Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian academic and journalist, and was a major feminist voice of the mid-20th century.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her book The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her into a household name and bringing her both adulation and opposition. She is also the author of many other books including Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984); The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991); Shakespeare's Wife (2007); and The Whole Woman (1999). She is Professor Emerita of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick.

Greer has defined her goal as "women's liberation" as distinct from "equality with men". She asserts that women's liberation meant embracing gender differences in a positive fashion—a struggle for the freedom of women to define their own values, order their own priorities and determine their own fates. In contrast, Greer sees equality as mere assimilation and "settling" to live the lives of "unfree men".

Following the publication of her highly controversial book 'The Beautiful Boy' in 2003, Greer has been labelled by some as promoting paedophilia with Greer herself describing the depiction of adolescent males in her own book as "full of pictures of 'ravishing' pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists". She goes on to say that, "I know that the only people who are supposed to like looking at pictures of boys are a subgroup of gay men".

Read more about Germaine Greer:  Early Life and Career, Middle Career, Later Career, Other Media, Aboriginal Australians

Famous quotes by germaine greer:

    If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your menstrual blood—if it makes you sick, you’ve a long way to go, baby.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    The principle of the brotherhood of man is ... narcissistic ... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your menstrual blood—if it makes you sick, you’ve a long way to go, baby.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)