Germaine du Feu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer

Germaine Greer (/ɡrɪər/; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. Based in England since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Australia and her home in Essex.

GERMIANE GREER - BIOGRAPHY

Germaine Greer, is a theorist, academic, and journalist. She was born on January 29, 1939. Germaine Greer holds an emeritus professorship in English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick. Although Germaine Greer studies the literature of early modern English, she is best known for her work in twentieth century feminism. Her ideas about gender and sexuality have provoked controversy since the release of her 1970 book The Female Eunuch. Some of Germaine Greer’s other works are titled Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility, The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause, and Shakespeare's Wife. For Germiane Greer the goal of women’s liberation was not to obtain equality with men. She rejected simple equality with simple assimilation. Such assimilation for women would make them only the equals of enslaved men. To Germiane Greer, women’s liberation should take the form as accepting gender differences in a positive life. Women should gain freedom by defining their own value system and gaining sovereignty over their own fates. Germain Greer was born in Melbourne, Australia on January 29, 1939. Her father served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War. As a civilian, Germiane Greer’s father worked for a newspaper as an advertising representative. Greer was educated in Gardenvale at Star of the Sea College. This school was a private school associated with a convent. In 1956, Germaine Greer was awarded a scholarship to enroll at the University of Melbourne. The university awarded Germiane Greer a bachelor’s degree in English and French literature and language. Germaine Greer relocated to Sydney where she joined the Sydney Push movement. The Sydney Libertarians formed the center of the milieu, imbuing it with their anarchistic leanings. The interactions with this social movement influenced her later theories. Germiane Greer would drift into a series of beliefs that were anarchic and communist, identifying with as a variant Marxist. She would later receive a Master’s degree in Romantic Poetry from the University of Sydney. Germaine Greer’s Master’s thesis The Developmenet of Byron’s Satiric Mode would earn her the Commonwealth Scholarship. She would use the award to pay for her doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. While in England, she would join Newnham Colleg, an all women’s institution. Greer developed her cheeky sense of politics by arguing that regardless of education or achievement, women would never achieve liberation as long as their breasts were required to be squeezed into ill fitting and inorganically formed bras. While pursuing her doctorate, Germaine Greer joined the amateur acting group the Cambridge Footlights. This group helped connect Germaine Greer to the world of art and media production in London. Greer began writing under the pseudonym Rose Blight for Private Eye, a satirical magazine. She also wrote under the pseudonym Dr. G. for the magazine Oz. She would pose nude for this magazine on the condition that the male editors did the same. The male editors, revealing their sexism and hypocrisy, refused to pose after they convinced Greer to. Germaine Greer would also publish a revealing photograph of herself in the magazine Suck, which she also edited. Germain Greer received her Doctorate in Elizabethan drama. Greer was given a lectureship in English at the University of Warwick in Coventry in 1968. This was also the year that Germaine Greer briefly married journalist Paul du Feu. Germaine Greer was not faithful to her husband, and the couple divorced in 1973. Greer published her seminal work The Female Eunuch in 1970. The book was extremely successful. The first printing sold out quickly, and the second printing was almost sold out by early 1971. Greer would resign her lectureship in 1972 so that she would have the freedom to continue traveling and the freedom to promote her work. In The Female Eunuch, Germain Greer argues that women are ignorant of the inherent dyspathy and contempt that men hold for them. Germaine Greer continues to state that women are also ignorant of the extent they themselves have internalized the dyspathy and contempt. The contents were so provocative that some claim it was the cause for many fights between husbands and wives during this period. For Germain Greer, a major concern was the idea that women had been disconnected from their libido and their sexuality. Greer made the observation that women had become like gelded animals, fat and docile. During a New York Times interview, Germaine Greer admitted that she had been a so-call supergroupie. Unlike a regular groupie, a supergroupie does not have to hang around the halls of hotel rooms. They are invited backstage. Germaine Greer was proud of this classification because it allowed her to dispel the mysticism around sex and sexual conquest. In 1972, New Zealand authorities arrested Germaine Greer for saying, “fuck” and “bullshit” at a rally. Later in the 1970s, Germaine Greer debated William F. Buckley on Firing Line. Germaine Greer carried the audience with reasoning. When composing her book Sex and Destiny, Germaine Greer would return to two of the themes she had began to explore in The Female Eunuch. The first theme that Greer returned to was the idea that the nuclear family was an inherently poor environment for women and children. The second theme was that the manner in which female sexuality is constructed in the West is demeaning. Greer indicates that women accept the culturally determined identification of gender as they become ashamed of their bodies and lose their ability to have autonomy. Women are left powerless and separated. They are unable to experience authentic joy. To counteract the extremes of oppression, Greer argued that women needed to embrace their bodies. They should overcome cultural queasiness about menstruation by tasting their menstrual blood. Greer, also, argued that women should abandon concepts like monogamy and celibacy. However in contrast to her earlier rejection of the bra, Greer declared that the blind rejection of the bra was just another form of internalized oppression. Germaine Greer, Jonathan Routh and Kenny Everett hosted Nice Time. Germaine Greer wrote articles for The Sunday Times. She traveled throughout Asia and Africa. In Bangladesh, Greer investigated the condition of women who were raped during a conflict with Pakistan. In 1979, the University of Tulsa-Oklahoma made Germaine Greer for the Center of the Study of Women’s Literature. During the early 1980s, Greer founded an academic journal called Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. Newnham College hired Germaine Greer as a fellow and special lecturer in 1989. Germaine Greer would later try to stop transsexual Rachel Padman from being hired. The controversy caused so much ill will that Germaine Greer resigned from her position in 1996. In 1991, Germain Greer published The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause. Greer addressed the many treatments (including hormone replacement) that attempted to pathologize a natural process. In 1999, she released The Whole Woman which was intended to be a sequel to The Female Eunuch. Germaine Greer examined the lack of process that had occurred since the earlier books publication. Although Germaine Greer continues to identify as a Marxist and anarchist, Greer has rarely addressed these issues explicitly in her works. Germaine Greer has struggled with the idea of a continual revolution. In this formulation, ideas would constantly be reevaluated and criticized. Greer’s work remains complicated, and she continues to take positions about gender that run the gamut from the radical to the reactionary. Ultimately, Greer believes that ideological positions should be ancillary to the real world workings of society. Germaine Greer continues to write and continues to be a lightning rod for controversy.

Source: http://www.egs.edu/library/germaine-greer/biography/

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer