The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer Search Amazon for other books by or about Germaine Greer. Rating: Reviewed by: Richard Hawkins

Germaine Greer is back and she's still angry. The Whole Woman is the self-proclaimed sequel to 1971's The Female Eunuch, a sequel she had said she would never write. She took up the cause again because "the fire flared up in her belly" when the feminists of her generation said that feminism had gone too far and the "lifestyle feminists" (whoever they may be) said that it had gone far enough.

For Greer, almost everything about being a woman today is terrible, because she sees that all women are cruelly manipulated by the media and society's constructs to become "disabled" beings. So "a woman's first duty to herself is to survive this process, then to recognize it, then to take measures to defend herself against it." Mass culture has spread the "gospel of salvation according to hipless, wombless, hard-breasted Barbie" to the rest of the world with terrible efficiency so that even the "whole women" of the third world (including, presumably, the "infibulated woman who taught her about sexual pleasure") are being transformed into the dreaded stereotype. "If only all women were like me!" Greer seems to be saying.

It is this apparent solipsism that infects all of Greer's writing. She has, in one of her many well-documented tirades, accused her mother of having Asperger's syndrome but now Greer herself seems to be heading towards the same affliction.

Nevertheless, the fierce polemicism of all of Greer's writing (evident even in the autobiographical Daddy We Hardly Knew You), is stirring. She has the prodigious ability to irritate, to get under the skin, and not just of men. A friend of mine bought a copy of The Madwoman's Underclothes for his wife and after she read it (she's a feminist) she spent at least a month feeling angry, frustrated and depressed. An Australian cartoonist has invented some modern-day curses, including "may your wife read the latest Germaine Greer book."

A lot of Greer's writing in The Whole Woman is poorly executed and some of it is stunningly incomprehensible (what is anyone to make of this sentence: "Millions of women sit knitting garments that nobody wants because the hours of fiddling work give them an opportunity gradually to release the intolerable pressure of their unspoken love."?), but there are passages of great fire and real beauty. The chapter titled "Sorrow" is the best writing in the book - an espousal of the right of woman to feel sorrow - sometimes only for themselves because their lot is, in Greer 's estimation, so terrible. She feels there are powerfully good aspects to female sorrow, and we feel the poignancy as her wounded psyche becomes transparent beneath external rage. (Certainly she is probably also sure that women's propensity for sadness irritates men.)

The chapter called "Fathers", however, made me angry, distressed and outraged. Greer more or less baldly asserts that all fathers wish to molest their daughters: "it is a rare (non-abusing) father who can permit himself any degree of physical intimacy with a daughter." As the father of a daughter I'm amazed that she could get so much so wrong. Nevertheless, there is a deep poignancy in Greer's reiteration of the theme of being unloved. The tragic climax of Daddy We Hardly Knew You was Greer's realization that her late father was never really interested in her. Again, because she feels this pain so acutely, she draws the conclusion that this is how all women feel - they have all been neglected by their fathers: "The boy baby learns that he can have what he wants and quickly, the girl baby that she has to learn patience. The sociability and intuitiveness valued in...girls (possibly) has its roots in the insecurity that the little girl feels in her relationship with both her parents. Daughters will develop more self-confidence if their fathers are encouraging and appreciative of their efforts, but fathers seldom give such matters much attention.."

Greer has taken a big stand against sexual equality and argues the point cogently: "equality is an utterly conservative aim.Equality is cruel to women because it requires them to duplicate behaviors that they find profoundly alien and disturbing. Menlike the masculine world that they have built for themselves; if enough men had not enjoyed what they euphemistically call the'cut and thrust' - the sanctioned brutalities of corporate life - such behavior would never have been institutionalized and womenwould not now be struggling with it. In constructing its male elite, masculinist society contrives to be cruel to most men, allwomen and all children. If women can see no future beyond joining the masculinist elite on its own terms, our civilization willbecome more destructive than ever. There has to be a better way."

It seems true that women should (if they only had more sense, like Greer) get rid of men from their lives and live independently(as she does, but then, she's independently wealthy from the sales of her books) - all would be well. I wonder how manywomen are as eager as she to cast of all association with the "useless" sex.

Don't read The Whole Woman unless you are prepared to be annoyed and maybe to take to the barricades. The FemaleEunuch was a watershed in popular feminist writing. The Whole Woman probably won't have the same impact but it showsthere's plenty of life and fire in the belly of this 60 year-old feminist.