded further studies at the [[University of Cambridge]], arriving in October 1964 at [[Newnham College, Cambridge|Newnham College]], a women-only college.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=109}} She had been encouraged to move from Sydney by [[Samuel Louis Goldberg|Sam Goldberg]], a [[Leavisite]], who had been [[Challis Chair]] of English Literature at Sydney since 1963.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=82}} 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]]) to the PhD programme to study [[Shakespeare]], supervised by [[Anne Barton (Shakespearean scholar)|Anne Barton]], then known as Anne Righter.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=85}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=11}}; {{harvnb|Packer|1984|p=95}}; {{harvnb|James|1991|p=16}}</ref> She said she switched because she "realized they were not going to teach [her] anything".{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=85}} It was [[M. C. Bradbrook|Muriel Bradbrook]], Cambridge's first female Professor of English, who persuaded Greer to study Shakespeare; Bradbrook had supervised Barton's PhD.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=87}}

[[File:Cambridge News, November 1964.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Left to right: Hilary Walston, Germaine Greer and Sheila Buhr, joining the [[Footlights]], ''[[Cambridge News]]'', November 1964<ref>"Women admitted to make Footlights even brighter", ''Cambridge News'', November 1964.</ref>]]
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, Cambridge|Christ's College]] that allowed "Wives in for sherry only".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=112}} [[Lisa Jardine]] 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":

<blockquote>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]]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.<ref>[[Lisa Jardine|Jardine, Lisa]] (7 March 1999). [http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,97559,00.html "Growing up with Greer"], ''The Guardian''.</ref></blockquote>

As soon as she arrived, Greer auditioned (with [[Clive James]], whom she knew from the [[Sydney Push]]) for the student acting company, the [[Footlights]], in its club room in [[Petty Cury|Falcon Yard]] above a [[Mac Fisheries]] shop. They performed a sketch in which he was [[Noël Coward]] and she was [[Gertrude Lawrence]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=89–90}} Joining on the same day as James and [[Russell Davies]],<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nnnlc "Pete & Clive"], BBC Radio 4, 9 November 2015, from 00:06:43.</ref> Greer was one of the first women to be admitted as a full member, along with Sheila Buhr and Hilary Walston.{{efn|There had been women before who had been allowed to join in, but not as full members. [[Christine Wallace]] (1999): "A former Newnham student had paved the way: the actress Eleanor Bron, who appeared in Footlights in the late 1950s.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=123–124}} The decision to extend membership to women has been attributed to [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]],<ref>Boston, Richard (3 June 2013). [https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/jun/03/cambridge-footlights-comedy-university "From the archive, 3 June 1983: Cambridge Footlights celebrate 100 years of comedy"], ''The Guardian''.</ref> and to [[Eric Idle]], the Footlights president.}} The ''Cambridge News'' carried a news item about it in November 1964, referring to the women as "three girls".<ref name=Buchanan26May2016/> Greer's response to being accepted was reportedly: "This place is jumping with freckle-punchers. You can have it on your own."{{sfn|James|1991|p=16}} She did take part in its 1965 revue, ''My Girl Herbert'',{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=123–124}} alongside [[Eric Idle]] (the Footlights president), [[John Cameron (musician)|John Cameron]], [[Christie Davies]] and [[John Grillo]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.footlights.org/past/1965 |title=Cambridge Footlights: Year ending 1965 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060104112941/http://www.footlights.org/past/1965 |archive-date=4 January 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref> A critic noticed "an Australian girl who had a natural ability to project her voice".<ref>{{cite web |title=Footlights at 120: A history of Footlights |url=http://www.footlights.org:80/history |publisher=Cambridge Footlights |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060104103517/http://www.footlights.org/history |archive-date=4 January 2006 |url-status=dead |access-date=26 August 2020 }}</ref><!--Greer also took part in ''[[This Way Out]]'',<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.footlights.org/past/1966 |title=Cambridge Footlights: Year ending 1966 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060104110215/http://www.footlights.org:80/past/1966 |archive-date=4 January 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref> and helped to organise ''Supernatural Gas'' (directed by [[Clive James]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.footlights.org/past/1967 |title=Cambridge Footlights: Year ending 1967 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060104110215/http://www.footlights.org:80/past/1967 |archive-date=4 January 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref>--> Other members of the Footlights when she was there included [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]], [[John Cleese]], [[Peter Cook]] and [[David Frost]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=90}}

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

[[File:cmglee Cambridge Friar House from The Eagle.jpg|left|thumb|Greer lived in the room next to [[Clive James]] at Friar House (white building), [[Bene't Street]], Cambridge.]]
{{blockquote|Drawing on her incongruous but irrepressible skills as a housewife, she had tatted lengths of batik, draped bolts of brocade, swathed silk, swagged satin, niched, ruffed, hemmed and hawed. There were oriental carpets and occidental screens, ornamental plants and incidental music. The effect was stunning.&nbsp;... Romaine, however, once she had got her life of luxury up and running, did not luxuriate. She had a typewriter the size of a printing press. Instantly she was at it, ten hours a day. Through the lath-and-plaster wall I could hear her attacking the typewriter as if she had a contract, with penalty clauses, for testing it to destruction.{{sfn|James|1991|p=145}}}}

Greer, who speaks fluent Italian,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://library.unimelb.edu.au/asc/collections/highlights/collections/germainegreer/feature-images/tuscany-through-greers-eyes | title=Tuscany through Greer's eyes | date=16 July 2020 }}</ref> finished her PhD in [[Calabria]], 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 changed her plans. Rising before dawn, she would wash herself at a well, drink black coffee and start typing.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Buchanan |first1=Rachel |title=Showcasing Germaine Greer's Shakespearean scholarship |url=http://shakespeare400.unimelb.edu.au/tales/showcasing-germaine-greer-s-shakespearean-scholarship/ |publisher=University of Melbourne |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170219170255/http://shakespeare400.unimelb.edu.au/tales/showcasing-germaine-greer-s-shakespearean-scholarship/ |archive-date=2017-02-19|postscript=;}}<br />also see {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=101–102}}.</ref> She was awarded her PhD in May 1968 for a thesis entitled ''The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies''.{{sfn|Greer|1968}} 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."{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=102}}

''The Female Eunuch'' relies extensively on Greer's Shakespearean scholarship, particularly when discussing the history of marriage and courtship.<ref name=Buchanan26May2016>{{cite news |last1=Buchanan |first1=Rachel |title=Friday essay: How Shakespeare helped shape Germaine Greer's feminist masterpiece |url=https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-shakespeare-helped-shape-germaine-greers-feminist-masterpiece-59880 |work=The Conversation |date=26 May 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180414154156/https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-shakespeare-helped-shape-germaine-greers-feminist-masterpiece-59880 |archive-date=14 April 2018}};<br />{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=94–95}}.</ref> In 1986 Oxford University Press published her book ''Shakespeare'' as part of its [[Past Masters (book series)|Past Masters series]], and in 2007 Bloomsbury published her study of [[Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare)|Anne Hathaway]], ''Shakespeare's Wife''.{{sfn|Yalom|2009|pp=29–30}}

==Early career and writing==
===Teaching, marriage and television===
[[File:Germaine Greer, June 1972 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Greer in June 1972]]
{{anchor|Paul}}From 1968 to 1972, Greer worked as an assistant lecturer at the [[University of Warwick]] in Coventry, living at first in a rented bedsit in [[Leamington Spa]] with two cats and 300 tadpoles.<ref name=Bell31July1969/>{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=126–130}} 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]] 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.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=126–130}}<ref>{{cite news |last=Brooks |first=Richard |date=10 July 2011 |title=Greer reveals her triple trauma of rape, miscarriage and IVF |url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/greer-reveals-her-triple-trauma-of-rape-miscarriage-and-ivf-7q8vpt5k396 |newspaper=[[The Sunday Times]] |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Du Feu had already been divorced and had two sons, aged 14 and 16, with his first wife.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=120}}

The relationship lasted only a few weeks. Apparently unfaithful to du Feu seven times in three weeks of marriage,<ref name=Denton15Sept2003>{{cite news |title=Germaine Greer |url=http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s946782.htm |work=Enough Rope with Andrew Denton |publisher=ABC Television (Australia) |date=15 September 2003 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060103033826/http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s946782.htm |archive-date=3 January 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref> Greer wrote that she had spent their wedding night in an armchair, because her husband, drunk, would not allow her in bed.<ref name=Greer29May2004>Greer, Germaine (29 May 2004). [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3320728/Country-notebook-drunken-ex-husband.html "Country notebook: drunken ex-husband"] ''The Daily Telegraph''</ref> Eventually, during a party near [[Ladbroke Grove]], "'[h]e 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.'"<ref name=Greer29May2004/>

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]] (the Australian artist and co-editor of ''[[Oz (magazine)|Oz]]'' magazine) and Bob Whitaker.<ref name=Buchanan17Feb2017/><ref>{{YouTube|VH2eyftdBac|''Darling, Do You Love Me?'' (1968)}}</ref> From 1968 to 1969 she featured in a [[Granada Television]] slapstick show, ''Nice Time'', with [[Kenny Everett]], [[Sandra Gough]] and [[Jonathan Routh]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Nice Time |url=https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/nice_time/ |website=British Comedy Guide |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161225230410/https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/nice_time/ |archive-date=25 December 2016}}</ref> 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.<ref name=Buchanan17Feb2017>{{cite news |last1=Buchanan |first1=Rachel |title=Why Germaine Greer was filmed naked in a bathtub of milk |url=https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-germaine-greer-was-filmed-naked-in-a-bathtub-of-milk |work=Pursuit |publisher=University of Melbourne |date=17 February 2017}}</ref> She stated in 1995, that she had wanted to become a mother, but was forced to abandon this due to constant miscarriages.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjME6IUgjs |title=Germaine Greer talks to Andrew Neil about childlessness {{!}} Is This Your Life? {{!}} 1995 |date=2021-12-07 |last=Open Media |access-date=2024-12-18 |via=YouTube}}</ref> 

===''Oz'' and ''Suck''===
[[File:Oz magazine, issue 19, early 1969.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|left|Greer on the cover of ''[[OZ (magazine)|Oz]]'' magazine, early 1969, with [[Vivian Stanshall]] of the [[Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band]]]]
Greer began writing columns as "Dr. G" for ''[[Oz (magazine)|Oz]]'' magazine, owned by [[Richard Neville (writer)|Richard Neville]], whom she had met at a party in Sydney.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=112, 176}} 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".{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=109, 111}} [[Keith Morris (photographer)|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]] and another in which she pretends to play the guitar.<ref>{{cite web |title=Photographs |date=30 August 2017 |url=https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/191793 |publisher=Germaine Greer Archive, University of Melbourne |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003194325/https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/191793 |archive-date=3 October 2018 |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine }}</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite journal |title=OZ 29, July 1970 |year=1970 |url=http://ro.uow.edu.au/ozlondon/29/ |publisher=University of Wollongong Australia |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180211025158/https://ro.uow.edu.au/ozlondon/29/ |archive-date=11 February 2018|url-status=live|last1=Neville |first1=Richard |journal=Research Online }}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=176}}</ref> As "Rose Blight", she also wrote a gardening column for ''[[Private Eye]]''.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=266}}<!--add The Universal Tonguebath, issue 19 of Oz, early 1969-->

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 (author)|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 (Metropolitan Police)|Special Branch]] raided its London office in the [[Arts Lab]] in [[Drury Lane]] and closed its postbox address.<ref name=suck>{{cite book |title=Suck, the first European sex magazine |oclc=810282005}}</ref>{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=121}}

According to [[Beatrice Faust]], ''Suck'' published "high misogynist [[Sadomasochism|SM]] content", including a cover illustration, for issue&nbsp;7, of a man holding a "screaming woman with her legs in the air while another rapes her anally".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Faust |first1=Beatrice |author-link=Beatrice Faust |title=Grab-bag of Germaine ideas |work=The Age |date=20 December 1986 |page=137}}</ref> One of Greer's biographers, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, wrote that almost nothing was off limits for ''Suck'', including descriptions of child abuse, incest and bestiality.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=121}} Greer's column, "Sucky Fucky" by "Earth Rose",{{sfn|Neville|2010|p=166}} included advice to women about how to look after their genitals and how they ought to taste their vaginal secretions.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=122}} She published the name of a friend, someone she knew from her time with the [[Sydney Push]] and to whom she later dedicated ''The Female Eunuch'': "Anyone who wants group sex in New York and likes fat girls, contact [[Lillian Roxon]]."<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=141}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=188}}.</ref> During a 1970 Amsterdam film festival organized by ''Suck'', the judging panel, which included Greer, gave first prize to [[Bodil Joensen]] for a film in which a woman has sex with animals.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=124}} ''Suck'' reproduced one interview with Greer (first published in ''[[Screw (magazine)|Screw]]'', another pornographic magazine), entitled "I Am a Whore".<ref name=Winant2015/>

In parallel with her involvement in ''Suck'', Greer told [[Robert Greenfield]] of ''Rolling Stone'' in January 1971 that she was an admirer of the [[Redstockings]], a [[Radical feminism|radical feminist]] group founded in New York in January 1969 by [[Ellen Willis]] and [[Shulamith Firestone]].<ref name=Greenfield7Jan1971/> Criticised by feminists for her involvement with ''Suck'', in May 1971 she told an interviewer for ''Screw'':

{{blockquote|There's a big cleft between sexual liberation and women's liberation. My sisters get mad at me when I say gay liberation is part of our whole movement, and we've got to combine them. They want me to wear pants and be unavailable, and carry a jimmy to bash people over the head with if they feel my ass in the street. They get mad at me for calling myself superwhore, supergroupie, and all that stuff. They think I'm cheapening myself, I'm allowing people to laugh at me, when the whole point is that if my body is sacred and mine to dispose of, then I don't have to build things around it like it was property that could be stolen.<ref>"An Intimate Interview with Germaine Greer", ''Screw: The Sex Review'', May 1971; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=208}}.</ref>}}

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.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=156–157}};<br />{{cite news| url = http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2091764,00.html|title = Well done, Beth Ditto. Now let it all hang out|last=Greer|first = Germaine |date = 31 May 2007|work = The Guardian}}</ref><ref name=ifeminists>{{cite web |url= http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/1215cook.html |title=Encounters with Germaine Greer|first=Dana|last=Cook|date=15 December 2004|website=ifeminists.com}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=157}} She resigned, accusing the other editors of being "counter-revolutionary".<ref name=suck/> Greer said later that her aim in joining the editorial board had been to try to steer ''Suck'' away from exploitative, sadistic pornography.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=123}}<ref>{{YouTube|Q0hvr8GPV_I|Germaine Greer: Pornography perpetuates stereotypical notions of sex}}, ''Iqsquared'', 2 May 2013.</ref>

===''The Female Eunuch'' (1970)===
====Writing====
{{further|The Female Eunuch}}
[[File:The Pheasantry-152 Kings Road.JPG|thumb|[[The Pheasantry]], 152 [[King's Road]], [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]]]]
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]] in [[The Pheasantry]] on [[King's Road]].<ref name=Bell31July1969>{{cite news |last1=Bell |first1=Lynne |title=Doctor who refuses to be type-cast |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=31 July 1969 |page=19}}</ref> When she first moved to London, she had stayed in [[John Peel]]'s spare room before being invited to take the bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under [[Martin Sharp]]'s; accommodation there was by invitation only.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=106–108}}

She was also writing ''The Female Eunuch''. On 17 March 1969 she had had lunch in [[Golden Square]], [[Soho]], 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=137}}; also see {{harvnb|Packer|1984|p=98}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=141}}.</ref> Crawford had suggested that Greer write a book for the 50th anniversary of women (or a portion of them) being [[Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom|given the vote in the UK]] in 1918.{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=11}} 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.{{sfn|Packer|1984|p=98}} In a three-page synopsis for Mehta, she wrote: "If [[Eldridge Cleaver]] can write [[Soul on Ice (book)|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."{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=7}}

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]] 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]] sings at [[Albert Hall]]. Yesterday the title was Strumpet Voluntary—what shall it be today?"{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=9}} She told the ''[[Sydney Morning Herald]]'' 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".<ref name=Bell31July1969/> 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."{{sfn|Greer|1986|p=26}} Several British feminists, including [[Angela Carter]], [[Sheila Rowbotham]] and [[Michelene Wandor]], responded angrily.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=403}} 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.{{sfn|Spongberg|1993|p=415}}

====Publication====
[[File:Female Eunuch cover.jpeg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Christine Wallace]] called [[Paladin Books|Paladin]]'s cover, designed by John Holmes, one of the most "instantly recognizable images in post-war publishing".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=161–162}}]]

Launched at a party attended by editors from ''Oz'',{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=176}} ''The Female Eunuch'' was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Tweedie |first1=Jill |title=Goodbye love |work=The Guardian |date=28 September 1970 |page=9}}; {{cite news |last1=Lyndon |first1=Neil |author-link=Neil Lyndon |title=Shooting down The Female Eunuch |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/shooting-down-the-female-eunuch-d75bkm2t9jz |work=The Sunday Times |date=10 October 2010}}.</ref> dedicated to [[Lillian Roxon]] and four other women.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=136–137}}</ref> The first print run of {{frac|2|1|2}} thousand copies sold out on the first day.<ref name=Byrne1986>{{cite news |title=Germaine Greer on Marriage, Children And Society |url=https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1021/825887-germaine-greer-and-the-female-eunuch/ |work=The Late Late Show |publisher=RTÉ |date=24 October 1986}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Reilly|2010|p=213}} According to Greer, [[McGraw-Hill]] paid $29,000 for the American rights and [[Bantam Books|Bantam]] $135,000 for the paperback.<ref name=Greenfield7Jan1971>{{cite magazine |last1=Greenfield |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert Greenfield |title=Germaine Greer, A Groupie in Women's Lib |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/germaine/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=7 January 1971 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171223025916/http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/germaine/ |archive-date=23 December 2017}}</ref> 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".{{sfn|Baumgardner|2001|p=3}} Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly,{{sfn|Baumgardner|2001|p=4}} and it has never been out of print.<ref name=Winant2015/> 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.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=299}} By 1998 it had sold over one million copies in the UK alone.<ref name=McCann25Feb1998/>

The year 1970 was an important one for second-wave feminism. In February 400 women met in [[Ruskin College]], Oxford, for Britain's first Women's Liberation Conference.<ref>{{harvnb|Lake|2016|p=10}}; {{cite news |title=The first Women's Liberation Movement Conference |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03/2010_08_thu.shtml |work=Woman's Hour |publisher=BBC |date=25 February 2010}}</ref> In August [[Kate Millett]]'s ''[[Sexual Politics]]'' was published in New York;<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Doherty |first1=Maggie |title=What Kate Did |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/131897/kate-millett-sexual-politics |magazine=The New Republic |date=23 March 2016}}</ref> 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]] was on the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' 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).<ref>{{harvnb|Poirot|2004|pp=204–205}}; {{harvnb|Mosmann|2016|p=84}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=166–167}}.</ref> September and October saw the publication of ''[[Sisterhood Is Powerful]]'', edited by [[Robin Morgan]], and [[Shulamith Firestone]]'s ''[[The Dialectic of Sex]]''.{{sfn|Merck|2010|p=13}} 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.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Heilpern |first1=John |title=Women who came out in the cold |work=The Observer |date=7 March 1971 |page=1}}<br />{{cite news |last1=Whitmore |first1=Greg |title=Women's Liberation Movement march, 1971 – in pictures |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/mar/03/womens-liberation-movement-march-1971-in-pictures |work=The Guardian |date=3 March 2018}}<br />{{cite news |last1=Tweedie |first1=Jill |title=From the archive, 8 March 1971: Women march for liberation in London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/mar/08/1971-womens-liberation-march-archive |work=The Guardian |date=8 March 2013}}</ref> By that month ''The Female Eunuch'' had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=299}} McGraw-Hill published it in the United States on 16 April 1971.<ref name=weintraub22March1971/><ref>{{cite news |title=Books of the Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/20/archives/the-best-feminist-book-so-far.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=20 April 1971}}; {{cite news |last1=Kempton |first1=Sally |title=''The Female Eunuch'' by Germaine Greer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/25/archives/the-female-eunuch-by-germaine-greer-349-pp-new-york-mcgrawhill-book.html|date=25 April 1971|work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> 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]] where her publisher had booked her; her book launch had to be rescheduled because so many people wanted to attend.<ref>{{harvnb|Spongberg|1993|p=407}}; for the Hotel Chelsea, {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=169}}.</ref> A ''[[New York Times]]'' book review described her as "[s]ix feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and a profile reminiscent of [[Greta Garbo|Garbo]]".<ref name=weintraub22March1971/> Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear".{{sfn|Caine|Gatens|1998|p=44}}

{{anchor|cover}}A [[Grafton (publisher)|Paladin]] paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by [[René Magritte]],<ref name=Hamilton2016p44/> showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip.<ref>Russell, Marlowe (18 October 2011). [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/18/john-holmes-obituary "John Holmes obituary"], ''The Guardian''.</ref> [[Clive Hamilton]] regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created".<ref name=Hamilton2016p44>{{harvnb|Hamilton|2016|p=44}}.</ref> 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&nbsp;... 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".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=161–162}} The book was reissued in 2001 by [[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]] at the instigation of [[Jennifer Baumgardner]], a leading [[Third-wave feminism|third-wave feminist]] and editor of the publisher's Feminist Classics series.{{sfn|Baumgardner|2011|p=34}} According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist".{{sfn|Wlodarczyk|2010|p=24}}

====Arguments====
{{quote box|align=left|qalign=left|salign=right|width=250px|border=.20em|quote="When a woman may walk on the open streets of our cities alone, without insult or obstacle, at any pace she chooses, there will be no further need for this book."|source=—Germaine Greer, 1969, ''The Female Eunuch'', opening line of the first draft.<ref>[http://hdl.handle.net/11343/42290 "''The Female Eunuch'' first draft"], University Library, The University of Melbourne.</ref>}}

''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.{{sfn|Brock|2016|p=80}} She summarized the book's position in 2018 as "Do what you want and want what you do&nbsp;... Don't take it up the arse if you don't want to take it up the arse."<ref>{{YouTube|id=cCzilf_o6fg|title=Interview with Germaine Greer}}, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Sydney Opera House {{time needed|date=November 2020}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Brock|2016|p=82}} 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"):{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=8}}

{{blockquote|This book is part of the second feminist wave. The old [[suffragette]]s, who served their prison term and lived on through the years of gradual admission of women into professions which they declined to follow, into parliamentary freedoms which they declined to exercise, into academies which they used more and more as shops where they could take out degrees while waiting to get married, have seen their spirit revive in younger women with a new and vital cast.&nbsp;... The new emphasis is different. Then genteel middle-class ladies clamoured for reform, now ungenteel middle-class women are calling for revolution.{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=13}}}}

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?"{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=371}}

[[File:Germaine Greer, Amsterdam, June 1972.jpg|thumb|Greer in Amsterdam, 6 June 1972, on a book tour for ''The Female Eunuch'']]
Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to ''Sex and Destiny'' 14 years later, namely that the [[nuclear family]] is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children, and that the manufacture of [[Human female sexuality|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.<ref>{{YouTube|id=CN2xhrEJCxs|title=Germaine Greer explains her interpretation of ''The Female Eunuch''}}, BBC, 9 June 2018</ref> "Like beasts", she told ''[[The New York Times]]'' 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."<ref name=weintraub22March1971>{{cite news|first=Judith|last=Weintraub|date=March 22, 1971|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/greer-shock.html|title=Germaine Greer&nbsp;– Opinions That May Shock the Faithful|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> The book argues that "[w]omen have very little idea of how much men hate them", while "[m]en do not themselves know the depth of their hatred."<ref>{{harvnb|Greer|2001|pp=279, 281–282}}; also see {{harvnb|Greer|1999|p=359}}.</ref> [[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&nbsp;..."{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=353}} The American feminist [[Betty Friedan]], 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.{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=334}}

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).{{sfn|Evans|2002|p=68}} 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 criticised Greer for her attitude toward women:

{{blockquote|Having convincingly and movingly shown how women are castrated by society, turned into fearful and resentful dependents, she surprisingly spends the rest of her book castigating them as the creators of their own misery. There is a strange confusion here of victim and oppression, so that her most telling insights into women's psychic lives are vitiated by her hatred for those who lead such lives. Feeling that women are crippled in their capacity to love others because they cannot love themselves, she feels that women must despise each other. Perhaps this self-contempt explains the gratuitous nastiness of her cracks about faculty wives, most wives, all those who haven't reached her state of independence, and her willingness to denigrate most of the members of the Women's movement she mentions.&nbsp;... The lack of "sisterhood" she shows, of love for those who never chose to be eunuchs and who are made miserable by their sense of their own impotence is more than obtuse and unpleasant, it is destructive.{{sfn|Diamond|1972|p=277}}}}

==Celebrity==
===Debate with Norman Mailer===
{{main|Town Bloody Hall}}
{{quote box|align=left|qalign=left|salign=right|width=250px|border=.20em|quote="She was something to be seen: clad in a black fur jacket and a glamorous floor-length sleeveless dress, the thirty-two-year-old Greer was six feet tall, angular verging on bony, and in possession of a thick crown of frizzed-out black hair. Her style on stage was less performance than poised seduction."|source=—&nbsp;[[Carmen Winant]], describing Greer in ''Town Bloody Hall'' (1979)<ref name=Winant2015/>}}

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".<ref name=Spongberg1993p407>{{harvnb|Spongberg|1993|p=407}}.</ref> Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at the [[The Town Hall (New York City)|Town Hall]] in New York, she famously debated [[Norman Mailer]], 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]]."{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=175}} [[Betty Friedan]], [[Sargent Shriver]], [[Susan Sontag]] and [[Stephen Spender]] sat in the audience, where tickets were $25 a head (c.&nbsp;$155 in 2018), while Greer and Mailer shared the stage with [[Jill Johnston]], [[Diana Trilling]] and [[Jacqueline Ceballos]].<ref name=Winant2015>{{harvnb|Winant|2015}}.</ref><ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/>{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=177}} Several feminists declined to attend, including [[Ti-Grace Atkinson]], [[Kate Millett]], [[Robin Morgan]] and [[Gloria Steinem]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=175}} Filmmakers [[Chris Hegedus]] and [[D. A. Pennebaker]] captured the event in the documentary ''Town Bloody Hall'' (1979).<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/>

{{External media
| image1 = [https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw19244/Germaine-Greer.jpg In ''Vogue'' magazine], photographed by Lord Snowdon, May 1971{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=170}}
| image2 = [https://web.archive.org/web/20181206100507/https://imgc.artprintimages.com/img/print/feminist-germaine-greer-may-7-1971_u-l-p699dxo1zoo.jpg?h=900&w=900 In ''Life'' magazine], 7 May 1971
|audio1={{YouTube|EWKcs0anxKc|This House Supports the Women's Liberation Movement}}, Greer debates [[William F. Buckley Jr.]], [[Cambridge Union]], 1973; Greer speaks from 00:13:40 and Buckley from 00:20:15.
|video1={{YouTube|id=zT1wHe1DlOM&t=1m15s|title=Greer at the Town Hall, New York, 30 April 1971|link=no}}}}

Wearing a [[Paisley (design)|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 (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine on 7 May 1971, under the title "Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like"; there were five more photographs of her inside.<ref>{{harvnb|Smith|2012|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=HfnZAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA309 309]}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=171–172}}.</ref> Also in May, she was featured in [[Vogue (magazine)|''Vogue'']] magazine, photographed by [[Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon|Lord Snowdon]], on the floor in knee-length boots and wearing the same paisley coat.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=170}} (In 2016 the coat, now in the [[National Museum of Australia]], got its own scholarly article, and the photograph by Lord Snowdon is in the [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]] in London.){{sfn|Mosmann|2016|pp=78, 83}} On 18 May Greer addressed the [[National Press Club (United States)|National Press Club]] in Washington, the first woman to do so; she was introduced as "an attractive, intelligent, sexually liberated woman".{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=173}} She also appeared on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'', and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=183}}

Greer was in a relationship at the time with Tony Gourvish, manager of the British rock band [[Family (band)|Family]], 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.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=160–161}} 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]]s" made pregnant by American soldiers, and to Bangladesh, where she interviewed women [[Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War|raped by Pakistani soldiers]] during the 1971 [[Bangladesh Liberation War]].<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018>{{cite web|last1=Buchanan|first1=Rachel|title=Why it's time to acknowledge Germaine Greer, journalist |url=https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-to-acknowledge-germaine-greer-journalist-88958|website=The Conversation|date=7 January 2018}}</ref>

===Tuscany===
[[File:Germaine Greer SLNSW FL4580206.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Germaine Greer, c.1975]]
In the summer of 1971, Greer moved to [[Cortona]], [[Tuscany]], where she rented ''Il Palazzone'', a cottage near the town, then bought a house, ''Pianelli''.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=209, 212}} She told [[Richard Neville (writer)|Richard Neville]] that she had to spend time away from England because of its tax laws.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=209}} She spent part of that summer in [[Porto Cervo]], a seaside resort, with [[Kenneth Tynan]], artistic director of the [[Royal National Theatre]], as guests of [[Michael White (producer)|Michael White]], the impresario. The group had dinner one evening with [[Princess Margaret]], [[Lord Snowdon]] and [[Aga Khan IV|Karim Aga Khan]]. 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]]'s ''[[Lysistrata]]''.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=206–209}}<ref name=Dean1Nov2013/> First performed in 411 BCE, the play explores an attempt by women to force the end of the [[Peloponnesian War]] 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.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=207}}<ref name=Dean1Nov2013>Dean, Katrina (1 November 2013). [https://theconversation.com/why-germaine-greers-life-in-letters-is-one-for-the-archives-19625 "Why Germaine Greer's life in letters is one for the archives"], ''The Conversation''.</ref> 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''.<ref>{{harvnb|Greer|Willmott|2011}}; [[Michael Billington (critic)|Billington, Michael]] (9 July 1999). [https://www.theguardian.com/stage/1999/jul/09/theatre.artsfeatures "What a carry on"], ''The Guardian''.</ref> 
Greer has described the freedom she felt at her home in Italy,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2803443/04_Buchanan-Greer-21.pdf |title='Here I let live, and am let live': Germaine Greer and Italy |first=Rachel |last=Buchanan |access-date=3 March 2024}}</ref> which had no electricity when she first moved there. While living in Italy, Greer interviewed{{efn|Greer is a polyglot, and can write or speak German, French, Spanish and Latin, in addition to English and Italian<ref>{{cite web | url=https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/91820 | title=Germaine Greer's Shakespeare: Early writing }}</ref>}} [[Primo Levi]], [[Luciano Pavarotti]] and her friend and lover<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/apr/11/germaine-greer-federico-fellini | title=Federico Fellini wanted to cast me in Casanova. We ended up in bed together &#124; Germaine Greer | website=[[TheGuardian.com]] | date=11 April 2010 }}</ref> [[Federico Fellini]].

In or around July 1971 Greer was interviewed by Nat Lehrman, a member of ''[[Playboy]]''{{'}}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&nbsp;– a Candid Conversation with the Ballsy Author of ''The Female Eunuch''".<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=211–212; 401, n.&nbsp;8}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=212, n.&nbsp;22}}.</ref> It was during this interview that she first discussed publicly that [[#rape|she had been raped]] in her second year at the University of Melbourne.<ref>{{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=269}}; also see {{harvnb|Packer|1984|pp=92–93}}.</ref><ref name=Greer20March1995/> Busy with her journalism and publicity tours, she resigned her teaching position at Warwick that year.{{sfn|Standish|2014}} 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]] (who would later be elected mayor of [[Invercargill]] 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.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=202–203}}

In August 1973 Greer debated [[William F. Buckley Jr.]] at the [[Cambridge Union]] 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."<ref>[[William F. Buckley Jr.|Buckley, William F.]] (1989). ''On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures''. New York: Random House.</ref><ref name=ifeminists/>

Greer, then 37, had an affair in 1976 with the novelist [[Martin Amis]], then 26, which was discussed publicly in 2015 after she sold her archives to the University of Melbourne. In them [[Margaret Simons]] 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&nbsp;... with it. As for you, my darling, I see you very rarely. Even in my dreams you send me only your handmaidens."{{sfn|Simons|2015}}

===Tulsa===
{{further|Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature}}
[[File:Mcfarlin ice.jpg|thumb|left|McFarlin Library, [[University of 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.<ref>Greer, Germaine (1979). ''The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work''. London: Martin Secker and Warburg.</ref><ref>[[Peter Conrad (academic)|Conrad, Peter]] (28 October 1979). "Decorative Drudgery". ''[[The Observer]]'', p. 39.</ref> That year Greer was appointed director of the Center of the Study of Women's Literature at the [[University of Tulsa]], Oklahoma, and in 1982 she founded the ''Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature'', an academic journal that highlights unknown or little-known women writers.{{sfn|Medoff|2010|p=263}}<ref name="Greer 464089">{{cite journal|last=Greer |first=Germaine|title=The Tulsa Center for the Study of Women's Literature: What We Are Doing and Why We Are Doing It|date=Spring 1982|volume=1|issue=1|pages=5–26|url=https://tswl.utulsa.edu/1980s/vol-1/fall-1982-vol-1-no-1/|journal=Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature|doi=10.2307/464089 |jstor=464089|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181001080617/https://tswl.utulsa.edu/1980s/vol-1/fall-1982-vol-1-no-1/ |archive-date=1 October 2018|url-access=subscription}}</ref> In the first issue Greer wrote that she wanted the journal to focus on the "rehabilitation of women's literary history".<ref name="Greer 464089"/> She would spend five months a year in Tulsa and the rest in the UK.{{sfn|Packer|1984|p=85}}

She continued working as a journalist. In 1984 she travelled to [[Ethiopia#Derg era (1974–1991)|Ethiopia]] to report on the [[1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia|1983–1985 famine]] for the ''[[Daily Mail]]'' and again in April 1985 for ''[[The Observer]]''. For the latter, she took photographs with an Olympus automatic camera and drove 700&nbsp;km to [[Asosa]], a city to which the [[Derg|Ethiopian government]] 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]] in the UK.<ref name=Buchanan7Jan2018/>

===''Sex and Destiny'' (1984)===
''Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility'' (1984) continued Greer's critique of Western attitudes toward sexuality, [[fertility]], 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]] 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]], Essex, England, 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.<ref name=TheMills/><ref>For being proud of the wood, see {{harvnb|Greer|2013|p=1}}.</ref> The Mills was still Greer's home for part of the year when she put it up for sale in 2018;<ref name=TheMills>Greer, Germaine (11 March 2018). [https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/wildlife-nature/article/germaine-greer-offers-advice-for-the-next-owner-of-her-essex-home-ckcfn9p2r "Germaine Greer offers advice for the next owner of her Essex home"]. ''The Sunday Times''.<br />{{cite web |title=The Mills |url=https://assets.savills.com/properties/GBCARSCAS150149/CAS150149_CAS15002037.PDF |publisher=Savills |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180602004903/https://assets.savills.com/properties/GBCARSCAS150149/CAS150149_CAS15002037.PDF |archive-date=2 June 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> as of 2016 she was spending four months a year in Australia and the rest in the UK.<ref name=Dugdale7Nov2016>{{cite news |last1=Dugdale |first1=Lynda |title=Germaine Greer: Not about to change |url=https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2016/11/07/germaine-greer-not-about-to-change |work=Intheblack |date=7 November 2016}}</ref>

[[File:Germaine Greer and Lewis Wolpert on After Dark on 30 May 1994.jpg|thumb|With [[Lewis Wolpert]] on [[Channel 4]]'s ''[[After Dark (TV series)|After Dark]]'', 1994]]
Her book ''Shakespeare'' (her PhD topic) was published in 1986 by Oxford University Press as part of its [[Past Masters (book series)|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]], [[Antonia Fraser]], [[Ian McEwan]], [[Margaret Drabble]], [[Salman Rushdie]], [[David Hare (playwright)|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.{{sfn|Peacock|1999|pp=26–27}}<!--Greer was strongly supportive of the gay community.-->

In 1989 she wrote ''[[Daddy, We Hardly Knew You]]'', 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|bye-fellow]] that year of Newnham College, Cambridge,{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=266}}<ref name=AngliaRuskin/> a position she held until 1998.{{sfn|Standish|2014}} Greer founded Stump Cross Books, based at The Mills, which published the work of 17th- and 18th-century female poets.{{sfn|Medoff|2010|p=263}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Welcome to Stump Cross Books Home Page |url=http://www.sxbxsx.com/books.htm |website=Stump Cross Books |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180601163348/http://www.sxbxsx.com/books.htm |archive-date=2018-06-01}}</ref> She returned to the University of Warwick, accepting a personal Chair as Professor in the English and Comparative Studies department.<ref name=AngliaRuskin>{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer Honorary Doctor of Letters, 2003 |publisher=Anglia Ruskin University|archive-date=24 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151124103022/http://ww2.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/honorary/greer.html|url-status=dead|url=http://ww2.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/honorary/greer.html}}</ref>

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?''<ref>{{IMDb title|tt9800432|Is This Your Life?|(22 July 1995, Germaine Greer)}}</ref> In 1998 she wrote an episode, "Make Love not War", for the television documentary series ''[[Cold War (TV series)|Cold War]]'', and the following year sat for a nude photograph by the Australian photographer [[Polly Borland]].<ref>[https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw15907/ Germaine Greer] by [[Polly Borland]], [[National Portrait Gallery, London]], October 1999.</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=7 February 1994|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/02/07/Greer-to-sue-journalist-who-posed-as-a-homeless-man/3897760597200/|title=Greer to sue journalist who posed as a homeless man|agency=[[United Press International]]}}</ref> After the newspaper published a three-page spread, the [[Press Complaints Commission]] found it guilty of subterfuge not in the public interest.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/newspaper-breached-code-1432513.html|title=Newspaper breached code|newspaper=[[The Independent]]|date=30 March 1994}}</ref>

==Later writing about women==
===''The Change'' (1991 and 2018)===
[[Natalie Angier]], writing in ''[[The New York Times]]'', called ''The Change: Women, Ageing, and the Menopause'' (1991) a "brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book&nbsp;...  tantalizingly close to being a potential feminist classic on a par with ''The Female Eunuch''."  In it, Greer writes of the myths about [[menopause]]—or as she prefers to call it the "climacteric", or critical period.<ref>{{cite news|first=Natalie|last=Angier|authorlink=Natalie Angier|date=October 11, 1992|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/greer-change.html|title=The Transit of Woman|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> "Frightening females is fun", she wrote in ''[[The Age]]'' in 2002. "Women were frightened into using [[hormone replacement therapy]] by dire predictions of crumbling bones, [[heart disease]], loss of [[libido]], [[clinical depression|depression]], despair, disease and death if they let nature take its course." She argues that scaring women is "big business and hugely profitable".<ref>{{cite news|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=13 July 2002|url=https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/07/12/1026185109376.html|title=The Female Used|newspaper=[[The Age]]}}</ref> The book, including the medical information, was updated and reissued in 2018.<ref>[https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-change-9781632869203/ "The Change"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200314145912/https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-change-9781632869203/ |date=14 March 2020 }}, Bloomsbury Publishing.</ref>

===''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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Doody |first1=Margaret Anne |author-link=Margaret Doody |title=Poxy Doxies |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/v17/n24/margaret-anne-doody/poxy-doxies |journal=[[London Review of Books]] |volume=17|issue=24|date=14 December 2005 |pages=14–15}}</ref> Her conclusion is that women were held to lower standards than men (hence the "slip-shod" sibyls of the title, quoting [[Alexander Pope]]), and the poetic tradition discouraged good poetry from women.{{sfn|Greer|1995|p=xxiii}} The book includes a critique of the concept of woman as [[Muses|Muse]], associated with [[Robert Graves]] and others; a chapter on [[Sappho]] and her use as a symbol of female poetry; a chapter on the 17th-century poet [[Katherine Philips]]; two chapters on [[Aphra Behn]] and one on [[Anne Wharton]]; and material on [[Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea|Anne Finch]], [[Letitia Landon]] 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."{{sfn|Greer|1995|p=390}}

===''The Whole Woman'' (1999)===
[[File:Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman, Waterstone's, 1999.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Display in the window of a [[Waterstone's]] book store for the launch of ''The Whole Woman'']]
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.<ref name=McCann25Feb1998>{{cite news |last1=McCann |first1=Paul |title=Greer paid pounds 1/2m for new 'Female Eunuch' |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/greer-paid-pounds-12m-for-new-female-eunuch-1146787.html |work=The Independent |date=25 February 1998}}</ref><ref name=Thackray21Feb1999>{{cite news |last1=Thackray |first1=Rachelle |title=Germaine smacks her sisters |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/germaine-smacks-her-sisters-1072156.html |work=The Independent on Sunday|date=21 February 1999}}</ref> 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 [women's] visceral experiences [that] is 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."<ref name=Greer1999p3>{{harvnb|Greer|1999|page=[https://archive.org/details/wholewoman00gree/page/3 3]}}</ref>
 
{{blockquote|Even if it had been real, equality would have been a poor substitute for liberation; fake equality is leading women into double jeopardy. The rhetoric of equality is being used in the name of political correctness to mask the hammering that women are taking. When ''The Female Eunuch'' was written our daughters were not cutting or starving themselves. On every side speechless women endure endless hardship, grief and pain, in a world system that creates billions of losers for every handful of winners. It's time to get angry again.<ref name=Greer1999p3/>}}

Her comments on [[female genital mutilation]] (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.{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=120}}<ref>{{cite news |author-link=Michiko Kakutani |last=Kakutani |first=Michiko |date=18 May 1999 |title= The Female Condition, Re-explored 30 Years Later |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05EFDB153EF93BA25756C0A96F958260&fta=y}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/535488.stm| title=MPs attack Greer on female circumcision| date=25 November 1999| work=BBC News}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=119}}

===On gender===
====Sex-gender distinction====
In ''The Whole Woman'', Greer argued that, while [[Sex and gender distinction|sex]] is a biological given, [[gender role]]s are cultural constructs. [[Femininity]] is not [[female]]ness. "Genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity", she wrote.{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=2}} 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.{{sfn|Greer|1999|pp=369-370}} "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."<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=29m54s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:29:54</ref>

====Transgender identity====
In a 1989 issue of the Independent, she published "On Why Sex Change is a Lie", an essay in which she recalled a 1971 encounter with someone she perceived as a trans woman. She referred to this person as "it" and "him"; called her a "gross parody of my sex" who should not be allowed to "come to the lavatory with me" or possess a "female passport"; and said that when this person "grabbed my hand" to say "thank you," she did so with a "paw" with a "rapist's grip."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Healy |first=Rachael |date=2024-08-07 |title=Ugly Sisters review – deft duo riff on Germaine Greer's encounter with a trans woman |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/article/2024/aug/07/ugly-sisters-review-germaine-greer-underbelly-cowgate |access-date=2024-08-08 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Thurlow |first=Claire |date=March 2024 |title='It's just common sense': A Critical Exploration of Contemporary Trans-Exclusionary Feminism |url=https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/169922/1/2024ThurlowCPhD.pdf |access-date=August 8, 2024 |publisher=Cardiff University - School of Law & Politics}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Lees |first=Paris |date=2015-11-20 |title=Paris Lees: On Germaine Greer and the Hypocrisy of the 'Left' |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/germaine-greer-paris-lees-hypocrisy-left-free-speech/ |access-date=2024-08-08 |website=VICE |language=en-US}}</ref>

In 1997, she said it was "disgraceful" that Newnham College had recently granted a fellowship to physicist [[Rachael Padman]], a [[trans woman]] who had transitioned in the early 1980s during her PhD. Cambridge University explained that, "since the early 1970s", whenever the university was aware of someone requesting privacy for their gender transition, it had been a university-wide practice for the administration to maintain their privacy and respect the gender in which they lived. Greer argued that since Padman had been born male, the women-only college had "driven a coach and horses through our statutes" by admitting her.<ref>{{cite news |last=Garner |first=Clare |date=25 June 1997 |title=Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307162149/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html |archive-date=March 7, 2014 |work=[[The Independent]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Mistiaen |first=Veronique |date=August 24, 1997 |title=Can Cambridge's All-women College Survive The Change? |url=https://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-08-24/features/9708240082_1_all-women-college-single-sex-college-germaine-greer |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307070206/https://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-08-24/features/9708240082_1_all-women-college-single-sex-college-germaine-greer |archive-date=March 7, 2014 |access-date=August 9, 2024 |work=Chicago Tribune}}</ref>

In 1999, 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."{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=64}}

She reiterated her views several times over the following years,{{efn|Greer repeated her views in 2016 on an episode of Australia's ''[[Q&A (Australian talk show)|Q&A]]'',<ref>{{cite news|title=''Q&A'': Germaine Greer revives an old controversy about what constitutes a real woman|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-11/q&a-germaine-greer-weighs-in-sexuality-transgender/7318024|work=ABC News|date=11 April 2016}}</ref> and in 2018 on Channel 4's ''Genderquake'' debate in the UK.<ref>{{cite news|first=Sarah|last=Ditum|date=13 May 2018|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/13/genderquake-failed-now-for-a-proper-trans-debate|title=Genderquake failed. Now for a proper trans debate|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref>}} including in 2015 when students at [[Cardiff University]] tried unsuccessfully to [[No Platform|"no platform"]] her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century".<ref>{{cite news|first=Steven|last=Morris|date=18 November 2015|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/18/transgender-activists-protest-germaine-greer-lecture-cardiff-university |title=Germaine Greer gives university lecture despite campaign to silence her|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with [[Kirsty Wark]] for BBC ''[[Newsnight]]'', that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of [[Caitlyn Jenner]] for Glamour Woman of the Year had been [[Misogyny|misogynist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-34625512/germaine-greer-transgender-women-are-not-women|title=Germaine Greer: Transgender women are 'not women'|website=[[BBC News]]|date=24 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Kimiko|last=De Freytas-Tamura|date=24 October 2015|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/world/europe/cardiff-university-rejects-bid-to-bar-germaine-greer.html|title=Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Lehmann|first1=Claire|author-link=Claire Lehmann|title=Germaine Greer and the scourge of 'no-platforming'|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-27/lehmann-greer-and-the-no-platforming-scourge/6887576|work=[[ABC News (Australia)|ABC News]]|date=27 October 2015}}</ref> Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to ''[[The Observer]]'' in 2015 objecting to the use of no-platform policies against Greer and feminists with similar views; signatories included [[Beatrix Campbell]], [[Mary Beard (classicist)|Mary Beard]], [[Deborah Cameron (linguist)|Deborah Cameron]], [[Catherine Hall]], [[Liz Kelly]], [[Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett|Ruth Lister]], and the [[Southall Black Sisters]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Campbell |first1=Beatrix |display-authors=etal |author-link1=Beatrix Campbell |title=We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |work=[[The Observer]] |date=14 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181013014630/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |archive-date=13 October 2018 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=12 October 2018 }}</ref>

===On rape===
====Arguments====
Greer wrote in ''The Female Eunuch'' (1970) that [[rape]] is not the "expression of uncontrollable desire" but an act of "murderous aggression, spawned in self-loathing and enacted upon the hated other".{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=281}} 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."<ref name=Greer6March1995/>

{{quote box|align=right|qalign=left|salign=right|width=250px|border=.20em|quote="If we adopt a female-centred view of the offence, can we really argue that a raped woman is ruined or undone? She may be outraged and humiliated, but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."|source=Germaine Greer, ''[[The Guardian]]'', 6 March 1995.<ref name=Greer6March1995/>}}

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."<ref name=Greer6March1995/> 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.<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=13m2s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:13:00</ref> She suggested in 1995 that the crime of rape be replaced by one of [[sexual assault]] with varying degrees of seriousness and swifter outcomes.<ref name=Greer6March1995>{{cite news|ref=none|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=6 March 1995|title=Call rape by another name|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|page=20}}</ref> In 2018 she said she had changed her mind about calling rape "sexual assault", because most rape (in particular, [[marital rape|sex without consent within marriage]]) is not accompanied by physical violence.<ref>{{YouTube|id=Zg54CZ_Lo9s&t=2m49s|title=Germaine Greer on tackling rape and the gender pay gap}}, ''[[The Wright Stuff]]'', Channel 5, UK, 6 April 2018, at 2m49s</ref> "There is no way that the law of rape fits the reality of women's lives", she said in 2018.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Germaine Greer|display-authors=etal|date=24 March 2018 |title=Debate: Has the #MeToo Movement Gone Too Far? |medium=video |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=iX1gNTF7liM|time=00:05:20|location=YouTube}} How to:Academy and ''[[The New York Times]]''.</ref> Her book, ''On Rape'', was published by [[Melbourne University Press]] in September 2018.<ref>{{cite book|first=Germaine|last=Greer|url=https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522874303-on-rape|title=On Rape|publisher=[[Melbourne University Press]]|location=Melbourne, Australia|date=2018|isbn=978-0522874303|access-date=3 June 2018|archive-date=11 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180711212916/https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522874303-on-rape|url-status=dead}}</ref>

====Personal experience====
{{anchor|rape}}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.<ref>{{harvnb|Packer|1984|pp=92–93}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|pp=269, 287}}.</ref> 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.<ref name=Greer20March1995/> 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.<ref name=Greer20March1995/>

She argued, in two ''Guardian'' columns, that it was not the rapist's penis that had hurt her, but his fists and "vicious mind",<ref name=Greer20March1995/> and the loss of control, invasion of self, and "being made to speak the rapist's script".<ref>{{cite news|ref=none|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=3 April 1995|title=A phallocentric view of sexual violence|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> "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.<ref name=Greer20March1995>{{cite news|ref=none|first=Germaine |last=Greer|date=20 March 1995|title=The refusal to be bowed by brutality|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Her views were strongly criticised by [[Women Against Rape]], which at the time was campaigning for more prosecutions.<ref>{{cite news|first=Peter|last=Ellingsen|date=22 March 1995|title=Feminists' anger as Greer calls for 'outing' of rapists|newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]}}</ref>

===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 [[Sexual harassment|sexually harassed]].<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Germaine Greer |display-authors=etal|date=6 November 2017 |title=Germaine Greer: Australian politician did a Weinstein on me |medium=video |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefk34SsMM&t=3m14s |time=00:03:14|location=YouTube |publisher=[[Sam Delaney's News Thing]], RT UK}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite news|first=Nick|last=Miller|date=21 January 2018 |url=https://www.smh.com.au/world/germaine-greer-challenges-metoo-campaign-20180121-h0lpra.html |title=Germaine Greer challenges #MeToo campaign|newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]}}</ref>  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]]s, but then had spoken out once the [[statute of limitations]] had lapsed and they had nothing to lose.<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=8m12s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, [[Channel 4 News]], 23 May 2018</ref>

==Other work==
===''The Boy'' (2003)===
{{main|The Beautiful Boy}}
[[File:Björn Andrésen dans Mort à Venise.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Björn Andrésen]] was featured on the cover of ''The Boy'']]
A book of art history, ''The Boy'' (2003)<ref name=Denton15Sept2003/>—published in the United States as ''The Beautiful Boy''—was illustrated with 200 photographs of what ''The Observer'' called "succulent teenage male beauty".<ref name=Merritt5Oct2003>Merritt, Stephanie (5 October 2003). [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/05/highereducation.gender "Danger mouth"], ''The Observer''.</ref> 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".<ref>Greer, Germaine (2003). ''The Beautiful Boy'', New York: Rizzoli. Quoted in Deslandes, Paul R. (2013). "Exposing, Adorning, and Dressing in the Modern Era", in Sarah Toulalan, Kate Fisher (eds.), ''The Routledge History of Sex and the Body, 1500 to the Present''. Routledge, p.&nbsp;[https://books.google.com/books?id=X_w83yCJCOQC&pg=PA186 186].</ref>{{efn|In the book's opening pages, Greer writes: "Most people have accepted without question that women are treated as sex objects, viewed principally as body, with a primary duty to attract male attention. Though this is clearly true, it is also true that women are at the same time programmed for failure in their duty of attraction, because boys do it better. This is not good news for men, because a boy is a boy for only a very brief space. He has to be old enough to be capable of sexual response but not yet old enough to shave. This window of opportunity is not only narrow, it is mostly illegal. The male human is beautiful when his cheeks are still smooth, his body hairless, his head full-maned, his eyes clear, his manner shy and his belly flat."<ref name=":12">{{Cite news |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=11 October 2003 |title=Why women just like to look |work=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]|url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/why-women-just-like-to-look-20031011-gdhk4b.html |access-date=18 April 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Greer |first=Germaine |title=The Beautiful Boy |year=2003 |pages=7}}</ref>}}

The cover photograph, by [[David Bailey]], was of 15-year-old [[Björn Andrésen]] in his character of Tadzio in the film ''[[Death in Venice (film)|Death in Venice]]'' (1971). The actor complained about Greer's use of the photograph, saying it was used without his permission and was disturbed by the contents of the book. He stated "Adult love for adolescents is something that I am against in principle... Emotionally perhaps, and intellectually, I am disturbed by it—because I have some insight into what this kind of love is about."<ref>Seaton, Matt (16 October 2003). [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/oct/16/gender.film "I feel used"], ''The Guardian''; [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/17/1066364482598.html "I'm not Germaine's toy, says cover boy"], Australian Associated Press, 18 October 2003.</ref> Some writers characterised the book's nature as [[pedophilia|paedophilic]],<ref>{{cite news|last=Young|first=Emma|title=Sticks and stones may break bones but not stereotypes|url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/sticks-and-stones-may-break-bones-but-not-stereotypes-20031027-gdhnv3.html|access-date=2007-09-09 |date=27 October 2003|work=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Abdolmaleki |first=Kara |date=November 2013 |title=The Female Gaze in The Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat and Lost Highway by David Lynch |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iranian-studies/article/abs/female-gaze-in-the-blind-owl-by-sadeq-hedayat-and-lost-highway-by-david-lynch/CB0C15F60E128878F9772D1B67E6F0F3 |journal=[[Iranian Studies (journal)|Iranian Studies]] |language=en |volume=46 |issue=6 |pages=906 |doi=10.1080/00210862.2013.810072 |s2cid=161738859 |issn=0021-0862|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Alessandrini |first=Christopher |date=18 May 2019 |title='Boys Do It Better': The Paintings of Louis Fratino |work=[[The New York Review of Books]] |url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/18/boys-do-it-better-the-paintings-of-louis-fratino/ |access-date=19 April 2022}}</ref> with Greer herself admitting that she expected to be called a paedophile after publication.<ref>{{Cite news |date=27 July 2003 |title=Greer braced for 'paedophile book' storm |work=[[The Scotsman]] |url=https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news/greer-braced-paedophile-book-storm-2511208 |access-date=18 April 2022}}</ref>

==="Whitefella Jump Up" (2003)===
Greer has published several essays on [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal]] issues, including "Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood", first published in ''[[Quarterly Essay]]'' in August 2003,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood |journal=[[Quarterly Essay]] |publisher=[[Schwartz Publishing]]|date=August 2003 |url=https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2003/08/whitefella-jump-up |location=Melbourne, Australia}}</ref> and later as a book in the UK.{{sfn|Greer|2004|p=22}}<ref>{{cite news |title=A new outbreak of Germs warfare |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/a-new-outbreak-of-germs-warfare-20040828-gdjmrs.html |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=28 August 2004}}</ref> 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]]". 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]] with activist [[Bobbi Sykes]].{{sfn|Greer|2004|p=22}}

Greer argued that Australians should re-imagine the country as an Aboriginal nation. "Jump up" in [[Australian Kriol language|Australian Kriol]] 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:

{{blockquote|Though I can claim no drop of Aboriginal blood, twenty years ago [[Kulin people|Kulin]] women from [[Fitzroy, Victoria|Fitzroy]] adopted me. There are whitefellas who insist that blackfellas don't practise adoption; all I can say is that when I asked about the possibility of assuming Aboriginality, the Kulin women said at once 'We'll adopt you.' 'How do you do that?' I asked, hoping I wouldn't be required to camp in some bleak spot for a month or two, and be painted or smoked and cut about. 'That's it,' they said. 'It's done. We've adopted you.' Since then I have sat on the ground with black women and been assigned a skin and been taught how to hunt and how to cook shellfish and [[witchetty grub]]s, with no worse punishment for getting it wrong than being laughed at.{{sfn|Greer|2004|p=23}}}}

Greer's essay ''On Rage'' (2008) dealt with the widespread rage of Indigenous men.<ref>{{cite book|last=Greer|first=Germaine|title=On Rage|year=2008|publisher=Melbourne University Press|location=Carlton, Victoria|isbn=9780522855180|oclc=271842343}}; {{cite news| last = Wilson| first = Laura| url = http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24183660-16947,00.html| title = Bob Carr pierced by Germaine Greer's 'ferocious logic'| date = 15 August 2008| work = [[The Australian]]| access-date = 15 August 2008| archive-date = 17 September 2008| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080917184241/http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24183660-16947,00.html| url-status = dead}}</ref> Aboriginal academic [[Marcia Langton]] argued that she was making excuses for bad behaviour.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/greer-maintains-rage-of-racists/story-e6frg6zo-1111117231379|archive-url=https://archive.today/20121231002456/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/greer-maintains-rage-of-racists/story-e6frg6zo-1111117231379|url-status=dead|archive-date=31 December 2012|title=Greer maintains rage of racists|last=Langton|first=Marcia|author-link=Marcia Langton|date=15 August 2008|work=[[The Australian]]}}</ref> Greer returned that year to Newnham College, Cambridge, as a special supervisor.{{sfn|Standish|2014}}

===''White Beech'' (2013)===
{{further|White Beech: The Rainforest Years|Gondwana Rainforests of Australia}}
[[File:Natural Bridge, Springbrook National Park, Queensland - Cave Creek.JPG|thumb|left|Cave Creek, near [[Natural Bridge, Queensland]]]]
In 2001 Greer bought {{convert|60|ha}} of land in Australia for $500,000 at Cave Creek in the [[Numinbah Valley]], near the [[Natural Bridge, Queensland|Natural Bridge]] section of [[Springbrook National Park]] 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.<ref>Lowry, Elizabeth (22 January 2014). [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/22/white-beech-rainforest-years-germaine-greer "White Beech: The Rainforest Years by Germaine Greer – review"], ''The Guardian''.<br />Giblett, Rod (2014). [https://plumwoodmountain.com/rod-giblett-reviews-white-beech-by-germaine-greer/ "Rod Giblett reviews White Beech by Germaine Greer"], ''Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics'' 1(2).</ref><ref name=Greer12Jan2005/> Friends of Gondwana Rainforest, a charity Greer registered in England in 2011, funds and oversees the project.<ref>[http://gondwanarainforest.org/ "Friends of Gondwana Rainforest"], gondwanarainforest.org; [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07842375 "Friends of Gondwana Rainforest"], Companies House.<br />Greer, Germaine (29 January 2014). [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthcomment/10592487/Germaine-Greer-Im-staging-a-rainforest-rescue.html "Germaine Greer: I'm staging a rainforest rescue"], ''The Daily Telegraph''.</ref>

[[File:Germaine Greer Sydney Writers Walk plaque.jpg|thumb|Plaque on the [[Sydney Writers Walk]]: "Australia is my birthplace but I cannot call it my own as well as my native land, for I have no right to live there. Until a treaty is agreed with the original inhabitants, I shall be homeless in the world."]]
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]] ingredient) had been sprayed in the area for years to thin the hardwood and control the weeds.{{sfn|Greer|2013a|pp=8–9}}<ref>Greer, Germaine (3 October 2012). [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/9583839/Germaine-Greers-rainforest-a-carnival-of-wild-creatures-in-Cave-Creek.html "Germaine Greer's rainforest: a carnival of wild creatures in Cave Creek"], ''The Daily Telegraph''.</ref> 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."{{sfn|Greer|2013a|pp=1–2, 4}} Although she divides time between Australia and England annually, she will not settle permanently in Australia until the country has a [[Indigenous treaties in Australia|treaty with its indigenous people]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=325}}

==Awards and honours==
{{External media
|topic=Germaine Greer portraits
|image1=[https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw18996/Germaine-Greer.jpg Bryan Wharton] (1969)
|image2=[https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw15907/Germaine-Greer.jpg Polly Borland] (1999)
|image3=[http://sydney.edu.au/images/content/news/2011/jan/germaine_greer.jpg Australian stamp] (2011)
}}
Greer has received several honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Letters from [[York University]] in 1999,<ref>{{cite web |title=Manfred Erhardt, Germaine Greer, Golda Koschitzky, Francesca Valente to Receive Hon. Docs.&nbsp;... |url=http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/releases_1996_2000/archive/110199.htm |publisher=York University |date=1 November 1999}}</ref> a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2003,<ref>{{cite news |title=Roll out the honours |url=https://www.theage.com.au/education/roll-out-the-honours-20050613-ge0bwo.html |work=The Age |date=13 June 2005}}</ref> a Doctor of Letters at [[Anglia Ruskin University]] in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2005.<ref>{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer speaks to University of Sydney graduates |url=http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=761 |publisher=The University of Sydney |date=4 November 2005}}; {{harvnb|Francis|Henningham|2017}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Germaine Greer - ARU |url=https://aru.ac.uk/graduation-and-alumni/honorary-award-holders2/germaine-greer |access-date=2023-02-11 |website=aru.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>

The [[National Portrait Gallery, London|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]].<ref name=NPR>{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06545/germaine-greer |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London}}</ref> She was selected as an Australian [[National Living Treasure (Australia)|National Living Treasure]] in 1997,<ref>{{cite web |title=Australian National Living Treasure |url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1293 |website=AustLit |publisher=University of Queensland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003212028/https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1293 |archive-date=3 October 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> and in 2001 was inducted into the [[Victorian Honour Roll of Women]].{{sfn|Francis|Henningham|2017}} In 2011 she was one of four feminist "Australian legends" (along with [[Eva Cox]], [[Elizabeth Evatt]] and [[Anne Summers]]) represented on Australian postage stamps.<ref>{{cite news |title=Feminists feature on Aussie legends stamps |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-01-20/feminists-feature-on-aussie-legends-stamps/1912494 |agency=Australian Associated Press |publisher=ABC News (Australia) |date=19 January 2011}}</ref> In the UK she was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971,<ref name=Spongberg1993p407/> and in 2016 BBC Radio 4's ''[[Woman's Hour]]'' 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]], [[Helen Brook]], [[Barbara Castle]], [[Jayaben Desai]], [[Bridget Jones]], and [[Beyoncé]].<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38303886 "Margaret Thatcher tops Woman's Hour Power List"], BBC News, 14 December 2016.</ref>

==Controversial views==
Writer [[Yvonne Roberts]] referred to Greer as "the [[contrarian]] queen".<ref>{{cite news|last1=Roberts|first1=Yvonne|last2=Hirsch|first2=Afua|last3=Parkinson|first3=Hannah-Jane|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/09/germaine-greer-on-rape-book-three-women-respond|title=Reading Germaine: three generations respond to On Rape|website=[[The Guardian]]|date=9 September 2018|access-date=29 June 2021}}</ref> 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".<ref name=Ditum6June2018/> ''[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]'' has labelled her a "human headline".<ref>{{cite news |title=Greer given enough rope |url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/greer-given-enough-rope-20040719-gdjdf9.html |work=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |date=19 July 2004}}</ref> British actor and comedian [[Tracey Ullman]] has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops.<ref name=Ditum6June2018>{{cite news|last=Ditum|first=Sarah|title=Germaine Greer has always refused to be 'nice' – if only there were more of her|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/06/germaine-greer-has-always-refused-be-nice-if-only-there-were-more-her|work=[[New Statesman]]|date=6 June 2018}}</ref> In response to criticism of Greer, [[Polly Toynbee]] wrote in 1988: "Small minds, small spirits affronted by the sheer size and magnetism of the woman."{{sfn|Toynbee|2012|p=127}}

Greer said that the [[The Satanic Verses controversy|1989 fatwa]] against [[Salman Rushdie]] for his novel ''[[The Satanic Verses]]'' (1988)<ref name=Lewis29July2006>{{cite news |last1=Lewis |first1=Paul |title='You sanctimonious philistine' – Rushdie v Greer, the sequel |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jul/29/topstories3.books |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=29 July 2006}}</ref> was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support.<ref>{{cite news |title=World Statement, International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers |work=[[The Observer]] |date=5 March 1989 |page=4}}</ref> In 2006, she supported activists trying to halt the filming in London's [[Brick Lane]] of the film ''[[Brick Lane (2007 film)|Brick Lane]]'' (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&nbsp;... not unexpected".<ref name=Lewis29July2006/>

In May 1995, in her column for ''[[The Guardian]]'' (which the newspaper refused), she referred to ''Guardian'' journalist [[Suzanne Moore]]'s "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gerrard |first1=Nicci |title=Middle-aged feminist rage shocks and amuses |work=[[The Observer]] |date=21 May 1995 |page=12}}</ref><!--add what this was in response to--> She called her biographer, [[Christine Wallace]], a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, ''Untamed Shrew'' (1999), "a piece of excrement".<ref name=Thackray21Feb1999/>{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=283}} (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]], read his fucking books.")<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lewis |first1=Helen |title=Funny, unkind, provocative: please don't make me have an opinion on Germaine Greer |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/11/funny-unkind-provocative-please-don-t-make-me-have-opinion-germaine-greer |work=[[New Statesman]] |date=7 November 2018}}</ref> Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister, [[John Howard]], called her remarks patronising and condescending.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Squires |first1=Nick |last2=Davies |first2=Caroline |title=Oz outrage at Germaine Greer's attack on 'cultural wasteland' |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/1452851/Oz-outrage-at-Germaine-Greers-attack-on-cultural-wasteland.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/1452851/Oz-outrage-at-Germaine-Greers-attack-on-cultural-wasteland.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=28 January 2004}}{{cbignore}}</ref> After receiving a fee of £40,000,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gibson |first1=Owen |title=Greer walks out of 'bullying' Big Brother |url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/12/bigbrother.broadcasting |work=The Guardian |date=12 January 2005}}</ref> she left the ''[[Celebrity Big Brother (British series 3)|Celebrity Big Brother]]'' house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "[[fascist]] prison camp".<ref>{{cite news|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=16 January 2005|url=https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/germaine-greer-filth-56ttn2h6nwp|title=Filth!|newspaper=[[The Sunday Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Sarah|last=Lyall|authorlink=Sarah Lyall|date=20 January 2005|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/arts/television/germaine-greers-orwellian-ordeal-on-big-brother.html|title=Germaine Greer's Orwellian Ordeal on 'Big Brother'|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref name=Greer12Jan2005>{{cite news |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=Why I said yes to Big Brother's shilling |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3634824/Why-I-said-yes-to-Big-Brothers-shilling.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3634824/Why-I-said-yes-to-Big-Brothers-shilling.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=12 January 2005}}{{cbignore}}</ref> [[Kevin Rudd]], 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]]'', she concluded that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge".<ref>{{cite news |title= Greer draws anger over Irwin comments | url =http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Greer-draws-anger-over-Irwin-comments/2006/09/06/1157222168676.html | work= [[The Age]] |date=6 September 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | last=Greer | first=Germaine |title=That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin | url=https://www.theguardian.com/australia/story/0,,1865124,00.html |work=[[The Guardian]]|date=5 September 2006}}</ref> She criticised the wife of the newly elected American president [[Barack Obama]], [[Michelle Obama]], for her dress on the night of the [[U.S. presidential election, 2008|2008 U.S. election]],{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=357}}<ref>{{Cite news |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=2008-11-17 |title=If Michelle Obama's such a great dresser, what was she doing in this red butcher's apron? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/17/michelleobama-fashion |access-date=2024-04-25 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> and in 2012 she advised Australia's first female prime minister, [[Julia Gillard]], to change the cut of her jackets because she had "a big arse".<ref>{{YouTube|vM0_gZaOj_w|Germaine Greer}}, ''[[Q&A (Australian talk show)|Q&A]]'', 2012</ref>

On [[Andrew Denton]]'s television talk show ''[[Enough Rope]]'', Denton quoted Greer as having said to the ''Sydney Morning Herald'' that, "A woman of taste is a [[pederast]]—boys rather than men", a quote she confirmed.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-01-18 |title=ENOUGH ROPE with Andrew Denton - episode 27: Germaine Greer (15/09/2003) |url=http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s946782.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118164400/http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s946782.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=2012-01-18 |access-date=2025-03-01 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Writers |first=Staff |date=2008-04-20 |title=Germaine Greer: The Boy |url=https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/germaine-greer-the-boy/8390 |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=Star Observer |language=en-US}}</ref>

== Later life ==
In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the [[Museum of Australian Democracy]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Haussegger |first=Virginia |date=2022-06-18 |title=The incredible women reshaping our nation |url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7785168/the-incredible-women-reshaping-our-nation/ |access-date=2022-09-09 |website=The Canberra Times |language=en-AU}}</ref>

In 2021, Greer returned to Australia to sell her home and put herself into aged care in [[Castlemaine, Victoria]]. She stayed 10 months and left in April 2022 to live with her brother. She described herself as having been "not a patient, but an inmate" at the aged-care home. She noted that more women are in care than men and said residential aged care was a pressing feminist issue.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-08-05 |title=Females to the fore: The women at this year's Canberra Writers Festival |url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7846103/females-to-the-fore-the-women-at-this-years-canberra-writers-festival/ |access-date=2022-09-09 |website=The Canberra Times |language=en-AU}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Overington |first=Caroline |date=1 July 2022 |title=Germaine Greer's life as an aged-care 'inmate' |url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/germaine-greer-life-as-an-agedcare-inmate/news-story/d8072017b7701420a65b498d275dd357 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220703053353/https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/germaine-greer-life-as-an-agedcare-inmate/news-story/d8072017b7701420a65b498d275dd357 |archive-date=July 3, 2022 |access-date=August 10, 2024 |website=The Australian}}</ref>

==Germaine Greer archive==
Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne.<ref>[https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/collections/germainegreer/about-the-collection "An introduction to the Germaine Greer collection at the University of Melbourne Archives"]. University of Melbourne.</ref> As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space.<ref>[https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/collections/germainegreer "The Germaine Greer Collection"], University of Melbourne.</ref><ref>Gulliver, Penny (23 March 2017). [http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-reading-germaine-greers-mail-74693 "Friday essay: reading Germaine Greer’s mail"], ''The Conversation''.</ref><ref name=Dean1Nov2013/> 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 {{AUD|3 million}} 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.<ref>{{cite web|title=University to house Germaine Greer archive|url=http://www.campaign.unimelb.edu.au/news-and-events/2013-10-28-university-to-house-germaine-greer-archive|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109020158/http://www.campaign.unimelb.edu.au/news-and-events/2013-10-28-university-to-house-germaine-greer-archive|url-status=dead|archive-date=9 November 2013|publisher=University of Melbourne|date=28 October 2013}}</ref>

Index cards that contain Greer family tree information, compiled when she was researching her book [[Daddy, We Hardly Knew You]], are held by the [[State Library of Victoria]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Index cards ca. 1990. [manuscript]. |url=https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/discovery/fulldisplay?&context=L&vid=61SLV_INST:SLV&search_scope=slv_local&tab=searchProfile&docid=alma9916351273607636 |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=find.slv.vic.gov.au |language=en}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Anarchism in Australia]]

==Selected works==
{{div col}}
*(1963). {{cite thesis|title=The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode|type=MA| publisher=University of Sydney|hdl=2123/13500}}
*(1968). {{cite thesis|id={{EThOS|uk.bl.ethos.599683}}|title=The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies|degree= PhD |publisher= University of Cambridge|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/256631/Greer-1967-PhD_06204.pdf}}
*(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: Harper & Row.
*(1986). ''Shakespeare''. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past Masters series).
*(1986). ''The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings''. London: Picador.
*(1988) 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). ''[[Daddy, We Hardly Knew You]]''. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
*(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.&nbsp;54–75.
*(1991). ''The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause''. London: Hamish Hamilton.
*(1994). "Macbeth: Sin and Action of Grace", in J. Wain (ed.). ''Shakespeare: Macbeth''. London: Macmillan, pp.&nbsp;263–270.
*(1995). ''Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet''. Viking.
*(1997) with Susan Hastings (eds). ''The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton''. London: Stump Cross Books.
*(1999). ''The Whole Woman''. London: Doubleday.
* (2000). ''Lysistrata - The Sex Strike''. London: Aurora Metro Books (with Phil Willmott).
*(2000). ''John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester''. London: Northcote House Publishers.
*(2001) (ed.). ''101 Poems by 101 Women''. London: Faber & Faber.
*(2003). ''[[The Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]''. London: Thames & Hudson.
*(2003) (ed.). ''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.&nbsp;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.
{{div col end}}

==Sources==
===Notes===
{{notelist}}

===References===
{{reflist|26em}}

===Works cited===
:''Websites and news articles are listed in the [[#References|References]] section only.''
{{refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
* {{cite book |last1=Angelou |first1=Maya |author-link=Maya Angelou |title=Even the Stars Look Lonesome |date=1998 |publisher=Bantam Books |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |last1=Baumgardner |first1=Jennifer |author-link1=Jennifer Baumgardner|editor1-last=Greer|editor1-first=Germaine |title=The Female Eunuch |date=2001 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |pages=1–7  |chapter=Why the Female Eunuch?}}
* {{cite book |last1=Baumgardner |first1=Jennifer |author-link1=Jennifer Baumgardner |title=F 'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls |date=2011 |publisher=Da Capo Press |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |last1=Brock |first1=Malin Lidström |title=Writing Feminist Lives: The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir |date=2016 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Cham }}
* {{cite book |last1=Caine |first1=Barbara |author-link1=Barbara Caine |last2=Gatens |first2=Moira |author-link2=Moira Gatens |title=Australian Feminism: a companion |date=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Melbourne and Oxford }}
* {{cite book |last1=Coombs |first1=Anne |title=Sex And Anarchy: The Life And Death of the Sydney Push |date=1996 |publisher=Viking}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Diamond |first1=Arlyn |title=Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer |journal=The Massachusetts Review |date=Winter–Spring 1972 |volume=13 |issue=1/2 |pages=275–279 |jstor=5088230}}
* {{cite book |last1=Evans |first1=Mary |title=Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |location=London and New York }}
* {{cite web |last1=Francis|first1=Rosemary|last2=Henningham|first2=Nikki|title=Greer, Germaine (1939–)|date=2017 |orig-year=2009 |url=http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4415b.htm |publisher=The Australian Women's Register |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180414134015/http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4415b.htm |archive-date=14 April 2018}}
* {{cite thesis|first=Germaine| last=Greer| date=1963|title=The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode|type=MA| publisher=University of Sydney| hdl=2123/13500}} {{free access}}
* {{cite thesis|date=7 May 1968|first=Germaine|last= Greer|id={{EThOS|uk.bl.ethos.599683}}|title=The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies|degree= PhD |publisher= Apollo Digital Repository, University of Cambridge|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/256631/Greer-1967-PhD_06204.pdf|oclc=221288543|doi=10.17863/CAM.567}} {{free access}}
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings 1968–1985 |date=1986 |orig-year=1970 |publisher=Picador|location=London|chapter=The Slag-Heap Erupts|at=First published in ''Oz'', February 1970}}
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Female Eunuch |date=2001 |orig-year=1970 |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux|location=New York |isbn=0-374-52762-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Greer |first=Germaine |title=Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet|url=https://archive.org/details/slipshodsibylsre0000gree_g6v6 |url-access=registration |publisher=Viking Press|location=London|year=1995|isbn=9780670849147 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Whole Woman |date=1999 |publisher=Transworld Publishers Ltd |location=London}}
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=Whitefella Jump Up |date=2004 |publisher=Profile Books |location=London}}
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=White Beech: The Rainforest Years |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury |location=London}}
* {{cite web |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=19 October 2013a |title=The greening of Greer |work=[[The Australian]]|url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/the-greening-of-greer/news-story/e264844dd385bb18aa7cb1ba72089c0f}} (Edited extract from ''White Beech'')
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |last2=Willmott|first2=Phil|title=Lysistrata: The Sex Strike. After Aristophanes|date=2011 |publisher=Samuel French Limited}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=Clive |author-link=Clive Hamilton |title=What Do We Want?: The Story of Protest in Australia |date=2016 |publisher=National Library of Australia |location=Sydney }}
* {{cite book |last1=James |first1=Clive |author-link1=Clive James |title=May Week Was In June |date=1991 |publisher=Pan Books |location=London }}
* {{cite book |last1=Kleinhenz |first1=Elizabeth |title=Germaine: The Life of Germaine Greer |date=2018 |publisher=Knopf |location=Sydney }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lake |first1=Marilyn |author-link=Marilyn Lake |title='Revolution for the hell of it': the transatlantic genesis and serial provocations of The Female Eunuch |journal=Australian Feminist Studies |date=2016 |volume=31 |issue=87 |pages=7–21 |doi=10.1080/08164649.2016.1174926 |s2cid=147881101 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Magarey |first1=Susan|author-link=Susan Magarey|editor1-last=Smith |editor1-first=Bonnie G. |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |pages=402–403  |chapter=Germaine Greer}}
* {{cite book |last1=Medoff |first1=Jeslyn |editor1-last=Wallace |editor1-first=Elizabeth Kowaleski |title=Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory |date=2010 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |page=263  |chapter=Germaine Greer}}
* {{cite book |last1=Merck |first1=Mandy |editor1-last=Merck |editor1-first=Mandy |editor2-last=Sandford |editor2-first=Stella |title=Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone |url=https://archive.org/details/furtheradventure00merc |url-access=limited |date=2010 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/furtheradventure00merc/page/n19 9]–28  |chapter=Prologue: Shulamith Firestone and Sexual Difference|isbn=9780230100299 }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosmann |first1=Petra |title=A feminist fashion icon: Germaine Greer's paisley coat |journal=Australian Feminist Studies |date=31 May 2016 |volume=31 |issue=87 |pages=78–94|doi=10.1080/08164649.2016.1174928|s2cid=148120100 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Neville |first1=Richard |author-link=Richard Neville (writer) |title=Hippie Hippie Shake |date=2010 |publisher=Gerald Duckworth & Co |location=London }}
* {{cite book |last1=Packer |first1=Clyde |author-link=Clyde Packer |title=No Return Ticket |url=https://archive.org/details/noreturnticket00pack |url-access=registration |date=1984 |publisher=Angus & Robertson |isbn=9780207150289 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Peacock |first1=D. Keith |title=Thatcher's Theatre: British Theatre and Drama in the Eighties |date=1999 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, CT }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Poirot |first1=Kristan |title=Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse: Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, and Feminism's Second Wave |journal=Women's Studies in Communication |date=Summer 2004 |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=204–235 |doi=10.1080/07491409.2004.10162473|s2cid=145150915 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Reilly |first1=Susan P. |editor1-last=Wallace |editor1-first=Elizabeth Kowaleski |title=Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory |date=2010 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |page=213  |chapter=Female Eunuch}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Simons |first1=Margaret |author-link=Margaret Simons |title=The Long Letter to a Short Love, or&nbsp;... |journal=[[Meanjin]] |url=https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-long-letter-to-a-short-love-or/ |date=Summer 2015 }}
* {{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Philippa Mein |author-link1=Philippa Mein Smith |year=2012 |orig-year=2005 |title=A Concise History of New Zealand |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Spongberg |first1=Mary |title=If She's So Great, How Come So Many Pigs Dig Her? Germaine Greer and the malestream press |journal=Women's History Review |date=1993 |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=(407–419), 407 |doi=10.1080/09612029300200036 |doi-access=free }}
* {{cite book |last1=Standish |first1=Ann |title=The Encyclopedia of Women & Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia |date=2014 |chapter-url=http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0350b.htm |publisher=Australian Women's Archives Project |location=Melbourne |page=263  |chapter=Greer, Germaine (1939–)|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180620001818/http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0350b.htm |archive-date=20 June 2018|url-status=live}}
* {{cite book |last1=Toynbee |first1=Polly |author-link1=Polly Toynbee |editor1-last=Cochrane |editor1-first=Kira |editor1-link=Kira Cochrane |title=Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism |date=2012 |publisher=Guardian Books |location=London  |chapter=Behind the Lines: Ironing in the Soul|orig-year=1988}}
* {{cite book |last=Wallace |first=Christine |author-link=Christine Wallace |title=Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew |publisher=Faber and Faber|location=London|year=1999|orig-year=1997}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Winant |first1=Carmen |title=The Meaningful Disappearance of Germaine Greer |url=http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/57/winant.php |issue=57 |journal=Cabinet |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180325042922/http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/57/winant.php |archive-date=25 March 2018 |date=Spring 2015|url-status=dead}}
* {{cite book |last1=Wlodarczyk |first1=Justyna |title=Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |location=Newcastle upon Tyne }}
* {{cite journal |last1=Yalom |first1=Marilyn |author-link=Marilyn Yalom |title=Review: The Second-Best Bed and Other Conundrums |journal=The Women's Review of Books |date=January–February 2009 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=29–30 |jstor=20476813}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Commons category|Germaine Greer}}
{{library resources box|by=yes}}
*{{Australian Women's Register}}
*{{OL author}}
*[http://archives.unimelb.edu.au/ The University of Melbourne Archives].
*{{YouTube|LOcMazsj6OQ|Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists}}, University of Melbourne, 8 March 2017.
*{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06545/germaine-greer |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London}}
*{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6q27f|title=Germaine Bloody Greer|publisher=BBC Two|date=15 June 2018}}
*{{YouTube|id=AQrQnVWp9Yg&t=1321s|title=Ideas at the House: Germaine Greer – How Many Dangerous Ideas Can One Person Have|link=no}}, Talks & Ideas, Sydney Opera House, 9 October 2013.
*{{Cite news|last1=Paglia|first1=Camille|author-link=Camille Paglia|title=Back to the Barricades|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=9 May 1999|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/books/back-to-the-barricades.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715152224/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/books/back-to-the-barricades.html|archive-date=15 July 2018|at=Review of Greer's biography, ''Untamed Shrew'' by [[Christine Wallace]]|ref=none}}
*{{YouTube|O4LtOpjQrQo|Professor Germaine Greer—An Insight—full interview|link=no}}, [[Leeds Beckett University]], March 2010

{{UK underground}}
{{Radical feminism}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greer, Germaine}}
[[Category:1939 births]]
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