Free Republic

THE high rate of divorce should be celebrated as the major sign of progress in the feminist movement, an ever-passionate Germaine Greer said at the start of a national speaking tour. A woman's refusal to remain in an unloving relationship, and a description of soccer star David Beckham as an interesting but confusing "boy", were among the many thoughts shared by the 65-year-old during a seminar in Perth. Greer said the main thing to have changed since her early feminist days was the mass exodus of women walking out on their marriages. "The big change is the divorce rate," she...

Turning her back on a strict Catholic upbringing, Germaine Greer became feminist’s leading avatar of free love. As a graduate student at Cambridge University, she often posed nude for underground magazines, and indulged in group sex escapades she would later describe as a “bloodsport.” In 1970 Greer published The Female Eunuch. The book claims that the sexual repression of women robs them of the dynamic energy they need to attain gender independence and selfhood. Hence, sexual license is the sure path to female liberation. Many years and several abortions later, Greer finally renounced her advocacy of sexual debauchery. But in...

GERMAINE Greer this week went on BBC television and appealed for help. "It's about time, I reckon, we resuscitated the Communist Party." No one on the panel with her blinked at this evil idea -- although whether because they agreed with it or thought Greer was crazy and best ignored, I can't tell. I'd understand if some thought the latter. On the same show, Greer, famed for leading the feminist revolution with her The Female Eunuch, offered a nutty excuse for Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving cars. "I get a bit worried about certain heavily veiled ladies driving because...

On Thursday January 22 Germaine Greer published Slack and insufferable in Rupert Murdoch's Australian: ? one supposes to roughly coincide with Australia Day. [January 26 1788 was the date of landing of the first British settlers; chiefly convicts] It has caused something of a furor, and was featured on page two of the Herald-Sun, Melbourne's paper of record. People's response was scarce in its praise, to say the least, and no wonder. Nevertheless, for those interested in the pathology of Germaine Greer, the piece is of considerable forensic and psychiatric interest. Let us examine the article in detail. Despite the...

Australia's fragile national ego was laid bare yesterday when its prime minister attacked Germaine Greer, the country's most prominent expatriate intellectual, for a scathing critique of her homeland. The academic and Daily Telegraph columnist, who lives near Saffron Walden, Essex, prompted a frenzy of soul-searching and self-analysis by condemning Australia as a sports-obsessed suburban wasteland devoid of cerebral stimulation. Miss Greer, 64, who left Melbourne for England in 1964, said Australia's city centres were "marooned in oceanic tracts of suburban doldrums". The Cambridge-educated author, best known for her feminist treatise The Female Eunuch, said Australia was defined by suburban mediocrity,...