The Female Eunuch 40 years on
Posted by Laurie Penny Wednesday 27 October 2010 10.04 BST
Germaine Greer's ferocious polemic remains an inspiration, but should not be read as holy writ
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/oct/27/female-eunuch-40-years-on (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/oct/27/female-eunuch-40-years-on)
Forty years ago this month, Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was published – and women's liberation would never be quite the same again. Generations of feminists have been inspired by Greer's belligerent, bile-spattered dialectic of rebellion, a 400-page brick slammed through the screen of male entitlement and female submission. At the age of 12, I was one of her youngest devotees, and although today I take issue with many of her conclusions, the book still thrills me to the core on each rereading.
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Another uncomfortable failing of the text is Greer's savage attack on transsexual women. Greer has long led the radical feminist charge against trans women, whom she labels "castrates", fifth columnists mocking real women and invading female space. This is an ugly untruth, and has directly influenced the bitter, childish rows over the status of trans women that still scar the modern feminist movement. Just recently, an angry debate has erupted yet again over whether or not trans women will be welcome at the annual Reclaim the Night march against sexual violence, threatening solidarity among the new generation of activists.
Crazy Greer is also the idiot who wrote a great thick book on art in which she claimed that there could be no great women artists because their hopes and aspirations were trampled on by having to conform to sterotype and being thought incapable of making great art.
She illustrated it with many fine pictures done by women
It's generally written that prehistoric cave art was done by cavemen but who is to say it wasn't cavewomen doodling while waiting for their men to drag the dinasaur steaks home?
Greer is hardly a good stereotype for modern woman or possessing of an unbiased viewpoint after having a convent education followed by being a groupie and having numerous abortions.