January 29, 1939 - Germaine Greer - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Author of the Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer is born in Melbourne. Germaine Greer became known as one of the defining authors and speakers of the feminist movement in the 1970s due to her first book, The Female Eunuch. Greer was born on January 29, 1939 in Melbourne, Australia and was educated in a convent. Her post-secondary education earned her degrees at Melbourne and Sydney Universities before she attended Newnham College, a women’s college at the University of Cambridge in England on a scholarship. After receiving her PhD in 1967, she stayed in England to lecture in English at Warwick University until 1973. While there, Greer published the Female Eunuch in 1970 and it immediately became a best seller. Since that time it has been translated into numerous languages and continues to be sold around the world. The controversy of the book came from Greer’s frank talk and explicit language about women’s sexuality and how the traditional family repressed women, turning them into eunuchs. Greer was quoted as saying, “I have always been principally interested in men for sex. I've always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I'd fall in love with a woman. Damn.” But her language garnered more than just criticism. While speaking in New Zealand in 1972 she was fined $40 for swearing. Greer continues to write books and articles, and is a regular commentator, not only calling women to action, but encouraging men and women to challenge conventional roles. Greer, an avowed anarchist, has lived and worked in Italy, England and the United States.

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