Castrating Greer?

Four decades after the publication of Germaine Greer’s seminal feminist work “The Female Eunuch,” it has provoked an astonishing attack by a fellow Australian writer Louis Nowra. Nowra says Greer has “fundamentally misunderstood how women tick” and that the reality of the modern world has entirely contradicted her vision of how women would live after casting off the shackles of female oppression. The Independent reports that “In an essay to mark The Female Eunuch’s 40th anniversary, Nowra lambasts the book as ‘hopelessly middle class’ and Greer’s depiction of women as misogynistic. The playwright and novelist writes: ‘She wanted women to undergo a profound change in the way they viewed themselves and their relationships with men. If you look at how Greer thought this could happen and what actually did, then our contemporary world must come as a disappointment to her.’ In the essay, published in The Monthly, a current affairs magazine, Nowra not only attacks Greer’s work, but criticises her appearance, her character and even her sanity. ‘She will do anything to get noticed,’ he says, adding that when Greer appeared on the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, she looked like ‘a befuddled and exhausted old woman’.”