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Trailblazing feminist BADGermaine Greer is & unstoppable and GERMAINE impossible to ignore. David Leser talks to one of our favourite and most thinks too well and, for over four decades, beetle”, “intestinal flora” and a “brain- has been speaking and writing on too many dead hack”, for having the temerity to controversial Australians themes – sex, politics, menopause, women want to write about her life some years about the myths and painters, teenage boys, Aboriginal Australia, ago. “Go near my mother,” she told the Shakespeare’s wife – even the merits of respected Australian journalist, “and I’ll realities of her life. football and Posh Spice – to imagine that kneecap you”, although today she denies one could ever properly do her justice. uttering those words. Her first book, of course, The Female “Now hang on a minute,” she says, THE WHITE DOVES ARE fluttering Eunuch, remains, 38 years after its first “hang on a minute … I didn’t say anything above the stone cottage as Germaine Greer publication, possibly the most influential about knee-capping Christine Wallace. picks sweet peas in her English garden – feminist tract of its generation, sold to over And I don’t know if I called her a dung a posy of soft, fragrant colours arranging four million people, translated into a dozen beetle. I called her a flesh-eating bacterium themselves in her weathered hands. It is or more languages, reprinted hundreds of because that’s what she was doing [writing a good omen, gentle and benign. Whether times, pirated and bootlegged to such an a biography of me] … she was rolling or not it is a cunning deception on the part extent that, today, in Third World cities, around in her own excrement.” of Nature and Woman only time will tell. such as Calcutta, you can find copies on This qualification must come as a blessed As we know from years of reading, cheap paper, bleeding with run-away ink. relief to Christine Wallace. So, too, Cherie watching and listening to the keeper of these So, yes, there’s the industrial-sized brain Blair, who was described as “a concubine”, feathery peace symbols, Germaine Greer that cautions the visitor to her County Essex author Salmon Rushdie as “a megalomaniac”, has a manner and mouth on her capable of lair, but there’s also the viper’s tongue Victoria Beckham as “a scrawny, sabre- melting iron. For more than 40 years, she which accompanies it. toothed beast” and British feminist columnist, has been basking in controversy, lacerating “Anything sharp to declare?” the airport Suzanne Moore, as a woman with “bird’s- her opponents, living a life of such bold, officials ask when she leaves the country. nested hair … f--k-me shoes, three fat inches provocative strokes that only the knave or “Only my tongue,” she replies loudly, of cleavage” and a “lipstick-rotted brain”. Germaine Greer, 69, fool would underestimate her. thinking they might get the joke. They don’t, Suzanne Moore’s crime was to repeat in the garden of her No amount of research can ever really not usually, but then again neither do others false claims that Germaine had had a UK home. Her love of nature and advocacy equip you for an intellectual joust with the who’ve felt the prick and sting over the years. hysterectomy as a young woman, a claim for the environment most prolific and outspoken feminist of She described her unauthorised biographer, first made by Richard Neville, in his book are just some of many

her generation. She knows too much, Christine Wallace, as an “amoeba”, a “dung Hippie Hippie Shake. (The book, about  BY MARK HARRISON. PHOTOGRAPHY interests and passions. T2 | WW OCTOBER 2008 WW OCTOBER 2008 | 3 the 1960s counter-culture revolution, is currently being made into a film – much to Germaine’s displeasure.) “Imagine my amazement when I learn that he’s informed the world that I had a hysterectomy,” she says now. “I would have said [if he’d asked me] ‘Who did it? A vet?’ ” In fact, Richard Neville had asked her by dint of having sent her the manuscript prior to publication. He was requesting corrections to any errors of fact. None came. Instead, after publication, Germaine insisted a correction slip about the fallacious hysterectomy be placed in every book in every bookstore in the world. It was the beginning of the end of a friendship that had flowered during the heady days of the London underground magazine, Oz, when Germaine had posed nude for the cover and taken to writing – under the name Dr G – lewd and explicit tales Above: Germaine’s fierce intelligence was not encouraged growing up in a “bookless” about the virtues of free love and group sex. house in Melbourne. Yet, her book The Female Eunuch would become a feminist classic. She was impossible not to notice, as American writer Tom Wolfe discovered It is also a deep insight into Germaine “No, no, it was much more than that,” when he met her. “A thin, hard-looking Greer’s person. “I cannot claim,” she she replies. “Before I married him, I said, woman,” he noted, “with a tremendous curly wrote in The Female Eunuch, “to be fully ‘It can’t be an ordinary marriage. I still electric hairdo and the most outrageous emancipated from the dream that some have to go on doing what I do’. ‘Oh, that’s mouth I had ever heard on a woman.” enormous man, say six foot six, heavily fine’, [he said]. ‘I still have to go on teaching And that was just before she set fire to shouldered and so forth to match, will at the university.’ ‘That’s cool’, [he said]. her hair at dinner. “She was bored,” wrote crush me to his tweeds, look down into And it wasn’t cool at all.” Christine Wallace, in the biography, Untamed my eyes and leave the taste of heaven or The great moment of parting came Shrew, that so raised Germaine’s hackles. the scorch of his passion on my waiting three weeks after the wedding, when du “Two waiters ran over and flapped furiously lips. For three weeks, I was married to him.” Feu took Germaine to a drinks party on at the flames with napkins, while Greer sat Ask her now what was she thinking all Sunday morning. As she recalls now to with a sublime smile on her face.” those years ago – in 1968 – when she said The Weekly: “He looked around the room yes to marriage and she replies, “It was and he said, ‘You know, I could have any TODAY, GERMAINE GREER is slouched the wrong thing to have done. Unfair to woman in this room’. And there was only against her rustic kitchen island like a him … and unfair to me”. one answer: ‘Except me.’ And I walked out gun-slinger at rest, legs spread, one foot Was it true that she was unfaithful to the door and ran, and kept on running. It was up on the bench and a look on her face him seven times in the three weeks they as if somebody had taken a rock off my that alternates between good-natured were married? “Something like that. I kept head. It was unbelievable.” tolerance and shoot-’em-dead disdain. going back to the old boyfriends and saying, And you’ve been free ever since? “Never If truth be known, I’ve been in training ‘I got myself into terrible trouble’, and they likely to repeat that. I don’t know what I for this moment for 30 years – primed by would say, ‘There, there, never mind’, and thought I was doing.” the hundreds of interviews that have come one thing led to another and I’d think, Notorious for her sexual aggression, before this, but more importantly, prepared [laughing] ‘Oh dear, shit, sorry about that’. Germaine denies promiscuity. “I don’t by 20 years of marriage to a feminist. “The other thing is my husband really have men in every port,” she says. How could a man, I’ve often asked [Australian journalist Paul du Feu] was “Never did. The funny thing about all the myself, from the post-war baby boomer probably in love with me, but it expressed people who go on about me and my legendary generation contemplate marriage and not itself in jealousy and hostility. I don’t think promiscuity is that they can never name a consider some of the propositions first I’ve ever told the whole story, [but] I was partner. I say, ‘Come on, show me the list.’ ” raised in The Female Eunuch – that “the not allowed to sleep in the bed with him Can you imagine wanting to grow real theatre of the sex war is the domestic on my wedding night. He made me sleep older now with someone, having that hearth”, that marriage is slavery, that a full in the armchair. He was drunk and he was companionship? “Oh, well, it’s strange … bosom is a “millstone” around a woman’s a nasty drunk.” I’ve been asked to marry someone more neck, that most men hate women at least It beggars belief that anyone, even a “six often in the last 10 years than ever before in Tsome of the time and that a woman’s essential foot six heavily shouldered man”, could my life,” she says. The same person? quality is one of “castratedness”. keep Germaine Greer from her own bed “Hmmm … hmmm … pretty much.” One mightn’t agree with them all, but and it prompts the question as to whether Are you considering it? “Absolutely not.” it would be foolhardy, blind or both not to this rejection might have stemmed from Would you consider living with him? recognise, even grudgingly, how the book the fact that she’d agreed to dance with a “Probably not. He only asks because he

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK HARRISON. PHOTOGRAPHY was a challenge to men and women alike. “transvestite lesbian” on her wedding night? knows I’ll say no.”  “THAT’S PROBABLY WHY I WROTE THE FEMALE EUNUCH – BECAUSE THERE WAS MY MOTHER, A VERY INTELLIGENT, BEAUTIFUL, HEALTHY WOMAN WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HERSELF.”

people. It’s not as if I’m marooned in some geriatric enclave.” Perhaps not, but there is the keen sense with Germaine Greer that there’s much more isolation in her life than she’d ever Above: Described as a “proselytiser of sexual liberation”, Germaine, the high priestess of care to admit, despite some long-standing ‘60s feminism, strikes a pose to parody the portrayal of women as sex objects, circa 1971. friendships and the fact that she is known for her great kindness and generosity. I sense that part of you is tempted to say With a Masters degree in Romantic During the course of our three-and-a- yes? “No, no, no, no, no … I’d be more likely Poetry, she then won a Commonwealth half hours together, she referred a number to marry my dog.” Scholarship to Cambridge University, of times – unsolicited – to the difficulties of where she earned a PhD for her investigation her relationship with her brother and sister. GERMAINE GREER is 70 years old next into the “ethic of love and marriage in “These are not easy relationships,” she birthday. During the course of her remarkable Shakespeare’s early comedies”. That was said, “for a sister [Germaine] who abandoned life, she has lived in Australia, England, in 1968 – the same year as her marriage. them when they were little to the care of a Italy and travelled the world extensively. Since then, she’s been an anarchist, mad mother and an indifferent father. I f----d She has purchased rainforest, championed professor, author, columnist, broadcaster, off with never a backward look because if Aboriginal rights and weighed into the public editor, art historian, comedy show presenter I’d stayed I might have killed my mother. debate on just about every subject under (in the UK) and special guest on the British “She was driving me crazy and she was the sun. She has been assaulted, arrested, version of Celebrity Big Brother (she lasted doing it on purpose. She was the wind-up raped, ridiculed, lionised, taken hostage in five days). merchant like many a mother I can think of her own house (by a female student who For decades now, her views have been – especially of that generation. They were grabbed her by the throat, held her down for raked over by other writers looking for a mischievous bunch of angry women and three hours and kept calling her “Mummy”) the fatal flaws – the U-turns and massive that’s probably why I wrote The Female and turned into a subject for biography, contradictions – in her arguments, especially Eunuch – because there was my mother, a documentary, play, film and song. (She as they related to sex and family. very intelligent, beautiful, healthy woman plans to have Frank Zappa’s G-spot Biographer Christine Wallace described who didn’t know what to do with herself.” Tornado played at her funeral!) how this prosletyser for sexual liberation Germaine has been returning regularly There is no one like her. When the second sought to have a child in her late 30s, going to Australia for years now, in an effort to wave of feminism erupted in the ’60s, so far as to have her uterus reconstructed turn a dairy farm she bought into rainforest. Germaine was its high priestess. Tall, by a Harley Street specialist. Ask Germaine I ask her whether she’s seen the bumper Gbeautiful and precociously bright, she’d been about this now and she looks at you with stickers at home which read: “Oh shit, I’ve living “under a load of adolescent despair” one of those baleful glares, and says, “I turned into my mother”, given how notorious for as long as she could remember, born to gave it my best shot. It didn’t work. End she is for her own rage? “But I haven’t got parents whom she felt didn’t love her, of story. I don’t know why Australians it [rage],” she says. “I’ve never had it. I’m marooned in a “bookless” house in suburban pretend [having a child] is a one-way ticket not an aggressive person at all.” Melbourne, attending a private convent to fulfilment, because it isn’t. I’ve watched Really? You’re known to be as cranky school, where the girls were taught the evils my friends have children and I’ve never as a cobra? “It’s not true,” she insists. “It of sex. She took to learning Hamlet by heart seen them suffer more than through their simply isn’t true …” and reading sonnets in graveyards. “I was a children. Either their children were ill or What appears to be rage at worst, anger freak waiting to be born,” she would say. in trouble. Nightmare. Just endless agony. at best, is in Germaine’s estimation, merely She won a teacher’s scholarship, enrolled “And then [you] become grandparents, indignation. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she at the University of Melbourne, where she but for lots of people that involves exclusion says, when pressed on the subject. “I’m an graduated with a degree in English and from the family … the older generation Australian [and] you’ll know what I f-----g French, then moved to Sydney, where she gets held at arm’s length. I’ve had the think ’cause I’ll tell you, but I’m not going joined the group of intellectual and artistic company of 19 to 23-year-olds [students] to fester and froth, and I’m certainly not larrikins known as the Sydney Push. all my life. I’ve been surrounded by young going to slap you or knock you around.” 

6 | WW OCTOBER 2008 WW OCTOBER 2008 | 7 Left: Germaine thinks that Australians have misconceptions about her, but she says they are “the best people in the world”.

Later on, as her search for her father’s identity had gathered momentum, she would ask herself whether or not she was “congenitally unlovable”, whether or not her own “censorious, scrutinising nature” had turned her father from her. To her eternal relief, she found it had not. She found that her father had in fact adored her, it was just that the war and his generation of men had left him incapable of showing it. “That’s why I started to write Daddy, We Hardly Knew You,” she tells me now, “because I was one of a generation of children whose fathers were literally speechless, who thought that if they allowed anyone in closer, all their horror and fear and self-doubt, that the war had engendered The only time, she says, she’s ever felt This is a curious remark given the self- in them, would just overwhelm them. So rage was at her 50th birthday party, when absorption often required to wade into the they were a silent generation.” the cousin of a friend baited and mocked her public debate – especially with the kind of Germaine Greer almost verges on the to such an extent that her throat constricted ferocity Germaine regularly shows. It is vulnerable when she talks like this. Her and she lost her powers of speech. also curious given that, during the course face softens and the gunslinger glower I suggest to her that this must have been of our morning/afternoon communion, she melts away. A similar tenderness takes a first. “And the last, too,” she fires back. does not ask her guest a single question, over when she speaks about the rhapsody “I’ve never let that happen again. It was nor does she offer him a cup of tea, let of nature – for the honey bees and swallows counter-productive, hopeless. I couldn’t alone a glass of water, and this despite in her garden that are threatened, like so marshall my arguments.” him having crossed the English Channel much else, with extinction. Rage and grief are different. “In Australia, and taken a train from London to see her. “The idea that in 40 years we could I’ve got this kind of weird reputation as Indeed, when presented at the end of have no honey bees is horrifying and this mad virago. Australians have no idea this meeting with a small gift of two jars grief-striking. You just feel as if a claw what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years. of French jam, she looks at them sniffily went around your heart when you think English people know what I’ve been doing. They’re used to me and they know that I’m not a raging madwoman. I don’t “THE IDEA THAT IN 40 YEARS WE COULD HAVE NO HONEY know why Australians think that. I write BEES IS HORRIFYING AND GRIEF-STRIKING. YOU JUST something disparaging about Steve Irwin FEEL AS IF A CLAW WENT AROUND YOUR HEART ...” [“the only creatures he couldn’t dominate were parrots”] and they think, ‘Why did and says, “Jam? I’ve got plum trees all something like that. When my swallows she have to attack him?’. I didn’t attack over the place”. stopped coming, I really grieved. I felt a him. I simply pointed out that his kind of She then reads the labels on the jam chill that this beautiful thing … stopped conservation was wrong.” and exclaims, “Jam from France? You happening. And then, after 10 years, they (It is important to note here that Germaine mean you didn’t even make it yourself?” came back and I was ridiculously happy still believes Australians to be “the best for weeks. No one could understand why people in the world”. It is just that they are OF ALL THE MILLIONS of beautifully I was so happy.” doing some of the “worst things in the world”, chosen words Germaine Greer has ever It is a welcome thought, not just the like destroying our major river system.) written in her life, the ones that have come swallows returning, but Germaine Greer Margaret Fink claims her “cherished” closest to the raw truth of her character are finding happiness. For a lifetime, she friend of 40 years possesses “every human possibly those in the book about her father, has been – in her own words – “kicking quality known to man and woman”. Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. arse, taking names, talking loud and Endurance, courage, imagination, honesty, Published nearly 20 years ago, it remains drawing a crowd”. outspokenness … She is also a polymath, to this day the most honest glimpse she has She has been an intellectual giantess mimic and genius to boot. Too true, but given into her heartache. “Daddy never once among the pygmies and just like Virginia self-reflection is not among those qualities. hugged me,” she wrote. “If I put my arms Woolf once said of another great radical, Suggest to Germaine that she is – in around him, he would grimace … I clung feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, the words of one critic – as “introspective to the faith that he did not really find me “She is alive and active, she argues and as a sweet potato” and she replies, “I’m repulsive … If he had let me under his experiments, we hear her voice and trace not introspective. And less so as I get guard, I should have crept into his heart her influence, even now among the living.

older. I don’t fascinate myself at all.” and found the wound there.” We should all be grateful for that. ■ BY MARK HARRISON. PHOTOGRAPHY 8 | WW OCTOBER 2008 O WW OCTOBER 2008 | 9