The Female Eunuch

Reviews around this date should be ignored. Germaine said some stupid things about the death of Steve Irwin -Crocodile Hunter- and that has obiviously upset some people. I don't agree with Germaines comments - or much that she was written or said lately- but that doesn't stop this book from being an outstanding book of the 20th Century.

The hypocrisy of society is simply amazing! Despite claiming that women "have come a long way, baby," reality is they've barely touched the surface of the obnoxious existence they are expected to live with and "enjoy." Denied nearly every form of expression - from sexual to verbal - except for the occasional free-form of theatrical display, dance, and very measured boundaries of intellectual inquiry, they remain the Gender Eunichs both men and women rely upon them to be, in order to measure both morality as well as chastity in efforts of men to insure that the children they are responsible for are their own. While enormous strides have been made in both birth control, and safe abortions, males continue to emphasize purity, demure submission, and unreasonable role models that are anything but the privilege they afford themselves, both in public and in private, encouraging and perpetuating the myth of morality that women have been saddled with for centuries. If unable to resort to sexual mutilation to accomplish their task, they automatically, and in fact, usually accompany their rigid standards with social oppression and repression through all manner of forcible meassures such as ridicule, bullying, degrading remarks, and imposing higher than their own standards to define acceptance, or lack of it. Keeping women quiet, but performing, as and when they want performance, being the main goal. Most any method appears to be adequate in their eyes if it works. Enough already! Racial and Sexual slavery needs to be stamped out once and for all, along with the class horse it rode in upon. Class is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but rarely is it measured as it has always been, especially when the slaves are afforded their own rights! Haven't we learned this repeatedly throughout history? This constant addition to controlling everything about women must stop, or be seen for what it is!

I read Greer's The Whole Woman, her most recent endeavor, before reading The Female Eunuch--suddenly I understood why the reviews of the Whole Woman were so tepid-to-awful. I liked it, but reading Eunuch I realized that this woman had incredible style and swagger, but that she had written a much more delicious and fearless book back in 1970. In the intervening years, so much has changed for women (because of feminism) that Greer's antics and ability to go head to head with macho rakes/serious artists (like she did with Norman Mailer in an infamous Town Hall meeting) is less notable. Still, Eunuch bristles with energy and youth and it makes me think, even though I was certainly not raised in the repressive forties and fifties.I think that this book is definitely worth reading, especially to see how far we've come.

I began reading "The Female Eunuch" after I had read Natalies Angiers "Woman : An Intimate Geography". It caused a sensation in its time and is still capable of shocking. Ms Angiers may have borrowed from The "Female Eunuch" because she also divides her books in to chapters with simple headings like the "body" and "work" and this gives both books clarity and focus. Where they differ is that Ms Greer,s is on shakier ground with her scientific references which can be excused since the book was first published in 1970. Her statements about clitoral orgasms being a "new scientific myth" makes very odious and irritating reading. Ms Greer tries to excuse herself by saying that focusing on clitoral arousal is just another limiting perspective on female sexuality. She is wrong. Clitoral arousal is still a mystery to many women. Who still expect to achieve vaginal orgasms and wonder why they do not. Which only proves that for all the scientific hoopla in the 1970s. Most women are still ignorant about how their genitalia function. Ms Greer mentions hiding her soiled sanitary rag from her brother as a girl and is obviously indignant about it But still does not question why female reproductive organs are considered so objectionable that they and their issue should be hidden. I would have considered this oversight a direct result of her childhood in Australia which is basically a secular country. However Ms Greer attended a Roman Catholic girls school. Implying that she should know full well why women genitals and menstrual fluid are considered 'unclean' It is laid out quite clearly in Leviticus. Ms Greer,s strength lies in her confrontational style and ability to elucidate how women are taught to be women by the cultural process of engendering them and rather than an evolutionary predisposition to domestic servitude. At the time she made these statements there was little scientific data to support her assertions that far from women wanting to be frivolous domestic chattles and childbreeders. They actually were capable of pursuing any form of employment and having a womb in no way hampered this. Ms Greer is ignorant of non western cultures and even pre christian cultures and so she assumes that woman have always been socially subordinate because she has a womb. This is unfortunate because the western image of womanhood is not a universal standard and is itself quite recent. She would have done well to read up on the European witchtrials in which millions of women especially midwives died. Because their professions were in direct competition with doctors and priests. Ms Greer is at her best when she denounces. Female financial and emotional dependence on men as infantile and thus uninspiring for both men and woman. Contrary to many accusations of Ms Greer being a "man-hater" this book indicates that she is more likely to place women,s inferior social status squarely on the shoulders of women themselves. Ms Greer exh