I used to think that I had nothing in common with the feminist agenda. Indeed, I had a distorted view of what feminism stood for until I read ¨ber-feminist Germaine Greer's book The Whole Woman. Written in 1999 as a follow-up to her earlier feminist classic The Female Eunuch, I learned a lot from the book, which combines a lot of good ideas with a lot of really laughable ones. But I agree with a lot of what she says and if she is representative of feminism then I am proudly a feminist. The following are choice quotes that I agree with and commentary.
It could be argued that women's increasing economic independence removed part of the rationale for marriage. If a husband is
one who supports a wife and children he is fast becoming obsolete--not because of feminism but because it takes two pay packets to run a
home with 'all modern conveniences The voluntary stay at home wife is now the prerogative of the rich man only. Pg. 245
The absurdity of the notion that there is someone 'out there' for everybody is obvious to anyone who has thought about it more
than five seconds. Women's lives would be a lot easier if they started from the opposite premiss, that there is nobody 'out there' and they
might as well get on with life and work. Pg. 246
Wedding as pantomime has largely replaced wedding as sacrament. People who have lived together and found it good simply
decide to have a party. Pg. 255
Comment: I'm with her so far. The realization that marriage, soul mates and so forth is an outdated concept is something I'm right in
line with. For the IW take on marriage, see here.
That's right women, unless you are at the
top of the woman food chain you'll probably have to work anyway, so what's the point of getting married?
In post industrial societies it is individuals who marry; the nuptial agreement is seen as involving two people only. Even the
children they may have together are not party to the agreement between spouses. That agreement has been reliant from the first on the
intensity and durability of the sexual attraction between them. If the sexual attraction should lose its potency, if another attraction should
eclipse it, the marriage is deemed dead. Such a system is bound to fail; no person can guarantee to be sexually attracted to another for as
long as they both shall live. Sex is too anarchic a force and fat too responsive to fantasy to serve as the mortar holding together the
building blocks of society. . . modern marriage is fragile because the demands made upon it exceed the tensile strength of the initial sexual
bond.
Studies of the frequency of sexual intercourse between the spouses are neither numerous nor reliable, but they all demonstrate the
same pattern. The frequency of marital sexual intercourse declines precipitously after the first year before leveling out to a steady,
shallow decline. Wives are not sexy. Male sexuality demands the added stimulus of novelty. pg. 258
Comment: Exactly. The male sexuality requires novelty. Brilliantly stated, and answers so many questions. Why did he leave me
when I was so good to him? Why does Hugh Grant need to get a hooker when he has Liz Hurley at home, why does a guy ditch his
wife of 30 years for a 22 year old....The male sexuality requires novelty. Indeed.
A few men hate all women all the time, some men hate some women all of the time, and all men hate some women some of the
time. Pg 281
Comment: Dr. Greer is most famous for her comment in The Female Eunuch that "Women have very little idea how
much men hate them." This is I guess her follow-up to that. Of course this is probably true if you reverse women and men in this
sentence as well.
...boys grow up convinced that they are lovable regardless of their appearance or their behavior. The saddest, smelliest, most
shambling male individual still imagines that women will find him attractive and is prepared to act on that assumption. And he considers
himself entitled to criticize any and all aspects of a woman's appearance as harshly as any other male. Pg 291
The biological truth is the opposite, all biologists know that males are defective females. Though external genitalia are the
expression of that chromosomal defect, their removal will not alter the chromosomal fact... Pg 65
Comment:Okay so she can get a little bit out there. Of course guys feel they can criticize a woman's appearance. I guess
Dr. Greer is saying that ugly guys don't have the right to opinions about women. The second is just...interesting in a kind of crazy way.
The truth seems to be that men resent having to work and harbor a positive ambition to do nothing, which women do not share.
A love of idleness is another characteristic that male Homo sapiens has inherited from ho anthropoid ancestors; an animal behavior
researcher observed 'that she would find it exceedingly difficult to to observe a lone male gorilla for 8 hours because he does so little.'
Females, be they gorillas or worker bees, are naturally busy, which suggests another cause of men's irritability with women who penetrate
their territory. Pg. 122
Comment: Exaclty. See men are gentically predisposed to not want women around when they are not sleeping with them. So in a
sense, Dr. Greer is supporting the case that men and women can not really be friends. I mean, after all, we have genetically different
predispositions on the level of wanting to do something versus wanting to do nothing.
Many of the women who will this year shed a husband who thinks that he has behaved as well as could be expected will do so
because he is just too much trouble. The cost in human terms of feeding him, grooming him, humoring him, and financing his recreation is
way out of proportion with the contribution he makes in return, even if he is an attentive and sensitive lover. Pg 128
Comment: Exactly. And of course vice versa. Lots of men will discard wives who have become too much trouble, as the cost
of financing their shoes, food, clothes, manicures, telling them they look good and the decreasing sex become more trouble than it is
worth.
Women are not the point of pornography. Pornography is the flight from women, men's denial of sex as a medium of
communication, their denial of sex as the basis for a relationship, their rejection of fatherhood, their perpetual incontinent adolescence.
The victims of pornography are men not women. Pornography makes men leaky vessels, and undoes the principal male virtue of
continence. As men's real power dwindles, pornography is their refuge. Fear of commitment is inseparable from indulgence in pornography.
Masturbation is easy; relationships are difficult. Relationships interfere with masturbation. Pg. 182
Comment:First off, earlier in the book Dr. Greer said that sex shouldn't be the basis for a relationship. She called it too anarchic a
force. Now she is telling us that men are bad people for doing it. Which is it? But anyway, most of the stuff she said about pornography
there is true. But I'm not sure why this is a bad thing. If women are walking out on marriage, and marriage is as terrible as Dr. Greer
makes it out to be earlier in the book, why wouldn't we fear it? Then isn't pornography a good thing? I think so.
You and I need all the mothers we can get. Governments rely for the funds that run our societies on tx on current earnings; the
people now in work pay for the care and support of the people who are not in work. As the workforce shrinks and life-expectance increases
it becomes harder and harder to pay the Socail Security bill. We all need the children being born now and we need them to grow up as
well-educated, useful people, not circling aimlessly around the poverty trap. In The Female Eunuch I argued that motherhood should be
regarded as a genuine career option, that is to say, as paid work and as such an alternative to other paid work. What this would mean is
that every woman who decides to have a child would be paid enough money to raise that child in decent circumstances. Pg. 205
Comment:Even for the ultra-feminist, it still is about the money huh? Now she's argiung women should be paid for popping out kids?
Why not pay the fathers also? Doesn't every mother imply a father? Why don't we all give up working and just be mothers and fathers?
Well actually I would kind of be in favor of that, but then again I'm some kind of communist/anarchist/socialist something. Unfortunately I
think this is unskilled labor. After all, every hoodrat and white trash teenager can do it with no training at all.
Even for all of her crazy talk, Dr. Greer, and the ultra-feminist movement that she embodies are basically correct in many of their points. Indeed, enough so that I would classify myself as a feminist. Let us all embrace Dr. Greer and abandon silly notions of marriage, and dependence on men, and remember that men want to do nothing. Don't fault us for it, embrace our genetic differences.