Female Eunuch
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About this ebook
“Like a woman, this book gets better with age. Greer’s punchy prose and all-too-true observations motivate you to go out and do something to liberate yourself-and other women.” — Leora Tanenbaum, author of Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation
A ground-breaking, worldwide bestselling study of women’s oppression that is at once an important social commentary, a passionately argued masterpiece of polemic, and a feminist classic.
The publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970 was a landmark event, raising eyebrows and ire while creating a shock wave of recognition in women around the world with its steadfast assertion that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation. Today, Greer's searing examination of the oppression of women in contemporary society is both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is a major cultural figure – a writer, an English critic, a literary and media star, and a feminist.
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Reviews for Female Eunuch
51 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The glue is giving up on my 1971 copy of this seminal (so to speak) book - not that I read it that much these days, but what an eye-opener it was back then! So much we had taken for granted about how we were supposed to be and act. How little solidarity and sisterhood there really was out there in a world where every woman was after her alpha male to support her. Have things changed? Not as much as we hoped they would...but Germaine remains my heroine.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Female Eunuch was written in the 1970's and parts of it have not dated well. Greer's hostile writing makes the text less-than accessible in places, as she attacks both the nuclear family and other feminists who want mere "equality." What Greer does want is not exactly clear, and perhaps because of the time when it was written her work contains elements of homophobia, transphobia and racism. For a reader who did not grow up in the repressive 1950's there are many passages which will be relevant only in terms of history. After all, Freud and his ilk no longer hold the sway over popular opinion that they once did. However, reading the excerpts of Freud and other psychoanalysts' work of the period do serve to explain much of Greer's anger - who wouldn't be outraged by the thesis that women are intrinsically ethically inferior to men, and are really only incomplete men, who spend their whole lives longing for a penis? I think it is important to learn the historic struggles that feminists in this time period had to overcome.Some parts of Greer's text do continue to ring disturbingly true. For example, Greer's writing on women in advertisements is as true today as it was in 1970:"Every survey ever held has shown that the image of an attractive woman is the most effective advertising gimmick. She may sit astride the mudguard of a new car ... or dance through woodland glades in slow motion in all the glory of a new shampoo; whatever she does, her image sells. ... Her dominion must not be thought to entail the rule of women, for she is not a woman. Her glossy lips and matt complexion, her unfocused eyes and flawless fingers, her extraordinary hair all floating and shining, curling and gleaming, reveal the inhuman triumph of cosmetics, lighting, focussing and printing, cropping and composition. ... If ever she should appear tousled and troubled, her features are miraculously smoothed to their proper veneer by a new washing powder or a bouillon cube. For she is a doll: weeping, pouting or smiling, running or reclining, she is a doll." (p. 60)And, while women are no longer restricted to the jobs of secretary, nurse or teacher, I think a lot of what Greer writes on the brainwashing of young women with romance novels is still in effect (one need only look at the current Twilight franchise...) and her chapter titled The Object of Male Fantasy is still relevant. "For boys broaching manhood the dominant fantasy of adventure simply expands to include women as exploit ... and seem to fall into two patterns, the Great Bitch and the Poison Maiden." (p. 190) Although I do think that at present we have more (better) books and movies and not all of them fall into these patterns and stereotypes, there are still plenty that do.Greer's opposition to the nuclear family, which at first seems shocking, contains several good arguments - although some of them may be less relevant these days when mothers often lead careers and do hang out with their husband's friends, etc. Although when she makes the point about children emotionally blackmailing their parents to buy them things, or how infant girls are taught to be coy and sweet, in essence flirting with their fathers in order to get their way, I fear that some of what she says is still too true. The Female Eunuch is a feminist classic, and a very important one. It is well worth reading for anyone interested in the history of women and feminism, as long as one is prepared for Greer's aggressive and sometimes offensive style.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5International bestseller and milestone in the re-thinking of the very basic facts which continue to hag-ride our behavior -- gender differences and similarities in the body, the soul, and what we love and hate. Greer chapters each of those topics, concluding with a call to revolution. With Notes. Greer presents a direct description of sexuality--not content with mere anatomy or indirection. Looking at how they are treated, she concludes that "men hate women", even though they do not realize it, and men end up hating themselves. No actual eunuchs were injured in the analysis, but Greer invokes literary and consumerist evidence that "Women have been separated from their libido", and cut off from their capacity for action: castrati, sacrificed for fattening docilities. My reading is that Greer is all about elevating humans to a greater capacity for love, compounded by the joy of really being together. I think this book changed the lives of people in the 1970's, and not just in the English-reading world.Curiously, the "supergroupie" demystifying academic author published a kind of sequel to this work, in 1999, entitled The Whole Woman.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Back in the day, this book was very important to me; it helped me think about what being female really meant, and about how it should affect my life. Skimming back through it now, it seems awfully simplistic, too facile, and rather a rant. But that's looking at the book through "presentist" glasses. A key feminist work, which affected lots of lives.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I picked up this book not only because of it's historical significance but because a friend mad a blog post about it while having not read it basically saying Greer was an self-important idiot and I really hate ignorance. Reading this book as a feminist in 2010 there are things about it I don't agree with. I definetley have problems with the blatant transphobia which is a theme through Greer's writings, and she has a rather patchy idea about homosexuality. Some of the things she talks abuot are outdated or becoming so which is touching in a way as it means we're making progress but many of them are still cuttingly relevant today. Young girls still grow up dreaming of romance and magical kisses while boys are taught to fuck. Women are still penalised in marriage and children are still forced inwards in a nuclear family. This is a powerful book. At times too powerful. Greer also at time inadvertently makes me laugh by criticising accademic feminism in a highly accademic book and criticising the classism in feminism which dealing mainly with middle class issues. Maybe one of the most interesting things I got from reading this book is a view of hoiw feminism itself has changed. Feminism today is much more accessible, both in it's texts and in the way it operates, and we are started to acnowledge a lot more intersection which I think can only be a good thing. Greer quotes an argument that isms such as racism and classism are unimportant and can not be solved until we solve racism but the truth of the matter is these things are all intimatley linked, something that the feminist movement is slowly starting to admit and the faster we get round to it and embrace it the better.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Part of any worthwhile education. Should be taught in all schools.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Another feminazi bullshit, why womens keep reading that? Rage? God...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Definitely a life-changing book when I read it in the 1970s. One I could hardly bear to pick up as a wife and mother in the 1980s. I wonder what I would think if I re-read it today?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It's a good read, but more relevant to my mother's generation than my own.