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{{Short description|American feminist writer and activist (1921–2006)}}
{{Image|Germaine Greer, 28 October 2013 (portrait crop).jpg|right|300px|Germaine Greer in 2013.}}
{{Infobox person
{{TOC|left}}
| name          = Betty Friedan
'''Germaine Greer''' (1939 - ?) is an Australian writer and [[public intellectual]], regarded as one of the major voices of the [[second-wave feminism]] movement in the latter half of the 20th century.<ref>{{harvnb|Magarey|2010|pp=402–403}}; {{harvnb|Medoff|2010|p=263}}; {{harvnb|Standish|2014|p=263}}; {{harvnb|Francis|Henningham|2017}}. For the date of birth, {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=3}}.</ref>
| image        = Betty Friedan 1960.jpg
| caption      = Friedan in 1960
| birth_name    = Bettye Naomi Goldstein
| birth_date    = {{Birth date|1921|2|4}}
| birth_place  = [[Peoria, Illinois]], U.S.
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|2006|2|4|1921|2|4}}
| death_place  = Washington, D.C., U.S.
| education    = {{Plainlist|
* [[Smith College]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])
* [[University of California, Berkeley]]
}}
| occupation    = {{hlist|Writer|activist}}
| notable_works = ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' (1963)
| spouse        = {{Marriage|Carl Friedan|1947|1969|end=divorced}}
| children      = 3, including [[Daniel Friedan]]
| module        = {{Infobox academic|child=yes
| influences    = [[Simone de Beauvoir]]
}}
}}


* [https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2023/1102/How-the-women-s-movement-transformed-society How the women’s movement transformed society] by Barbara Spindel, Christian Science Monitor, November 2, 2023.  "Three recent books explore the contours of the second-wave feminist movement, from titan Betty Friedan to the editors and readers of Ms. Magazine."
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 the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England.


'''Betty Friedan''' (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American [[Feminism|feminist]] writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' is often credited with sparking the [[Second-wave feminism|second wave]] of [[Feminism in the United States|American feminism]] in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded, and was elected the first president of, the [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW). NOW's stated aim was to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men".
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, ''[[The Female Eunuch]]'' (1970), made her a household name.<ref name=Winant2015/> An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as [[womanhood]] and [[femininity]], arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed.<ref>Saracoglu, Melody (12 May 2014). [http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2014/05/melody-saracoglu-germaine-greer-one-woman-against-world "Melody Saracoglu on Germaine Greer: One Woman Against the World"], ''New Statesman''.</ref>{{sfn|Reilly|2010|p=213}}


After stepping down as NOW's president in 1970, Friedan organized a nationwide [[Women's Strike for Equality]] on August 26, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that granted women [[suffrage]] (the right to vote) in the United States. The national strike was successful beyond expectations in broadening the feminist movement; the march led by Friedan in New York City alone attracted over 50,000 people.
Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including ''Sex and Destiny'' (1984), ''The Change'' (1991), ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), and ''[[The Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]'' (2003). Her 2013 book, ''[[White Beech: The Rainforest Years]]'', describes her efforts to restore an area of [[Gondwana Rainforests of Australia|rainforest]] in the [[Numinbah Valley]] in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', ''[[The Guardian]]'', ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', ''[[The Spectator]]'', ''[[The Independent]]'', and ''[[The Oldie]]'', among others.


In 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to establish the [[National Women's Political Caucus]]. Friedan was also a strong supporter of the proposed [[Equal Rights Amendment]] to the United States Constitution that passed the United States House of Representatives (by a vote of 354–24) and Senate (84–8) following intense pressure by women's groups led by NOW in the early 1970s. Following Congressional passage of the amendment, Friedan advocated ratification of the amendment in the states and supported other women's rights reforms: she founded the [[NARAL Pro-Choice America|National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws]] but was later critical of the abortion-centered positions of many liberal feminists.
Greer is a [[Women's liberation movement|liberation]] (or [[Radical feminism|radical]]) rather than [[Equality feminism|equality feminist]].<ref name=note1>Germaine Greer, "All About Women" (2015): "I've always been a liberation feminist. I'm not an equality feminist. I think that's a profoundly conservative aim, and it wouldn't change anything. It would just mean that women were implicated."</ref> Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in ''The Whole Woman'' (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting [[Difference feminism|difference]] and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".<ref name=note2>Germaine Greer (''The Whole Woman'', 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. ''The Female Eunuch'' was one feminist text that did not argue for equality."</ref>


Regarded as an influential author and intellectual in the United States, Friedan remained active in politics and advocacy until the late 1990s, authoring six books. As early as the 1960s Friedan was critical of polarized and extreme factions of feminism that attacked groups such as men and homemakers. One of her later books, ''[[The Second Stage]]'' (1981), critiqued what Friedan saw as the extremist excesses of some feminists.<ref>{{cite news|title=The Second Stage|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/22/books/friedan-second.html?pagewanted=all|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date = November 22, 1981|access-date=March 9, 2018}}</ref>
==''The Female Eunuch'' (1970)==
===Writing===
{{further|The Female Eunuch}}
[[File:The Pheasantry-152 Kings Road.JPG|thumb|[[The Pheasantry]], 152 [[King's Road]], [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]]]]
When she began writing for ''Oz'' and ''Suck'', Greer was spending three days a week in her flat in Leamington Spa while she taught at Warwick, two days in Manchester filming, and two days in London in a white-washed [[bedsit]] in [[The Pheasantry]] on [[King's Road]].<ref name=Bell31July1969>{{cite news |last1=Bell |first1=Lynne |title=Doctor who refuses to be type-cast |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=31 July 1969 |page=19}}</ref> When she first moved to London, she had stayed in [[John Peel]]'s spare room before being invited to take the bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under [[Martin Sharp]]'s; accommodation there was by invitation only.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=106–108}}


== Early life ==
She was also writing ''The Female Eunuch''. On 17 March 1969 she had had lunch in [[Golden Square]], [[Soho]], with a Cambridge acquaintance, [[Sonny Mehta]] of [[MacGibbon & Kee]]. When he asked for ideas for new books, she repeated a suggestion of her agent, Diana Crawford, which she had dismissed, that she write about female suffrage.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=137}}; also see {{harvnb|Packer|1984|p=98}}; {{harvnb|Wallace|1999|p=141}}.</ref> Crawford had suggested that Greer write a book for the 50th anniversary of women (or a portion of them) being [[Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom|given the vote in the UK]] in 1918.{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=11}} The very idea of it made her angry and she began "raging" about it. "That's the book I want", he said. He advanced her £750 and another £250 when she signed the contract.{{sfn|Packer|1984|p=98}} In a three-page synopsis for Mehta, she wrote: "If [[Eldridge Cleaver]] can write [[Soul on Ice (book)|a book about the frozen soul of the negro]], as part of the progress towards a correct statement of the coloured man's problem, a woman must eventually take steps towards delineating the female condition as she finds it scored upon her sensibility."{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=7}}
Friedan was born '''Bettye Naomi Goldstein'''<ref name="Fox">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05friedan.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=30472e5004a66ea3&ex=1296795600 |first=Margalit |last=Fox |date=February 5, 2006 |title=Betty Friedan, who ignited cause in 'Feminine Mystique,' dies at 85 |work=The New York Times |access-date=February 2, 2010}}</ref><ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-friedan-465800.html Sweet, Corinne (Feb. 7, 2006). ''Ground-Breaking Author of 'The Feminine Mystique' Who Sparked Feminism's Second Wave''. The (London) Independent (obit)]{{dead link|date=August 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, Retrieved February 2, 2010.</ref><ref>[https://www.britannica.com/women/article-9035419 ''Betty Friedan'', in ''300 Women Who Changed the World''. Encyclopædia Britannica], Retrieved February 2, 2010.</ref> on February 4, 1921, in [[Peoria, Illinois]],<ref name="nowobit">{{cite web|title=NOW Mourns Foremothers of Feminist, Civil Rights Movements|url=http://www.now.org/nnt/summer-2006/foremothers.html|work=[[National Organization for Women]]|last=Wing Katie Loves Jason|first=Liz|date=Summer 2006|access-date=February 19, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061120203421/http://www.now.org/nnt/summer-2006/foremothers.html|archive-date=November 20, 2006}}</ref> to Harry and Miriam (Horwitz) Goldstein, whose [[Judaism|Jewish]] families were from Russia and Hungary.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w81L1qAhNjoC&q=Harry+Miriam+Goldstein&pg=PA698|title=History of American Political Thought|first1=Bryan-Paul|last1=Frost|first2=Jeffrey|last2=Sikkenga|year= 2017|publisher=Lexington Books|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0739106242}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/womenadvocatesof0000reyn|url-access=registration|title=Women advocates of reproductive rights: eleven who led the struggle in the United States and Great Britain|first=Moira Davison|last=Reynolds|year=1994|publisher=McFarland & Co.|via=Internet Archive|isbn=978-0899509402}}</ref> Harry owned a jewelry store in Peoria, and Miriam wrote for the society page of a newspaper when Friedan's father fell ill. Her mother's new life outside the home seemed much more gratifying.


As a young girl, Friedan was active in both [[Marxism|Marxist]] and Jewish circles; she later wrote how she felt isolated from the latter community at times, and felt her "passion against injustice&nbsp;... originated from my feelings of the injustice of anti-Semitism".<ref name="Horowitz_2000">{{harvp|Horowitz|2000}}</ref> She attended [[Peoria High School (Peoria, Illinois)|Peoria High School]], and became involved in the school newspaper. When her application to write a column was turned down, she and six other friends launched a literary magazine called ''Tide'', which discussed home life rather than school life.
Explaining why she wanted to write the book, the synopsis continued: "Firstly I suppose it is to expiate my guilt at being an [[uncle Tom]] to my sex. I don't like women. I probably share in all the effortless and unconscious contempt that men pour on women." In a note at the time, she described 21 April 1969 as "the day on which my book begins itself, and [[Janis Joplin]] sings at [[Albert Hall]]. Yesterday the title was Strumpet Voluntary—what shall it be today?"{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=9}} She told the ''[[Sydney Morning Herald]]'' in July 1969 that the book was nearly finished and would explore, in the reporter's words, "the myth of the ultra-feminine woman which both sexes are fed and which both end up believing".<ref name=Bell31July1969/> In February 1970, she published an article in ''Oz'', "The Slag-Heap Erupts", which gave a taste of her views to come, namely that women were to blame for their own oppression. "Men don't really like women", she wrote, "and that is really why they don't employ them. Women don't really like women either, and they too can usually be relied on to employ men in preference to women."{{sfn|Greer|1986|p=26}} Several British feminists, including [[Angela Carter]], [[Sheila Rowbotham]] and [[Michelene Wandor]], responded angrily.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=403}} Wandor wrote a rejoinder in ''Oz'', "On the end of Servile Penitude: A reply to Germaine's cunt power", arguing that Greer was writing about a feminist movement in which she had played no role and about which she knew nothing.{{sfn|Spongberg|1993|p=415}}


Friedan attended the women's [[Smith College]] in 1938. She won a scholarship prize in her first year for outstanding academic performance. In her second year, she became interested in poetry and had many poems published in campus publications. In 1941, she became editor-in-chief of SCAN (Smith College Associated News). The editorials became more political under her leadership, taking a strong antiwar stance and occasionally causing controversy.<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/> She graduated ''[[summa cum laude]]'' and [[Phi Beta Kappa]] in 1942 with a major in [[psychology]]. She lived in Chapin House during her time at Smith.<ref>Smith College. The Madeleine, 1942. Northampton: Graduating Class of 1942. Print. Archives, Smith College Special Collections.</ref>
===Publication===
[[File:Female Eunuch cover.jpeg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Christine Wallace]] called [[Paladin Books|Paladin]]'s cover, designed by John Holmes, one of the most "instantly recognizable images in post-war publishing".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=161–162}}]]


In 1943 she spent a year at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] on a fellowship for graduate work in [[psychology]] with [[Erik Erikson]].<ref name="a">{{cite journal|last=Henderson|first=Margaret|title=Betty Friedan 1921–2006|journal=Australian Feminist Studies|volume=22|issue=53|pages=163–166|date=July 2007|doi=10.1080/08164640701361725|s2cid=144278497}}</ref> She became more politically active, continuing to mix with Marxists (many of her friends were investigated by the [[FBI]]).<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/> In her memoirs, she claimed that her boyfriend at the time had pressured her into turning down a Ph.D. fellowship for further study and abandoning her academic career.
Launched at a party attended by editors from ''Oz'',{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=176}} ''The Female Eunuch'' was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Tweedie |first1=Jill |title=Goodbye love |work=The Guardian |date=28 September 1970 |page=9}}; {{cite news |last1=Lyndon |first1=Neil |author-link=Neil Lyndon |title=Shooting down The Female Eunuch |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shooting-down-the-female-eunuch-d75bkm2t9jz |work=The Sunday Times |date=10 October 2010}}.</ref> dedicated to [[Lillian Roxon]] and four other women.<ref>{{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=136–137}}</ref> The first print run of {{frac|2|1|2}} thousand copies sold out on the first day.<ref name=Byrne1986>{{cite news |title=Germaine Greer on Marriage, Children And Society |url=https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1021/825887-germaine-greer-and-the-female-eunuch/ |work=The Late Late Show |publisher=RTÉ |date=24 October 1986}}</ref> Arguing that the suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses and devitalizes women, the book became an international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement.{{sfn|Reilly|2010|p=213}} According to Greer, [[McGraw-Hill]] paid $29,000 for the American rights and [[Bantam Books|Bantam]] $135,000 for the paperback.<ref name=Greenfield7Jan1971>{{cite magazine |last1=Greenfield |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert Greenfield |title=Germaine Greer, A Groupie in Women's Lib |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/germaine/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=7 January 1971 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171223025916/http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/germaine/ |archive-date=23 December 2017}}</ref> The Bantam edition called Greer the "Saucy feminist that even men like", quoting ''Life'' magazine, and the book "#1: the ultimate word on sexual freedom".{{sfn|Baumgardner|2001|p=3}} Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly,{{sfn|Baumgardner|2001|p=4}} and it has never been out of print.<ref name=Winant2015/> Wallace writes about one woman who wrapped it in brown paper and kept it hidden under her shoes, because her husband would not let her read it.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=299}} By 1998 it had sold over one million copies in the UK alone.


== Writing career ==
The year 1970 was an important one for second-wave feminism. In February 400 women met in [[Ruskin College]], Oxford, for Britain's first Women's Liberation Conference.<ref>{{harvnb|Lake|2016|p=10}}; {{cite news |title=The first Women's Liberation Movement Conference |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03/2010_08_thu.shtml |work=Woman's Hour |publisher=BBC |date=25 February 2010}}</ref> In August [[Kate Millett]]'s ''[[Sexual Politics]]'' was published in New York;<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Doherty |first1=Maggie |title=What Kate Did |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/131897/kate-millett-sexual-politics |magazine=The New Republic |date=23 March 2016}}</ref> on 26 August the [[Women's Strike for Equality]] was held throughout the United States; and on 31 August Millett's portrait by [[Alice Neel]] was on the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, by which time her book had sold 15,000 copies (although in December ''Time'' deemed her disclosure that she was a lesbian as likely to discourage people from embracing feminism).<ref>{{harvnb|Poirot|2004|pp=204–205}}; {{harvnb|Mosmann|2016|p=84}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=166–167}}.</ref> September and October saw the publication of ''[[Sisterhood Is Powerful]]'', edited by [[Robin Morgan]], and [[Shulamith Firestone]]'s ''[[The Dialectic of Sex]]''.{{sfn|Merck|2010|p=13}} On 6 March 1971, dressed in a monk's habit, Greer marched through central London with 2,500 women in a Women's Liberation March.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Heilpern |first1=John |title=Women who came out in the cold |work=The Observer |date=7 March 1971 |page=1}}<br />{{cite news |last1=Whitmore |first1=Greg |title=Women's Liberation Movement march, 1971 – in pictures |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/mar/03/womens-liberation-movement-march-1971-in-pictures |work=The Guardian |date=3 March 2018}}<br />{{cite news |last1=Tweedie |first1=Jill |title=From the archive, 8 March 1971: Women march for liberation in London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/mar/08/1971-womens-liberation-march-archive |work=The Guardian |date=8 March 2013}}</ref> By that month ''The Female Eunuch'' had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing.{{sfn|Wallace|1999|p=299}} McGraw-Hill published it in the United States on 16 April 1971.<ref name=weintraub22March1971/><ref>{{cite news |title=Books of the Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/20/archives/the-best-feminist-book-so-far.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=20 April 1971}}; {{cite news |last1=Kempton |first1=Sally |title=''The Female Eunuch'' by Germaine Greer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/25/archives/the-female-eunuch-by-germaine-greer-349-pp-new-york-mcgrawhill-book.html|date=25 April 1971|work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> The toast of New York, Greer insisted on staying at the [[Hotel Chelsea]], a haunt of writers and artists, rather than at the [[Algonquin Hotel]] where her publisher had booked her; her book launch had to be rescheduled because so many people wanted to attend.<ref>{{harvnb|Spongberg|1993|p=407}}; for the Hotel Chelsea, {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|p=169}}.</ref> A ''[[New York Times]]'' book review described her as "[s]ix feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and a profile reminiscent of [[Greta Garbo|Garbo]]".<ref name=weintraub22March1971/> Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear".{{sfn|Caine|Gatens|1998|p=44}}
[[File:Betty friedan ©Lynn Gilbert.jpg|thumb|Betty Friedan photographed by [[Lynn Gilbert]], 1981]]
[[File:Betty Friedan LOC.jpg|thumb|Friedan in 1987]]


=== Before 1963 ===
{{anchor|cover}}A [[Grafton (publisher)|Paladin]] paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by [[René Magritte]],<ref name=Hamilton2016p44/> showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip.<ref>Russell, Marlowe (18 October 2011). [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/18/john-holmes-obituary "John Holmes obituary"], ''The Guardian''.</ref> [[Clive Hamilton]] regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created".<ref name=Hamilton2016p44>{{harvnb|Hamilton|2016|p=44}}.</ref> Likening the torso to "some fibreglass cast on an industrial production line", [[Christine Wallace]] wrote that Holmes's first version was a faceless, breastless, naked woman, "unmistakably Germaine&nbsp;... hair fashionably afro-frizzed, waist-deep in a pile of stylised breasts, presumably amputated in the creation of a 'female eunuch' based on an assumed equivalence of testicles and mammary glands".{{sfn|Wallace|1999|pp=161–162}} The book was reissued in 2001 by [[Farrar, Straus & Giroux]] at the instigation of [[Jennifer Baumgardner]], a leading [[Third-wave feminism|third-wave feminist]] and editor of the publisher's Feminist Classics series.{{sfn|Baumgardner|2011|p=34}} According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist".{{sfn|Wlodarczyk|2010|p=24}}
After leaving Berkeley, Betty became a journalist for [[left-wing politics|leftist]] and labor union publications. Between 1943 and 1946 she wrote for [[Federated Press]] and between 1946 and 1952 she worked for the [[United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America|United Electrical Workers]]' ''[[UE News]]''. One of her assignments was to report on the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]].<ref name="a" />


By then married, Friedan was dismissed from the union newspaper ''UE News'' in 1952 because she was pregnant with her second child.<ref name="biography.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.biography.com/people/betty-friedan-9302633|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130118015514/http://www.biography.com/people/betty-friedan-9302633|url-status=dead|title=Betty Friedan Biography – Facts, Birthday, Life Story – Biography.com|date=January 18, 2013|archive-date=January 18, 2013|website=archive.is}}</ref> After leaving UE News she became a freelance writer for various magazines, including ''[[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|Cosmopolitan]]''.<ref name="a" />
===Arguments===
<blockquote>
"When a woman may walk on the open streets of our cities alone, without insult or obstacle, at any pace she chooses, there will be no further need for this book."
</blockquote><ref>[http://hdl.handle.net/11343/42290 "''The Female Eunuch'' first draft"], University Library, The University of Melbourne. This quote is the first draft's opening line.</ref>


According to Friedan biographer Daniel Horowitz, Friedan started as a labor journalist when she first became aware of women's oppression and exclusion, although Friedan herself disputed this interpretation of her work.<ref>{{harvp|Horowitz|2000|pp=ix–xi}}</ref>
''The Female Eunuch'' explores how a male-dominated world affects a female's sense of self, and how sexist stereotypes undermine female rationality, autonomy, power and sexuality. Its message is that women have to look within themselves for personal liberation before trying to change the world. In a series of chapters in five sections—Body, Soul, Love, Hate and Revolution—Greer describes the stereotypes, myths and misunderstandings that combine to produce the oppression.{{sfn|Brock|2016|p=80}} She summarized the book's position in 2018 as "Do what you want and want what you do&nbsp;... Don't take it up the arse if you don't want to take it up the arse."<ref>{{YouTube|id=cCzilf_o6fg|title=Interview with Germaine Greer}}, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Sydney Opera House</ref> Wallace argues that this is a libertarian message, with its background in the Sydney Push, rather than one that rose out of the feminism of the day.{{sfn|Brock|2016|p=82}} The first paragraph stakes out the book's place in feminist historiography (in an earlier draft, the first sentence read: "So far the female liberation movement is tiny, privileged and overrated"):{{sfn|Lake|2016|p=8}}


=== ''The Feminine Mystique'' ===
{{blockquote|This book is part of the second feminist wave. The old [[suffragette]]s, who served their prison term and lived on through the years of gradual admission of women into professions which they declined to follow, into parliamentary freedoms which they declined to exercise, into academies which they used more and more as shops where they could take out degrees while waiting to get married, have seen their spirit revive in younger women with a new and vital cast.&nbsp;... The new emphasis is different. Then genteel middle-class ladies clamoured for reform, now ungenteel middle-class women are calling for revolution.{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=13}}}}
{{Main|The Feminine Mystique{{!}}''The Feminine Mystique''}}
For her 15th college reunion in 1957 Friedan conducted a survey of college graduates, focusing on their education, subsequent experiences and satisfaction with their current lives. She started publishing articles about what she called "the problem that has no name", and got passionate responses from many housewives grateful that they were not alone in experiencing this problem.<ref name=Spender1985>{{cite book|last=Spender|first=Dale|title=For the Record: The Making and Meaning of Feminist Knowledge|year=1985|publisher=[[Women's Press]]|location=London|isbn=0704328623|pages=[https://archive.org/details/forrecord00dale/page/7 7–18]|url=https://archive.org/details/forrecord00dale/page/7}}</ref>


<blockquote>The shores are strewn with the casualties of the feminine mystique. They did give up their own education to put their husbands through college, and then, maybe against their own wishes, ten or fifteen years later, they were left in the lurch by divorce. The strongest were able to cope more or less well, but it wasn't that easy for a woman of forty-five or fifty to move ahead in a profession and make a new life for herself and her children or herself alone.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gilbert |first=Lynn |title=Particular Passions: Betty Friedan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D8JcwHZRa7gC&q=betty+friedan |series=Women of Wisdom Series |year=2012 |publisher=Lynn Gilbert Inc. |location=New York |isbn=978-1-61979-593-8}}</ref></blockquote>
The ''Eunuch'' ends with: "Privileged women will pluck at your sleeve and seek to enlist you in the 'fight' for reforms, but reforms are retrogressive. The old process must be broken, not made new. Bitter women will call you to rebellion, but you have too much to do. What ''will'' you do?"{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=371}}


Friedan then decided to rework and expand this topic into a book, ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]''. Published in 1963, it depicted the roles of women in [[industrial society|industrial societies]], especially the full-time [[homemaker]] role which Friedan deemed stifling.<ref name=Spender1985/> In her book, Friedan described a depressed suburban housewife who dropped out of college at the age of 19 to get married and raise four children.<ref>''The Feminine Mystique'', p. 8.</ref> She spoke of her own 'terror' at being alone, wrote that she had never once in her life seen a positive female role-model who worked outside the home and also kept a family, and cited numerous cases of housewives who felt similarly trapped. From her psychological background she criticized [[Freud]]'s [[penis envy]] theory, noting a lot of paradoxes in his work, and offered some answers to women desirous of further education.<ref>{{cite news|title=Betty Friedan's Enduring 'Mystique'|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/books/review/betty-friedans-enduring-mystique.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=February 26, 2006|access-date=March 9, 2018|last1=Donadio|first1=Rachel}}</ref>
[[File:Germaine Greer, Amsterdam, June 1972.jpg|thumb|Greer in Amsterdam, 6 June 1972, on a book tour for ''The Female Eunuch'']]
Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to ''Sex and Destiny'' 14 years later, namely that the [[nuclear family]] is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children, and that the manufacture of [[Human female sexuality|women's sexuality]] by Western society is demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate them. Later, when women embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity, they develop a sense of shame about their own bodies, and lose their natural and political autonomy. The result is powerlessness, isolation, a diminished sexuality, and a lack of joy.<ref>{{YouTube|id=CN2xhrEJCxs|title=Germaine Greer explains her interpretation of ''The Female Eunuch''}}, BBC, 9 June 2018</ref> "Like beasts", she told ''[[The New York Times]]'' in March 1971, "who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives—to be fattened or made docile—women have been cut off from their capacity for action."<ref name=weintraub22March1971>{{cite news|first=Judith|last=Weintraub|date=March 22, 1971|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/greer-shock.html|title=Germaine Greer&nbsp;– Opinions That May Shock the Faithful|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> The book argues that "[w]omen have very little idea of how much men hate them", while "[m]en do not themselves know the depth of their hatred."<ref>{{harvnb|Greer|2001|pp=279, 281–282}}; also see {{harvnb|Greer|1999|p=359}}.</ref> [[First-wave feminism]] had failed in its revolutionary aims. "Reaction is not revolution", she wrote. "It is not a sign of revolution where the oppressed adopt the manners of the oppressors and practice oppression on their own behalf. Neither is it a sign of revolution when women ape men&nbsp;..."{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=353}} The American feminist [[Betty Friedan]], author of ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' (1963), wants for women "equality of opportunity within the status quo, free admission to the world of the ulcer and the coronary", she argued.{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=334}}


The "Problem That Has No Name" was described by Friedan in the beginning of the book:
Although Greer's book made no use of autobiographical material, unlike other feminist works at the time, Mary Evans, writing in 2002, viewed Greer's "entire ''oeuvre''" as autobiographical, a struggle for female agency in the face of the powerlessness of the feminine (her mother) against the backdrop of the missing male hero (her father).{{sfn|Evans|2002|p=68}} Reviewing the book for ''[[The Massachusetts Review]]'' in 1972, feminist scholar Arlyn Diamond wrote that, while flawed, it was also "intuitively and brilliantly right", but she criticized Greer for her attitude toward women:


<blockquote>The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban [house]wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries&nbsp;... she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – "Is this all?"<ref>{{cite book|last=Friedan|first=Betty|title=The Feminine Mystique|year=1963|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.|page=15|chapter=1 The Problem That Has No Name}}</ref></blockquote>
{{blockquote|Having convincingly and movingly shown how women are castrated by society, turned into fearful and resentful dependents, she surprisingly spends the rest of her book castigating them as the creators of their own misery. There is a strange confusion here of victim and oppression, so that her most telling insights into women's psychic lives are vitiated by her hatred for those who lead such lives. Feeling that women are crippled in their capacity to love others because they cannot love themselves, she feels that women must despise each other. Perhaps this self-contempt explains the gratuitous nastiness of her cracks about faculty wives, most wives, all those who haven't reached her state of independence, and her willingness to denigrate most of the members of the Women's movement she mentions.&nbsp;... The lack of "sisterhood" she shows, of love for those who never chose to be eunuchs and who are made miserable by their sense of their own impotence is more than obtuse and unpleasant, it is destructive.{{sfn|Diamond|1972|p=277}}}}


Friedan asserted that women are as capable as men for any type of work or any career path against arguments to the contrary by the mass media, educators and psychologists.<ref name="Fox"/> Her book was important not only because it challenged hegemonic [[sexism]] in US society but because it differed from the general emphasis of 19th- and early 20th-century arguments for expanding women's [[education]], [[Political Rights|political rights]], and participation in [[social movements]]. While "first-wave" feminists had often shared an [[Essentialism|essentialist]] view of women's nature and a [[corporatist]] view of society, claiming that [[women's suffrage]], education, and social participation would increase the incidence of [[marriage]], make women better wives and mothers, and improve national and international health and [[efficiency]],<ref>{{Cite book|title=Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women's History|last=Valverde|first=Mariana|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=1992|editor-last=Iacovetta|editor-first=Franca|location=Toronto|pages=3–4|chapter='When the Mother of the Race is Free': Race, Reproduction, and Sexuality in First-Wave Feminism|editor-last2=Valverde|editor-first2=Mariana}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Devereux|first=Cecily|date=1999|title=New Woman, New World: Maternal Feminism and the New Imperialism in the White Settler Colonies|url=http://www.ensani.ir/storage/Files/20100609131023-24.pdf|journal=Women's Studies International Forum|volume=22|issue=2|pages=175–184|doi=10.1016/S0277-5395(99)00005-9|pmid=22606720|access-date=April 30, 2018|archive-date=August 9, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170809102200/http://www.ensani.ir/storage/Files/20100609131023-24.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism|last=Devereux|first=Cecily|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|year=2006|location=Montreal & Kingston|pages=24–26}}</ref> Friedan based women's rights in what she called "the basic human need to grow, man's will to be all that is in him to be".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Feminine Mystique|last=Friedan|first=Betty|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|year=1963|location=New York|page=373}}</ref> The restrictions of the 1950s, and the trapped, imprisoned feeling of many women forced into these roles, spoke to American women who soon began attending [[consciousness-raising group|consciousness-raising sessions]] and lobbying for the reform of oppressive laws and social views that restricted females.
==Celebrity==
===Debate with Norman Mailer===
{{further|Town Bloody Hall}}
{{quote box|align=left|qalign=left|salign=right|width=250px|border=.20em|quote="She was something to be seen: clad in a black fur jacket and a glamorous floor-length sleeveless dress, the thirty-two-year-old Greer was six feet tall, angular verging on bony, and in possession of a thick crown of frizzed-out black hair. Her style on stage was less performance than poised seduction."|source=—&nbsp;[[Carmen Winant]], describing Greer in ''Town Bloody Hall'' (1979)<ref name=Winant2015/>}}


The book became a bestseller, which many historians believe was the impetus for the "[[Second-wave feminism|second wave]]" of the [[feminist movement|women's movement]] in the United States, and significantly shaped national and world events.<ref name="wo">{{cite book |last =Davis |first =Flora |title =Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America since 1960 |url =https://archive.org/details/movingmountainth00davi |url-access =registration |publisher =Simon & Schuster |year =1991 |location =New York |pages =[https://archive.org/details/movingmountainth00davi/page/50 50–53]|isbn =978-0671602079 }}</ref>
In the UK Greer was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971, and in the US the following year, she was "Playboy Journalist of the Year".<ref name=Spongberg1993p407>{{harvnb|Spongberg|1993|p=407}}.</ref> Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at the [[The Town Hall (New York City)|Town Hall]] in New York, she famously debated [[Norman Mailer]], whose book ''The Prisoner of Sex'' had just been published in response to Kate Millett. Greer presented it as an evening of sexual conquest. She had always wanted to fuck Mailer, she said, and wrote in ''The Listener'' that she "half expected him to blow his head off in 'one last killer come' like [[Ernest Hemingway]]."{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=175}} [[Betty Friedan]], [[Sargent Shriver]], [[Susan Sontag]] and [[Stephen Spender]] sat in the audience, where tickets were $25 a head (c.&nbsp;$155 in 2018), while Greer and Mailer shared the stage with [[Jill Johnston]], [[Diana Trilling]] and [[Jacqueline Ceballos]].<ref name=Winant2015>{{harvnb|Winant|2015}}.</ref>{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=177}} Several feminists declined to attend, including [[Ti-Grace Atkinson]], [[Kate Millett]], [[Robin Morgan]] and [[Gloria Steinem]].{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=175}} Filmmakers [[Chris Hegedus]] and [[D. A. Pennebaker]] captured the event in the documentary ''Town Bloody Hall'' (1979).


Friedan originally intended to write a sequel to ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'', which was to be called ''Woman: The Fourth Dimension'', but instead only wrote an article by that title, which appeared in the ''[[Ladies' Home Journal]]'' in June 1964.<ref name="anb.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03896.html|title=American National Biography Online: Friedan, Betty|website=www.anb.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iU97L2XVGN4C&pg=PT312|title=Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963–1975|first=Patricia|last=Bradley|year= 2017|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|via=Google Books|isbn=978-1604730517}}</ref>
{{External media
| image1 = [https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw19244/Germaine-Greer.jpg In ''Vogue'' magazine], photographed by Lord Snowdon, May 1971{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=170}}
| image2 = [https://web.archive.org/web/20181206100507/https://imgc.artprintimages.com/img/print/feminist-germaine-greer-may-7-1971_u-l-p699dxo1zoo.jpg?h=900&w=900 In ''Life'' magazine], 7 May 1971
|audio1={{YouTube|EWKcs0anxKc|This House Supports the Women's Liberation Movement}}, Greer debates [[William F. Buckley Jr.]], [[Cambridge Union]], 1973; Greer speaks from 00:13:40 and Buckley from 00:20:15.
|video1={{YouTube|id=zT1wHe1DlOM&t=1m15s|title=Greer at the Town Hall, New York, 30 April 1971|link=no}}}}


=== Other works ===
Wearing a [[Paisley (design)|paisley]] coat she had cut from a shawl and sewn herself, and sitting with her feet on a park bench, Greer appeared on the cover of ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine on 7 May 1971, under the title "Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like"; there were five more photographs of her inside.<ref>{{harvnb|Smith|2012|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=HfnZAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA309 309]}}; {{harvnb|Kleinhenz|2018|pp=171–172}}.</ref> Also in May, she was featured in [[Vogue (magazine)|''Vogue'']] magazine, photographed by [[Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon|Lord Snowdon]], on the floor in knee-length boots and wearing the same paisley coat.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=170}} (In 2016 the coat, now in the [[National Museum of Australia]], got its own scholarly article, and the photograph by Lord Snowdon is in the [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]] in London.){{sfn|Mosmann|2016|pp=78, 83}} On 18 May Greer addressed the [[National Press Club (United States)|National Press Club]] in Washington, the first woman to do so; she was introduced as "an attractive, intelligent, sexually liberated woman".{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=173}} She also appeared on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'', and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape.{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=183}}
{{external media | width = 210px | align = right | headerimage= | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?52571-1/fountain-age ''Booknotes'' interview with Friedan on ''The Fountain of Age'', November 28, 1993], [[C-SPAN]]<ref name="cspan">{{cite web | title =Fountain of Age| publisher =[[C-SPAN]] | date =November 28, 1993 | url =https://www.c-span.org/video/?52571-1/fountain-age| access-date =March 26, 2017 }}</ref> }}
Friedan published six books. Her other books include ''[[The Second Stage]]'', ''[[It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement]]'', ''[[Beyond Gender]]'' and ''[[The Fountain of Age]]''. Her autobiography, ''Life so Far'', was published in 2000.


She also wrote for magazines and a newspaper:
* Columns in ''[[McCall's]]'' magazine, 1971–1974<ref>{{harvp|Siegel|2007|pp=90–91}}</ref>
* Writings for ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'', ''[[Newsday]]'', ''Harper's''<!-- unclear which Harper's, so not linked -->, ''[[Saturday Review (U.S. magazine)|Saturday Review]]'', ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]'', ''[[Ladies' Home Journal]]'', ''[[Family Circle]]'', ''[[TV Guide]]'', and ''[[True (magazine)|True]]''.<ref>{{harvp|Siegel|2007|p=90}}</ref>


== Activism in the women's movement ==


=== National Organization for Women ===
==Later writing about women==
[[File:NOW women.jpg|thumb|Billington, Friedan, Ireton, and Rawalt<ref name="SIA">{{cite web |title=(left to right): Billington; Betty Naomi Goldstein Friedan (1921–2006); Barbara Ireton (1932–1998); and Marguerite Rawalt (1895–1989) |url=http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_297417 |work=Smithsonian Institution Archives |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |access-date=July 11, 2013}}</ref>]]
In 1966 Friedan co-founded, and became the first [[list of presidents of the National Organization for Women|president]] of the [[National Organization for Women]].<ref name="SIA" /> Some of the founders of NOW, including Friedan, were inspired by the failure of the [[Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]] to enforce [[Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964]]; at the Third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women they were prohibited from issuing a resolution that recommended the EEOC carry out its legal mandate to end sex discrimination in employment.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.feminist.org/research/chronicles/fc1966.html |title=The Feminist Chronicles, 1953–1993 – 1966 – Feminist Majority Foundation |publisher=Feminist.org |access-date=May 5, 2015}}</ref><ref name="makers1">{{cite web |author=MAKERS Team |date=June 30, 2013 |url=http://www.makers.com/blog/nows-47th-anniversary-celebrating-its-founders-and-early-members |title=NOW's 47th Anniversary: Celebrating Its Founders and Early Members |publisher=MAKERS |access-date=May 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180623165832/https://www.makers.com/blog/nows-47th-anniversary-celebrating-its-founders-and-early-members |archive-date=June 23, 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref> They thus gathered in Friedan's hotel room to form a new organization.<ref name="makers1"/> On a paper napkin Friedan scribbled the acronym "NOW".<ref name="makers1"/> Later more people became founders of NOW at the October 1966 NOW Organizing Conference.<ref name="autogenerated3">{{cite web|first=Allyson |last=Goldsmith |url=http://now.org/about/history/honoring-our-founders-pioneers/ |title=Honoring Our Founders and Pioneers |publisher=National Organization for Women |date=February 9, 2014 |access-date=May 5, 2015}}</ref> Friedan, with [[Pauli Murray]], wrote NOW's statement of purpose; the original was scribbled on a napkin by Friedan.<ref name="notablebiographies.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Friedan-Betty.html|title=Betty Friedan Biography – life, family, children, name, wife, mother, young, book, information, born|website=Notable Biographies}}</ref> Under Friedan, NOW fiercely advocated the legal equality of women and men.


NOW lobbied for enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the [[Equal Pay Act of 1963]], the first two major legislative victories of the movement, and forced the [[Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]] to stop ignoring, and start treating with dignity and urgency, claims filed involving sex discrimination. They successfully campaigned for a 1967 Executive Order extending the same [[affirmative action]] granted to blacks to women, and for a 1968 EEOC decision ruling illegal sex-segregated help want ads, later upheld by the Supreme Court. NOW was vocal in support of the legalization of abortion, an issue that divided some feminists. Also divisive in the 1960s among women was the [[Equal Rights Amendment]], which NOW fully endorsed; by the 1970s, women and labor unions opposed to ERA warmed up to it and began to support it fully. NOW also lobbied for national daycare.<ref name="Fox"/>
===On gender===
====Sex-gender distinction====
In ''The Whole Woman'', Greer argued that, while [[Sex and gender distinction|sex]] is a biological given, [[gender role]]s are cultural constructs. [[Femininity]] is not [[female]]ness. "Genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity", she wrote.{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=2}} Girls and women are taught femininity—learning to speak softly, wear certain clothes, remove body hair to please men, and so on—a process of conditioning that begins at birth and continues throughout the entire life span.{{sfn|Greer|1999|pp=369-370}} "There is nothing feminine about being pregnant", she told [[Krishnan Guru-Murthy]] in 2018. "It's almost the antithesis of that. There's nothing feminine about giving birth. It's a bloody struggle, and you've got to be strong and brave. There's nothing feminine about breastfeeding. God knows it drives everybody mad; they want to see nice big pumped-up tits, but they don't want to see them doing their job."<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=29m54s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:29:54</ref>


NOW also helped women get equal access to public places. For example, the [[Oak Room (Plaza Hotel)|Oak Room]] at the [[Plaza Hotel]] in New York held men-only lunches on weekdays until 1969, when Friedan and other members of NOW staged a protest.<ref name=Times2>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/opinion/opinionspecial/16gathje.html |title=What Would Eloise Say? |first=Curtis |last=Gathje |date=January 16, 2005 |work=The New York Times |access-date=January 8, 2015}}</ref>
====Transgender identity====
Greer's writing on gender has brought her into opposition with [[transgender]] activists. In a chapter in ''The Whole Woman'' entitled "Pantomime Dames", she wrote: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex."{{sfn|Greer|1999|p=64}} Her position first attracted controversy in 1997, when she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist [[Rachael Padman]], a [[trans woman]], arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.<ref>{{cite news|first=Clare|last=Garner|title=Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/fellows-divided-over-don-who-breached-last-bastion-1257781.html|work=[[The Independent]]|date=25 June 1997}}</ref> She reiterated her views several times over the following years, including in 2015 when students at [[Cardiff University]] tried unsuccessfully to [[No Platform|"no platform"]] her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century".<ref>{{cite news|first=Steven|last=Morris|date=18 November 2015|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/18/transgender-activists-protest-germaine-greer-lecture-cardiff-university |title=Germaine Greer gives university lecture despite campaign to silence her|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with [[Kirsty Wark]] for BBC ''[[Newsnight]]'', that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of [[Caitlyn Jenner]] for Glamour Woman of the Year had been [[Misogyny|misogynist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-34625512/germaine-greer-transgender-women-are-not-women|title=Germaine Greer: Transgender women are 'not women'|website=[[BBC News]]|date=24 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Kimiko|last=De Freytas-Tamura|date=24 October 2015|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/world/europe/cardiff-university-rejects-bid-to-bar-germaine-greer.html|title=Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Lehmann|first1=Claire|author-link=Claire Lehmann|title=Germaine Greer and the scourge of 'no-platforming'|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-27/lehmann-greer-and-the-no-platforming-scourge/6887576|work=[[ABC News (Australia)|ABC News]]|date=27 October 2015}}</ref> Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to ''[[The Observer]]'' in 2015 objecting to the use of no-platform policies against Greer and feminists with similar views; signatories included [[Beatrix Campbell]], [[Mary Beard (classicist)|Mary Beard]], [[Deborah Cameron (linguist)|Deborah Cameron]], [[Catherine Hall]], [[Liz Kelly]], [[Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett|Ruth Lister]], and the [[Southall Black Sisters]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Campbell |first1=Beatrix |display-authors=etal |author-link1=Beatrix Campbell |title=We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |work=[[The Observer]] |date=14 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181013014630/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship |archive-date=13 October 2018 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=12 October 2018 }}</ref>


Despite the success NOW achieved under Friedan, her decision to pressure Equal Employment Opportunity to use Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce more job opportunities among American women met with fierce opposition within the organization.<ref>{{harvp|Farber|2004|p=256}}</ref> Siding with arguments from the group's African American members, many of NOW's leaders accepted that the vast number of male and female African Americans who lived below the poverty line needed more job opportunities than women within the middle and upper class.<ref>{{harvp|Farber|2004|p=257}}</ref> Friedan stepped down as president in 1969.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.now.org/press/02-06/02-04.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131208133536/http://www.now.org/press/02-06/02-04.html|title=NOW statement on Friedan's death|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 8, 2013}}</ref>
===On rape===
====Arguments====
Greer wrote in ''The Female Eunuch'' (1970) that [[rape]] is not the "expression of uncontrollable desire" but an act of "murderous aggression, spawned in self-loathing and enacted upon the hated other".{{sfn|Greer|2001|p=281}} She has argued since at least the 1990s that the criminal justice system's approach to rape is male-centred, treating female victims as evidence rather than complainants, and reflecting that women were once regarded as male property. "Historically, the crime of rape was committed not against the woman but against the man with an interest in her, her father or her husband", she wrote in 1995. "What had to be established beyond doubt was that she had not collaborated with the man who usurped another's right. If she had, the penalty, which might have been [[stoning]] or [[pressing to death]], was paid by her."<ref name=Greer6March1995/>


In 1973, Friedan founded the First Women's Bank and Trust Company.
{{quote box|align=right|qalign=left|salign=right|width=250px|border=.20em|quote="If we adopt a female-centred view of the offence, can we really argue that a raped woman is ruined or undone? She may be outraged and humiliated, but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."|source=Germaine Greer, ''[[The Guardian]]'', 6 March 1995.<ref name=Greer6March1995/>}}


=== Women's Strike for Equality ===
Rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman, she writes; if a woman allows a man to have sex with her to avoid a beating, then arguably she fears the beating more. A woman who has been raped has no reason to feel shame (and therefore no need for anonymity), and a female-centred view of rape will not fashion it as something that can "ruin" a woman. "She may be outraged and humiliated", Greer writes, "but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."<ref name=Greer6March1995/> If a woman feels she has been destroyed by such an attack, "it is because you've been told lies about who and what you are", she argued in 2018.<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=13m2s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:13:00</ref> She suggested in 1995 that the crime of rape be replaced by one of [[sexual assault]] with varying degrees of seriousness and swifter outcomes.<ref name=Greer6March1995>{{cite news|ref=none|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=6 March 1995|title=Call rape by another name|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|page=20}}</ref> In 2018 she said she had changed her mind about calling rape "sexual assault", because most rape (in particular, [[marital rape|sex without consent within marriage]]) is not accompanied by physical violence.<ref>{{YouTube|id=Zg54CZ_Lo9s&t=2m49s|title=Germaine Greer on tackling rape and the gender pay gap}}, ''[[The Wright Stuff]]'', Channel 5, UK, 6 April 2018, at 2m49s</ref> "There is no way that the law of rape fits the reality of women's lives", she said in 2018.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Germaine Greer|display-authors=etal|date=24 March 2018 |title=Debate: Has the #MeToo Movement Gone Too Far? |medium=video |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=iX1gNTF7liM|time=00:05:20|location=YouTube}} How to:Academy and ''[[The New York Times]]''.</ref> Her book, ''On Rape'', was published by [[Melbourne University Press]] in September 2018.<ref>{{cite book|first=Germaine|last=Greer|url=https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522874303-on-rape|title=On Rape|publisher=[[Melbourne University Press]]|location=Melbourne, Australia|date=2018|isbn=978-0522874303|access-date=3 June 2018|archive-date=11 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180711212916/https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522874303-on-rape|url-status=dead}}</ref>
In 1970 NOW, with Friedan leading the cause, was instrumental in the U.S. Senate's rejection of President [[Richard M. Nixon]]'s Supreme Court nominee [[G. Harrold Carswell]], who had opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act granting (among other things) women workplace equality with men. On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Women's Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution]], Friedan organized the national [[Women's Strike for Equality]], and led a march of an estimated 20,000 women in New York City.<ref>[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902696,00.html "Nation: Women on the March"], ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', September 2, 1970, Accessed December 28, 2013</ref><ref>[http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/1970_the_womens.php 1970: The Women's National Strike for Equality] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131230232158/http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/1970_the_womens.php |date=December 30, 2013 }}, Mary Breasted, [[Village Voice]], September 3, 1970, Accessed December 28, 2013</ref><ref>[http://www.jerseycityindependent.com/2013/07/15/local-photographer-remembers-fight-for-gender-equality-demonstration-on-liberty-island/ Local Photographer Remembers Fight for Gender Equality, Demonstration on Liberty Island] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231000649/http://www.jerseycityindependent.com/2013/07/15/local-photographer-remembers-fight-for-gender-equality-demonstration-on-liberty-island/ |date=December 31, 2013 }}, Matt Hunger, ''[[Jersey City Independent]]'', Accessed December 28, 2013</ref> While the march's primary objective was promoting equal opportunities for women in jobs and education,<ref name=freidtime /> protestors and organizers of the event also demanded abortion rights and the establishment of child-care centers.<ref name=freidtime>[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876783-1,00.html "Nation: Who's Come a Long Way, Baby?"], ''Time'', August 31, 1970, Accessed December 28, 2013.</ref>


Friedan spoke about the Strike for Equality:
===Me Too movement===
Greer has commented several times on the [[Me Too movement]]. In November 2017, she called for women to show solidarity when other women are [[Sexual harassment|sexually harassed]].<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Germaine Greer |display-authors=etal|date=6 November 2017 |title=Germaine Greer: Australian politician did a Weinstein on me |medium=video |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefk34SsMM&t=3m14s |time=00:03:14|location=YouTube |publisher=[[Sam Delaney's News Thing]], RT UK}}</ref> Just before she was named Australian of the Year in Britain in January 2018, she said she had always wanted to see women react immediately to sexual harassment, as it occurs. "What makes it different is when the man has economic power, as [[Harvey Weinstein]] has. But if you spread your legs because he said 'be nice to me and I'll give you a job in a movie' then I'm afraid that's tantamount to consent, and it's too late now to start whingeing about that."<ref>{{cite news|first=Nick|last=Miller|date=21 January 2018 |url=https://www.smh.com.au/world/germaine-greer-challenges-metoo-campaign-20180121-h0lpra.html |title=Germaine Greer challenges #MeToo campaign|newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]}}</ref>  In May that year, she argued—of the high-profile cases—that disclosure was "dishonourable" because women who "claim to have been outraged 20 years ago" had been paid to sign [[non-disclosure agreement]]s, but then had spoken out once the [[statute of limitations]] had lapsed and they had nothing to lose.<ref>{{YouTube|id=aU_csXGfdVM&t=8m12s|title=Germaine Greer on women's liberation, the trans community and her rape}}, [[Channel 4 News]], 23 May 2018</ref>


<blockquote>All kinds of women's groups all over the country will be using this week on August 26 particularly, to point out those areas in women's life which are still not addressed. For example, a question of equality before the law; we are interested in the equal rights amendment. The question of child care centers which are totally inadequate in the society, and which women require, if they are going to assume their rightful position in terms of helping in decisions of the society. The question of a women's right to control her own reproductive processes, that is, laws prohibiting abortion in the state or putting them into criminal statutes; I think that would be a statute that we would [be] addressing ourselves to.<ref name="UPI">[http://www.upi.com/Audio/Year_in_Review/Events-of-1970/50th-Anniversary-of-Women%27s-Suffrage/12303235577467-12/ anon, ''1970 Year in Review: 50th Anniversary of Women's Suffrage'', UPI (United Press International)], as accessed June 18, 2013.</ref></blockquote>
==Awards and honours==
 
{{External media
<blockquote>So I think individual women will react differently; some will not cook that day, some will engage in dialog with their husband[s], some will be out at the rallies and demonstrations that will be taking place all over the country. Others will be writing things that will help them to define where they want to go. Some will be pressuring their Senators and their Congressmen to pass legislations that affect women. I don't think you can come up with any one point, women will be doing their own thing in their own way.<ref name="UPI" />
|topic=Germaine Greer portraits
</blockquote>
|image1=[https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw18996/Germaine-Greer.jpg Bryan Wharton] (1969)
 
|image2=[https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/large/mw15907/Germaine-Greer.jpg Polly Borland] (1999)
=== National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws ===
|image3=[http://sydney.edu.au/images/content/news/2011/jan/germaine_greer.jpg Australian stamp] (2011)
[[File:Albert M. Sacks, Pauli Murray, Dr. Mary Bunting; Alma Lutz, and Betty Friedan.jpg|thumb|Rear, L to R, Prof. Albert M. Sacks, Pauli Murray, Dr. Mary Bunting; Seated, L to R, [[Alma Lutz]], suffragette and Harvard Law School Forum Guest, and Betty Friedan]]
}}
 
Greer has received several honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Letters from [[York University]] in 1999,<ref>{{cite web |title=Manfred Erhardt, Germaine Greer, Golda Koschitzky, Francesca Valente to Receive Hon. Docs.&nbsp;... |url=http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/releases_1996_2000/archive/110199.htm |publisher=York University |date=1 November 1999}}</ref> a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2003,<ref>{{cite news |title=Roll out the honours |url=https://www.theage.com.au/education/roll-out-the-honours-20050613-ge0bwo.html |work=The Age |date=13 June 2005}}</ref> a Doctor of Letters at [[Anglia Ruskin University]] in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2005.<ref>{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer speaks to University of Sydney graduates |url=http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=761 |publisher=The University of Sydney |date=4 November 2005}}; {{harvnb|Francis|Henningham|2017}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Germaine Greer - ARU |url=https://aru.ac.uk/graduation-and-alumni/honorary-award-holders2/germaine-greer |access-date=2023-02-11 |website=aru.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>
Friedan founded the [[National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws]], renamed [[National Abortion Rights Action League]] after the [[Roe v. Wade|Supreme Court had legalized abortion]] in 1973.
 
=== Politics ===
In 1970 Friedan led other feminists in derailing the nomination of Supreme Court nominee [[G. Harrold Carswell]], whose record of racial discrimination and antifeminism made him unacceptable and unfit to sit on the highest court in the land to virtually everyone in the civil rights and feminist movements. Friedan's impassioned testimony before the Senate helped sink Carswell's nomination.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://gos.sbc.edu/f/friedan.html|title=Gifts of Speech – Betty Friedan|website=gos.sbc.edu}}</ref>
 
In 1971 Friedan, along with many other leading women's movement leaders, including [[Gloria Steinem]] (with whom she had a legendary rivalry) founded the [[National Women's Political Caucus]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.nwpc.org/nwpc-still-fighting-for-equality-for-women-45-years-later/|title=National Women's Political Caucus|website=National Women's Political Caucus|date=August 26, 2016|access-date=January 18, 2017}}</ref>
 
In [[1972 United States presidential election|1972]], Friedan unsuccessfully ran as a delegate to the [[1972 Democratic National Convention]] in support of Congresswoman [[Shirley Chisholm]]. That year at the DNC Friedan played a very prominent role and addressed the convention, although she clashed with other women, notably Steinem, on what should be done there, and how.<ref name="Freeman">{{cite news |title=Shirley Chisholm's 1972 Presidential Campaign |first=Jo |last=Freeman |work=University of Illinois at Chicago Women's History Project |date=February 2005 |url=http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/polhistory/chisholm.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150126085532/http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/polhistory/chisholm.htm |archive-date=January 26, 2015 }}</ref>
 
=== Movement image and unity ===
One of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century, Friedan (in addition to many others) opposed equating feminism with lesbianism. As early as 1964, very early in the movement, and only a year after the publication of ''The Feminine Mystique'', Friedan appeared on television to address the fact the media was, at that point, trying to dismiss the movement as a joke and centering argument and debate around whether or not to wear bras and other issues considered ridiculous.<ref name="youtube.com">{{YouTube|iDZh3nY9clY|CBCtv interview of Betty Friedan}}, from [http://www.cbc.ca CBCtv (Canadian television)]</ref> In 1982, after the second wave, she wrote a book for the post-feminist 1980s called ''[[The Second Stage]]'', about family life, premised on women having conquered social and legal obstacles.<ref name="notablebiographies.com"/><ref name="youtube.com" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hulu.com/watch/55118/independent-lens-sisters-of-77|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090324121019/http://www.hulu.com/watch/55118/independent-lens-sisters-of-77|url-status=dead|title=Hulu – PBS Indies: Sisters of '77 – Watch the full episode now<!-- Bot generated title -->|archive-date=March 24, 2009}}</ref>
 
She pushed the feminist movement to focus on economic issues, especially equality in employment and business as well as provision for child care and other means by which both women and men could balance family and work. She tried to lessen the focuses on abortion, as an issue already won, and on rape and pornography, which she believed most women did not consider to be high priorities.<ref>{{harvp|Friedan|1997|loc=e.g. pp. 8–9}}</ref>
 
=== Related issues ===
 
==== Lesbian politics ====
When she grew up in [[Peoria, Illinois]], she knew only one gay man. She said, "the whole idea of homosexuality made me profoundly uneasy."<ref name="LifeSoFar_221">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=221}}</ref> She later acknowledged that she had been very square, and was uncomfortable about homosexuality. "The women's movement was not about sex, but about equal opportunity in jobs and all the rest of it. Yes, I suppose you have to say that freedom of sexual choice is part of that, but it shouldn't be the main issue".<ref name="LifeSoFar_223">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=223}}</ref><ref group="Note">On equal opportunity in jobs: [[equal opportunity employment]], access to jobs without suffering discrimination on certain grounds.</ref><ref group="Note">On freedom of sexual choice: [[human female sexuality#Feminist views]], how feminism addresses a wide range of sexual issues.</ref> She ignored lesbians in the [[National Organization for Women]] ([[National Organization for Women|NOW]]) initially, and objected to what she saw as their demands for equal time.<ref name="LifeSoFar_221" /> "Homosexuality&nbsp;... is not, in my opinion, what the women's movement is all about."<ref name="LifeSoFar_222">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=222}}</ref> While opposing all repression, she wrote, she refused to wear a purple armband as an act of political solidarity, considering it not part of the mainstream issues of abortion and [[childcare|child care]].<ref name="LifeSoFar_248-249">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|pp=248–249}}</ref>
 
But in 1977, at the National Women's Conference, she seconded a lesbian rights resolution "which everyone thought I would oppose" in order to "preempt any debate" and move on to other issues she believed were more important and less divisive in the effort to add the [[Equal Rights Amendment]] ([[Equal Rights Amendment|ERA]]) to the [[United States Constitution|U.S. Constitution]].<ref name="LifeSoFar_295">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=295}}</ref> She accepted lesbian sexuality, albeit not its politicization.<ref name="2dStage-p307-308">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|pp=307–308}}</ref> In 1995, at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, she found advice given by Chinese authorities to taxi drivers that naked lesbians would be "cavorting" in their cars so that the drivers should hang sheets outside their cab windows, and that lesbians would have AIDS and so drivers should carry disinfectants, to be "ridiculous", "incredibly stupid" and "insulting".<ref name="LifeSoFar_365">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=365}}</ref> In 1997, she wrote that "children&nbsp;... will ideally come from mother and father."<ref name="BeyondGender_91">{{harvp|Friedan|1997|p=91}}</ref> She wrote in 2000, "I'm more relaxed about the whole issue now."<ref name="LifeSoFar_249">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=249}}</ref>
 
==== Abortion choice ====
She supported the concept that abortion is a woman's choice, that it shouldn't be a crime or exclusively a doctor's choice or anyone else involved, and helped form [[NARAL Pro-Choice America#History|NARAL]] (now [[NARAL Pro-Choice America]]) at a time when [[Planned Parenthood]] wasn't yet supportive.<ref name="LifeSoFar_212-216">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|pp=212–216}}</ref> Alleged death threats against her speaking on abortion led to the cancellation of two events, although subsequently one of the host institutions, Loyola College, invited her back to speak on abortion and other homosexual rights issues and she did so.<ref name="LifeSoFar_219">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=219}}</ref> Her draft of NOW's first statement of purpose included an abortion plank, but NOW didn't include it until the next year.<ref name="LifeSoFar_176">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=176}}</ref>
 
In 1980, she believed abortion should be in the context of "the choice to have children", a formulation supported by the Roman Catholic [[priesthood (Catholic Church)|priest]] organizing Catholic participation in the White House Conference on Families for that year,<ref name="2dStage-p94-95">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|pp=94–95}}</ref> though perhaps not by the [[bishop (Catholic Church)|bishops]] above him.<ref name="2dStage-p98">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|p=98}}</ref> A resolution embodying the formulation passed at the conference by 460 to 114, whereas a resolution addressing abortion, ERA and [[sexual orientation|"sexual preference"]] passed by only 292–291 and that only after 50 opponents of abortion had walked out and so hadn't voted on it.<ref name="2dStage-p95-96">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|pp=95–96}}</ref> She disagreed with a resolution that framed abortion in more feminist terms that was introduced in the [[Minneapolis]] regional conference resulting from the same White House Conference on Families, believing it to be more polarizing, while the drafters apparently thought Friedan's formulation too conservative.<ref name="2dStage-p97-98">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|pp=97–98}}</ref>


As of 2000, she wrote, referring to "NOW and the other women's organizations" as seeming to be in a "time warp", "to my mind, there is far too much focus on abortion.&nbsp;... [I]n recent years I've gotten a little uneasy about the movement's narrow focus on abortion as if it were the single, all-important issue for women when it's not".<ref name="LifeSoFar_377">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=377}}</ref> She asked, "Why don't we join forces with all who have true reverence for life, including Catholics who oppose abortion, and fight for the choice to have children?"<ref name="2dStage-p246-248esp247">{{harvp|Friedan|1998|pp=246–248}}</ref>
The [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]] in London has purchased eight photographs of Greer, including by [[Bryan Wharton]], [[Lord Snowdon]] and [[Polly Borland]], and one painting by [[Paula Rego]].<ref name=NPR>{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06545/germaine-greer |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London}}</ref> She was selected as an Australian [[National Living Treasure (Australia)|National Living Treasure]] in 1997,<ref>{{cite web |title=Australian National Living Treasure |url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1293 |website=AustLit |publisher=University of Queensland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003212028/https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1293 |archive-date=3 October 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> and in 2001 was inducted into the [[Victorian Honour Roll of Women]].{{sfn|Francis|Henningham|2017}} In 2011 she was one of four feminist "Australian legends" (along with [[Eva Cox]], [[Elizabeth Evatt]] and [[Anne Summers]]) represented on Australian postage stamps.<ref>{{cite news |title=Feminists feature on Aussie legends stamps |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-01-20/feminists-feature-on-aussie-legends-stamps/1912494 |agency=Australian Associated Press |publisher=ABC News (Australia) |date=19 January 2011}}</ref> In the UK she was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971,<ref name=Spongberg1993p407/> and in 2016 BBC Radio 4's ''[[Woman's Hour]]'' placed her fourth on its annual "Power List" of seven women who had the biggest impact on women's lives over the previous 70 years, alongside (in order) [[Margaret Thatcher]], [[Helen Brook]], [[Barbara Castle]], [[Jayaben Desai]], [[Bridget Jones]], and [[Beyoncé]].<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38303886 "Margaret Thatcher tops Woman's Hour Power List"], BBC News, 14 December 2016.</ref>


==== Pornography ====
==Controversial views==
She joined nearly 200 others in [[Feminist views on pornography#Feminist critique of censorship|Feminists for Free Expression]] in opposing the [[Pornography Victims Compensation Act|Pornography Victims' Compensation Act]]. "To suppress free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong," said Friedan. "Even some blue-jean ads are insulting and denigrating. I'm not adverse to a boycott, but I don't think they should be suppressed."<ref>Puente, Maria, ''Bill Holds Porn Producers Liable For Sex Crimes'', in ''USA Today'', April 15, 1992, p.&nbsp;09A.</ref>
Writer [[Yvonne Roberts]] referred to Greer as "the [[contrarian]] queen".<ref>{{cite news|last1=Roberts|first1=Yvonne|last2=Hirsch|first2=Afua|last3=Parkinson|first3=Hannah-Jane|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/09/germaine-greer-on-rape-book-three-women-respond|title=Reading Germaine: three generations respond to On Rape|website=[[The Guardian]]|date=9 September 2018|access-date=29 June 2021}}</ref> Sarah Ditum wrote that Greer "doesn't get into trouble occasionally or inadvertently, but consistently and with the attitude of a tank rolling directly into a crowd of infantry".<ref name=Ditum6June2018/> ''[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]'' has labelled her a "human headline".<ref>{{cite news |title=Greer given enough rope |url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/greer-given-enough-rope-20040719-gdjdf9.html |work=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |date=19 July 2004}}</ref> British actor and comedian [[Tracey Ullman]] has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops.<ref name=Ditum6June2018>{{cite news|last=Ditum|first=Sarah|title=Germaine Greer has always refused to be 'nice' – if only there were more of her|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/06/germaine-greer-has-always-refused-be-nice-if-only-there-were-more-her|work=[[New Statesman]]|date=6 June 2018}}</ref> In response to criticism of Greer, [[Polly Toynbee]] wrote in 1988: "Small minds, small spirits affronted by the sheer size and magnetism of the woman."{{sfn|Toynbee|2012|p=127}}


==== War ====
Greer said that the [[The Satanic Verses controversy|1989 fatwa]] against [[Salman Rushdie]] for his novel ''[[The Satanic Verses]]'' (1988)<ref name=Lewis29July2006>{{cite news |last1=Lewis |first1=Paul |title='You sanctimonious philistine' – Rushdie v Greer, the sequel |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jul/29/topstories3.books |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=29 July 2006}}</ref> was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support.<ref>{{cite news |title=World Statement, International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers |work=[[The Observer]] |date=5 March 1989 |page=4}}</ref> In 2006, she supported activists trying to halt the filming in London's [[Brick Lane]] of the film ''[[Brick Lane (2007 film)|Brick Lane]]'' (based on [[Monica Ali]]'s novel of the same name) because, she wrote, "a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name" had portrayed Bengali Muslims as "irreligious and disorderly". Rushdie called her comments "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but&nbsp;... not unexpected".<ref name=Lewis29July2006/>
In 1968, Friedan signed the "[[Writers and Editors War Tax Protest]]" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.<ref>"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 ''[[New York Post]]''</ref>


== Influence ==
In May 1995, in her column for ''[[The Guardian]]'' (which the newspaper spiked), she referred to ''Guardian'' journalist [[Suzanne Moore]]'s "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gerrard |first1=Nicci |title=Middle-aged feminist rage shocks and amuses |work=[[The Observer]] |date=21 May 1995 |page=12}}</ref><!--add what this was in response to--> She called her biographer, [[Christine Wallace]], a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, ''Untamed Shrew'' (1999), "a piece of excrement".{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=283}} (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]], read his fucking books.")<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lewis |first1=Helen |title=Funny, unkind, provocative: please don't make me have an opinion on Germaine Greer |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/11/funny-unkind-provocative-please-don-t-make-me-have-opinion-germaine-greer |work=[[New Statesman]] |date=7 November 2018}}</ref> Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister, [[John Howard]], called her remarks patronising and condescending.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Squires |first1=Nick |last2=Davies |first2=Caroline |title=Oz outrage at Germaine Greer's attack on 'cultural wasteland' |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/1452851/Oz-outrage-at-Germaine-Greers-attack-on-cultural-wasteland.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/1452851/Oz-outrage-at-Germaine-Greers-attack-on-cultural-wasteland.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=28 January 2004}}{{cbignore}}</ref> After receiving a fee of £40,000,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gibson |first1=Owen |title=Greer walks out of 'bullying' Big Brother |url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/12/bigbrother.broadcasting |work=The Guardian |date=12 January 2005}}</ref> she left the ''[[Celebrity Big Brother (British series 3)|Celebrity Big Brother]]'' house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "[[fascist]] prison camp".<ref>{{cite news|first=Germaine|last=Greer|date=16 January 2005|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germaine-greer-filth-56ttn2h6nwp|title=Filth!|newspaper=[[The Sunday Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Sarah|last=Lyall|authorlink=Sarah Lyall|date=20 January 2005|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/arts/television/germaine-greers-orwellian-ordeal-on-big-brother.html|title=Germaine Greer's Orwellian Ordeal on 'Big Brother'|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref name=Greer12Jan2005>{{cite news |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=Why I said yes to Big Brother's shilling |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3634824/Why-I-said-yes-to-Big-Brothers-shilling.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3634824/Why-I-said-yes-to-Big-Brothers-shilling.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=12 January 2005}}{{cbignore}}</ref> [[Kevin Rudd]], later Australia's prime minister, told her to "stick a sock in it" in 2006, when, in a column about the death of Australian [[Steve Irwin]], star of ''[[The Crocodile Hunter]]'', she concluded that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge".<ref>{{cite news |title= Greer draws anger over Irwin comments | url =http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Greer-draws-anger-over-Irwin-comments/2006/09/06/1157222168676.html | work= [[The Age]] |date=6 September 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | last=Greer | first=Germaine |title=That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin | url=https://www.theguardian.com/australia/story/0,,1865124,00.html |work=[[The Guardian]]|date=5 September 2006}}</ref> She criticized the wife of the newly elected American president [[Barack Obama]], [[Michelle Obama]], for her dress on the night of the [[U.S. presidential election, 2008|2008 U.S. election]],{{sfn|Kleinhenz|2018|p=357}} and in 2012 she advised Australia's first female prime minister, [[Julia Gillard]], to change the cut of her jackets because she had "a big arse".<ref>{{YouTube|vM0_gZaOj_w|Germaine Greer}}, ''[[Q&A (Australian talk show)|Q&A]]'', 2012</ref>
Friedan is credited for starting the contemporary feminist movement and writing a book that is one of the cornerstones of American feminism.<ref name=WolfMystique>{{cite web|last=Wolf|first= Allan|title=The Mystique of Betty Friedan|website= [[The Atlantic]]|date= September 1999|url= https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99sep/9909friedan.htm}}</ref> Her activist work and her book ''The Feminine Mystique'' have been a critical influence to authors, educators, writers, anthropologists, journalists, activists, organizations, unions, and everyday women taking part in the feminist movement.<ref name="NowTribute">National Organization for Women. ''Tributes to Betty Friedan''. {{cite web|url=http://www.now.org/history/friedan-tribute-compilation.html |title=Tributes to Betty Friedan |access-date=April 29, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511203118/http://www.now.org/history/friedan-tribute-compilation.html |archive-date=May 11, 2008 }}</ref> Allan Wolf, in ''The Mystique of Betty Friedan'' writes: "She helped to change not only the thinking but the lives of many American women, but recent books throw into question the intellectual and personal sources of her work."<ref name=WolfMystique /> Although there have been some debates on Friedan's work in ''The Feminine Mystique'' since its publication, there is no doubt that her work for equality for women was sincere and committed.


Judith Hennessee (''Betty Friedan: Her Life'') and Daniel Horowitz, a professor of American Studies at [[Smith College]], have also written about Friedan. Horowitz explored Friedan's engagement with the women's movement before she began to work on ''The Feminine Mystique''<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/> and pointed out that Friedan's feminism did not start in the 1950s but even earlier, in the 1940s.<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/> Focusing his study on Friedan's ideas in feminism rather than on her personal life<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/> Horowitz's book gave Friedan a major role in the history of American feminism.<ref name="Horowitz_2000"/>
== Later life ==
In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the [[Museum of Australian Democracy]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Haussegger |first=Virginia |date=2022-06-18 |title=The incredible women reshaping our nation |url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7785168/the-incredible-women-reshaping-our-nation/ |access-date=2022-09-09 |website=The Canberra Times |language=en-AU}}</ref>


Justine Blau was also greatly influenced by Friedan. In ''Betty Friedan: Feminist'' Blau wrote of the feminist movement's influence on Friedan's personal and professional life.<ref>Blau, Justine. ''Betty Friedan: Feminist''. Chelsea House Publications, 1990.</ref> Lisa Fredenksen Bohannon, in ''Woman's work: The story of Betty Friedan'', went deep into Friedan's personal life and wrote about her relationship with her mother.<ref>Bohannon, Lisa Fredenksen. ''Woman's work: The story of Betty Friedan''. Morgan Reynolds, 2004.</ref> Sandra Henry and Emily Taitz (''Betty Friedan, Fighter for Woman's Rights'') and Susan Taylor Boyd (''Betty Friedan: Voice of Woman's Right, Advocates of Human Rights''), wrote biographies on Friedan's life and works. Journalist Janann Sheman wrote a book called ''Interviews with Betty Friedan'' containing interviews with Friedan for ''The New York Times'', ''Working Women'' and ''Playboy'', among others. Focusing on interviews that relate to Friedan's views on men, women and the American Family, Sheman traced Friedan's life with an analysis of ''The Feminine Mystique''.<ref>Sheman, Janann. ''Interviews with Betty Friedan''. University Press of Mississippi, 2002.</ref>
In 2021 Greer had returned to Australia to sell her home and put herself into aged care. In 2022 the 83 year old Greer noted more women are in care than men. She described herself as 'not a patient, but an inmate' and spoke frankly about residential aged care being one of the more pressing feminist issues today.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-08-05 |title=Females to the fore: The women at this year's Canberra Writers Festival |url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7846103/females-to-the-fore-the-women-at-this-years-canberra-writers-festival/ |access-date=2022-09-09 |website=The Canberra Times |language=en-AU}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=1 July 2022 |title=The Australian - Germaine Greer's life as an aged-care 'inmate' |url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/germaine-greer-life-as-an-agedcare-inmate/news-story/d8072017b7701420a65b498d275dd357}}</ref>


Friedan (among others) was featured in the 2013 documentary ''[[Makers: Women Who Make America]]'', about the women's movement.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-weinreich/makers-the-women-who-make-america_b_2646816.html|title=Gloria Steinem and the Faces of Feminism: Makers: Women Who Make America|first=Regina|last=Weinreich|website=[[HuffPost]]|date=February 8, 2013}}</ref>
==Germaine Greer archive==
Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne.<ref>[https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/collections/germainegreer/about-the-collection "An introduction to the Germaine Greer collection at the University of Melbourne Archives"]. University of Melbourne.</ref> As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space.<ref>[https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/collections/germainegreer "The Germaine Greer Collection"], University of Melbourne.</ref><ref>Gulliver, Penny (23 March 2017). [http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-reading-germaine-greers-mail-74693 "Friday essay: reading Germaine Greer’s mail"], ''The Conversation''.</ref> The transfer of the archive (150 filing-cabinet drawers) from Greer's home in England began in July 2014; the university announced that it was raising {{AUD|3 million}} to fund the purchase, shipping, housing, cataloguing and digitising. Greer said that her receipt from the sale would be donated to her charity, Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.<ref>{{cite web|title=University to house Germaine Greer archive|url=http://www.campaign.unimelb.edu.au/news-and-events/2013-10-28-university-to-house-germaine-greer-archive|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109020158/http://www.campaign.unimelb.edu.au/news-and-events/2013-10-28-university-to-house-germaine-greer-archive|url-status=dead|archive-date=9 November 2013|publisher=University of Melbourne|date=28 October 2013}}</ref>


In 2014, a biography of Friedan was added to the American National Biography Online (ANB).<ref name="anb.org"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hnn.us/article/155461|title=Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer among new biographies added to the American National Biography Online|website=www.hnn.us|access-date=May 1, 2014|archive-date=April 30, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140430041820/http://www.hnn.us/article/155461|url-status=dead}}</ref>
==Selected works==
{{div col}}
*(1963). {{cite thesis|title=The development of Byron's satiric mode|type=MA| publisher=University of Sydney|hdl=2123/13500}}
*(1968). {{cite thesis|id={{EThOS|uk.bl.ethos.599683}}|title=The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies|degree= PhD |publisher= University of Cambridge|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/256631/Greer-1967-PhD_06204.pdf}}
*(1970). ''[[The Female Eunuch]]''. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
*(1979) as Rose Blight. ''The Revolting Garden''. HarperCollins.
*(1979). ''The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work''. London: Martin Secker and Warburg.
*(1984). ''Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility''. London: Harper & Row.
*(1986). ''Shakespeare''. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past Masters series).
*(1986). ''The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings''. London: Picador.
*(1988) with Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone (eds). ''Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse''. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
*(1989). ''[[Daddy, We Hardly Knew You]]''. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
*(1989) (ed.). ''The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn''. London: Stump Cross Books.
*(1990) with Ruth Little (eds). ''The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda'', Volume III, ''The Translations''. London: Stump Cross Books.
*(1991). "The Offstage Mob: Shakespeare's Proletariat", in Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanley Wells (eds). ''Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions''. Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp.&nbsp;54–75.
*(1991). ''The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause''. London: Hamish Hamilton.
*(1994). "Macbeth: Sin and Action of Grace", in J. Wain (ed.). ''Shakespeare: Macbeth''. London: Macmillan, pp.&nbsp;263–270.
*(1995). ''Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet''. Viking.
*(1997) with Susan Hastings (eds). ''The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton''. London: Stump Cross Books.
*(1999). ''The Whole Woman''. London: Doubleday.
*(2000). ''John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester''. London: Northcote House Publishers.
*(2001) (ed.). ''101 Poems by 101 Women''. London: Faber & Faber.
*(2003). ''[[The Beautiful Boy|The Boy]]''. London: Thames & Hudson.
*(2003) (ed.). ''Poems for Gardeners''. London: Virago.
*(2004). ''Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood''. London: Profile Books (first published 2003 in ''Quarterly Essay'').
*(2007). ''[[Shakespeare's Wife]]''. London: Bloomsbury.
*(2007). ''Stella Vine''. Oxford: Modern Art Oxford.
*(2008). "Shakespeare and the Marriage Contract", in Paul Raffield, Gary Watt (eds). ''Shakespeare and the Law''. London: Bloomsbury, pp.&nbsp;51–64.
*(2008). ''On Rage''. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
*(2011) with [[Phil Willmott]]. ''Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes''. Samuel French Limited.
*(2013). ''[[White Beech: The Rainforest Years]]''. London: Bloomsbury.
*(2018). ''On Rape''. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
{{div col end}}


== Personality ==
==Sources==
''[[The New York Times]]'' obituary for Friedan noted that she was "famously abrasive", and that she could be "thin-skinned and imperious, subject to screaming fits of temperament".
===Notes===
{{notelist}}


Media focus would fall on feminists grading each other on personality and appearance, the source of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem's well-documented antipathy.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Dean|first1=Michelle|title=On the 'Anger' of Betty Friedan and 'The Feminine Mystique|url=http://www.thenation.com/article/anger-betty-friedan-and-feminine-mystique/|website=[[The Nation]]|date=February 17, 2013|access-date=April 4, 2016}}</ref> In February 2006, shortly after Friedan's death, the feminist writer [[Germaine Greer]] published an article in ''[[The Guardian]]'',<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/gender/story/0,,1703933,00.html | work=The Guardian | location=London | title=The Betty I knew | first=Germaine | last=Greer | date=February 7, 2006 | access-date=April 26, 2010}}</ref> in which she described Friedan as pompous and [[egotism|egotistic]], somewhat demanding and sometimes selfish, citing several incidents during a 1972 tour of [[Iran]].<ref name="Fox"/>
===References===
{{reflist|26em}}


{{quotation|Betty Friedan "changed the course of human history almost single-handedly." Her ex-husband, Carl Friedan, believes this; Betty believed it too. This belief was the key to a good deal of Betty's behaviour; she would become breathless with outrage if she didn't get the deference she thought she deserved. Though her behaviour was often tiresome, I figured that she had a point. Women don't get the respect they deserve unless they are wielding male-shaped power; if they represent women they will be called "love" and expected to clear up after themselves. Betty wanted to change that forever.|Germaine Greer|"The Betty I Knew", ''[[The Guardian]]'' (February 7, 2006)<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/gender.bookscomment|title=The Betty I knew|first=Germaine|last=Greer|newspaper=The Guardian |date=February 7, 2006|via=www.theguardian.com}}</ref>}}
===Works cited===
 
:''Websites and news articles are listed in the [[#References|References]] section only.''
Indeed, Carl Friedan had been quoted as saying "She changed the course of history almost singlehandedly. It took a driven, super aggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this."<ref>Ginsberg L., "Ex-hubby fires back at feminist icon Betty", ''New York Post'', July 5, 2000</ref>
{{refbegin|indent=yes|30em}}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Angelou |first1=Maya |author-link=Maya Angelou |title=Even the Stars Look Lonesome |date=1998 |publisher=Bantam Books |location=New York }}
Writer [[Camille Paglia]], who had been denounced by Friedan in a ''[[Playboy]]'' interview, wrote a brief obituary for her in ''[[Entertainment Weekly]]'':
* {{cite book |last1=Baumgardner |first1=Jennifer |author-link1=Jennifer Baumgardner|editor1-last=Greer|editor1-first=Germaine |title=The Female Eunuch |date=2001 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |pages=1–7  |chapter=Why the Female Eunuch?}}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Baumgardner |first1=Jennifer |author-link1=Jennifer Baumgardner |title=F 'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls |date=2011 |publisher=Da Capo Press |location=New York }}
{{quotation|Betty Friedan wasn't afraid to be called abrasive. She pursued her feminist principles with a flamboyant pugnacity that has become all too rare in these [[yuppie|yuppified]] times. She hated girliness and bourgeois decorum, and never lost her earthly ethnicity.|Camille Paglia|December 29, 2006/January 5, 2007 double End of the Year issue,<ref>{{cite web|title=Remembering those who left us this year|url=https://ew.com/article/2006/12/22/remembering-those-who-left-us-this-year/|magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]]|access-date=9 March 2018}}</ref> section Farewell, pg. 94}}
* {{cite book |last1=Brock |first1=Malin Lidström |title=Writing Feminist Lives: The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir |date=2016 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Cham }}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Caine |first1=Barbara |author-link1=Barbara Caine |last2=Gatens |first2=Moira |author-link2=Moira Gatens |title=Australian Feminism: a companion |date=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Melbourne and Oxford }}
{{quotation|The truth is that I've always been a bad-tempered bitch. Some people say that I have mellowed some. I don't know.|Betty Friedan|Life So Far<ref name="LifeSoFar_379">{{harvp|Friedan|2001|p=379}}</ref>}}
* {{cite book |last1=Coombs |first1=Anne |title=Sex And Anarchy: The Life And Death of the Sydney Push |date=1996 |publisher=Viking}}
 
* {{cite journal |last1=Diamond |first1=Arlyn |title=Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer |journal=The Massachusetts Review |date=Winter–Spring 1972 |volume=13 |issue=1/2 |pages=275–279 |jstor=5088230}}
{{quotation|The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.|Betty Friedan|''The Feminine Mystique''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/21798.Betty_Friedan|title=Betty Friedan Quotes (Author of The Feminine Mystique)|website=www.goodreads.com|access-date=2016-09-06}}</ref>}}
* {{cite book |last1=Evans |first1=Mary |title=Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/Biography |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |location=London and New York }}
 
* {{cite web |last1=Francis|first1=Rosemary|last2=Henningham|first2=Nikki|title=Greer, Germaine (1939–)|date=2017 |orig-year=2009 |url=http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4415b.htm |publisher=The Australian Women's Register |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180414134015/http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4415b.htm |archive-date=14 April 2018}}
== Personal life ==
* {{cite thesis|first=Germaine| last=Greer| date=1963|title=The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode|type=MA| publisher=University of Sydney| hdl=2123/13500}} {{free access}}
She married Carl Friedan (né Friedman), a theater producer, in 1947 while working at UE News. She continued to work after marriage, first as a paid employee and, after 1952, as a freelance journalist. The couple divorced in May 1969, and Carl died in December 2005.
* {{cite thesis|date=7 May 1968|first=Germaine|last= Greer|id={{EThOS|uk.bl.ethos.599683}}|title=The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies|degree= PhD |publisher= Apollo Digital Repository, University of Cambridge|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/256631/Greer-1967-PhD_06204.pdf|oclc=221288543|doi=10.17863/CAM.567}} {{free access}}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings 1968–1985 |date=1986 |orig-year=1970 |publisher=Picador|location=London|chapter=The Slag-Heap Erupts|at=First published in ''Oz'', February 1970}}
Friedan stated in her memoir ''Life So Far'' (2000) that Carl had beaten her during their marriage; friends such as [[Dolores Alexander]] recalled having to cover up black eyes from Carl's abuse in time for press conferences (Brownmiller 1999, p.&nbsp;70). But Carl denied abusing her in an interview with ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine shortly after the book was published, describing the claim as a "complete fabrication".<ref name="Fox"/> She later said, on ''[[Good Morning America]]'', "I almost wish I hadn't even written about it, because it's been sensationalized out of context. My husband was not a wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me."
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Female Eunuch |date=2001 |orig-year=1970 |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux|location=New York |isbn=0-374-52762-8}}
 
* {{cite book |last=Greer |first=Germaine |title=Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet|url=https://archive.org/details/slipshodsibylsre0000gree_g6v6 |url-access=registration |publisher=Viking Press|location=London|year=1995|isbn=9780670849147 }}
Carl and Betty Friedan had three children, [[Daniel Friedan|Daniel]], Emily and Jonathan. She was raised in a Jewish family, but was an agnostic.{{#tag:ref|"As an agnostic Jew many of whose Jewish friends had become Unitarians, she arranged a Bar Mitzvah celebration for Daniel."<ref>{{harvp|Horowitz|2000|p=170}}</ref>|group=Note}} In 1973, Friedan was one of the signers of the [[Humanist Manifesto II]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II|title=Humanist Manifesto II|publisher=American Humanist Association|access-date=October 9, 2012|archive-date=October 20, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121020110719/http://www.americanhumanist.org/humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=The Whole Woman |date=1999 |publisher=Transworld Publishers Ltd |location=London}}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=Whitefella Jump Up |date=2004 |publisher=Profile Books |location=London}}
== Death ==
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |title=White Beech: The Rainforest Years |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury |location=London}}
Friedan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2006, her 85th birthday.{{#tag:ref|"Betty Friedan, the feminist crusader and author whose searing first book, ''The Feminine Mystique'', ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world, died yesterday, her 85th birthday, at her home in Washington. The cause was congestive heart failure, said Emily Bazelon, a family spokeswoman.&nbsp;... For decades a familiar presence on television and the lecture circuit, Ms. Friedan, with her short stature and deeply hooded eyes, looked for much of her adult life like a 'combination of [[Hermione Gingold]] and [[Bette Davis]],' as [[Judy Klemesrud]] wrote in [[The New York Times Magazine]] in 1970."<ref name="Fox"/>|group=Note}}
* {{cite web |last=Greer |first=Germaine |date=19 October 2013a |title=The greening of Greer |work=[[The Australian]]|url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/the-greening-of-greer/news-story/e264844dd385bb18aa7cb1ba72089c0f}} (Edited extract from ''White Beech'')
 
* {{cite book |last1=Greer |first1=Germaine |last2=Willmott|first2=Phil|title=Lysistrata: The Sex Strike. After Aristophanes|date=2011 |publisher=Samuel French Limited}}
==Papers==
* {{cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=Clive |author-link=Clive Hamilton |title=What Do We Want?: The Story of Protest in Australia |date=2016 |publisher=National Library of Australia |location=Sydney }}
Some of Friedan's papers are held at the [[Schlesinger Library]], Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00060|title=Friedan, Betty. Additional papers of Betty Friedan, 1937–1993 (inclusive), 1970–1993 (bulk): A Finding Aid|website=oasis.lib.harvard.edu|access-date=March 13, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140313214548/http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00060|archive-date=March 13, 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=James |first1=Clive |author-link1=Clive James |title=May Week Was In June |date=1991 |publisher=Pan Books |location=London }}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Kleinhenz |first1=Elizabeth |title=Germaine: The Life of Germaine Greer |date=2018 |publisher=Knopf |location=Sydney }}
== Awards and honors ==
* {{cite journal |last1=Lake |first1=Marilyn |author-link=Marilyn Lake |title='Revolution for the hell of it': the transatlantic genesis and serial provocations of The Female Eunuch |journal=Australian Feminist Studies |date=2016 |volume=31 |issue=87 |pages=7–21 |doi=10.1080/08164649.2016.1174926 |s2cid=147881101 }}
* Honorary doctorate of humane letters from [[Smith College]] (1975)<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nUqo-_9mZ7sC&q=friedan+%22honorary+doctorate+of+humane+letters%22+smith&pg=PA226|title=Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed The World|first1=Deborah G.|last1=Felder|first2=Diana|last2=Rosen|year= 2017|publisher=Citadel Press|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0806526560}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Magarey |first1=Susan|author-link=Susan Magarey|editor1-last=Smith |editor1-first=Bonnie G. |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |pages=402–403  |chapter=Germaine Greer}}
* [[Humanist of the Year]] from the [[American Humanist Association]] (1975)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://americanhumanist.org/AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year|title=Humanists of the Year<!-- Bot generated title -->|access-date=March 13, 2014|archive-date=November 28, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151128162005/http://americanhumanist.org/aha/humanists_of_the_year|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Medoff |first1=Jeslyn |editor1-last=Wallace |editor1-first=Elizabeth Kowaleski |title=Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory |date=2010 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |page=263  |chapter=Germaine Greer}}
* [[Mort Weisinger]] Award from the [[American Society of Journalists and Authors]] (1979)<ref name="www2.edc.org">{{cite web|url=http://www2.edc.org/womensequity/women/friedan.htm|title=Women's Equity Resource Center|website=www2.edc.org}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Merck |first1=Mandy |editor1-last=Merck |editor1-first=Mandy |editor2-last=Sandford |editor2-first=Stella |title=Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone |url=https://archive.org/details/furtheradventure00merc |url-access=limited |date=2010 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/furtheradventure00merc/page/n19 9]–28  |chapter=Prologue: Shulamith Firestone and Sexual Difference|isbn=9780230100299 }}
* From 1981 to 1983, [[Bonnie Tiburzi]] put on three “Women of Accomplishment” luncheons for the [[Wings Club]] honoring certain women, including Friedan.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://womenthatsoar.com/bonnie-tiburzi/ |title=Bonnie Tiburzi – Women That Soar 2020 |publisher=Womenthatsoar.com |access-date=March 9, 2020}}</ref>
* {{cite journal |last1=Mosmann |first1=Petra |title=A feminist fashion icon: Germaine Greer's paisley coat |journal=Australian Feminist Studies |date=31 May 2016 |volume=31 |issue=87 |pages=78–94|doi=10.1080/08164649.2016.1174928|s2cid=148120100 }}
* Honorary doctorate of humane letters from the [[State University at Stony Brook]] (1985)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/specials/friedan-run.html|title=For Friedan, a Life on the Run|website=The New York Times}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Neville |first1=Richard |author-link=Richard Neville (writer) |title=Hippie Hippie Shake |date=2010 |publisher=Gerald Duckworth & Co |location=London }}
* [[Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award]] (1989)<ref name="www2.edc.org"/>
* {{cite book |last1=Packer |first1=Clyde |author-link=Clyde Packer |title=No Return Ticket |url=https://archive.org/details/noreturnticket00pack |url-access=registration |date=1984 |publisher=Angus & Robertson |isbn=9780207150289 }}
* Honorary doctorate of humane letters from [[Bradley University]] (1991)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://lydia.bradley.edu/advising/pdfs/GeneralInfo.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=March 20, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407074936/http://lydia.bradley.edu/advising/pdfs/GeneralInfo.pdf |archive-date=April 7, 2014 }}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Peacock |first1=D. Keith |title=Thatcher's Theatre: British Theatre and Drama in the Eighties |date=1999 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, CT }}
* Induction into the [[National Women's Hall of Fame]] (1993)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.greatwomen.org/women-of-the-hall/search-the-hall/details/2/61-friedan|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130113072952/http://www.greatwomen.org/women-of-the-hall/search-the-hall/details/2/61-Friedan|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 13, 2013|title=Home – National Women's Hall of Fame|website=National Women's Hall of Fame}}</ref>
* {{cite journal |last1=Poirot |first1=Kristan |title=Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse: Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, and Feminism's Second Wave |journal=Women's Studies in Communication |date=Summer 2004 |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=204–235 |doi=10.1080/07491409.2004.10162473|s2cid=145150915 }}
* Honorary doctorate of letters from [[Columbia University]] (1994)<ref>{{Cite web|date=May 27, 1994|title=Columbia University Record – Texts of Citations for Honorary Degree Recipients|url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol19/vol19_iss30/record1930.23|access-date=February 3, 2022|website=columbia.edu|series=Vol. 19 No. 30}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Reilly |first1=Susan P. |editor1-last=Wallace |editor1-first=Elizabeth Kowaleski |title=Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory |date=2010 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |page=213  |chapter=Female Eunuch}}
* "The 75 Most Important Women of the Past 75 Years" – ''[[Glamour (magazine)|Glamour]]'' magazine listed Friedan as one of them (2014)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.glamour.com/inspired/2014/02/the-most-inspiring-female-celebrities-entrepreneurs-and-political-figures/28|title=The Most Inspiring Female Celebrities, Entrepreneurs, and Political Figures|work=Glamour|date=February 7, 2014|access-date=April 15, 2015|archive-date=March 4, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304114527/http://www.glamour.com/inspired/2014/02/the-most-inspiring-female-celebrities-entrepreneurs-and-political-figures/28|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* {{cite journal |last1=Simons |first1=Margaret |author-link=Margaret Simons |title=The Long Letter to a Short Love, or&nbsp;... |journal=[[Meanjin]] |url=https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-long-letter-to-a-short-love-or/ |date=Summer 2015 }}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Philippa Mein |author-link1=Philippa Mein Smith |year=2012 |orig-year=2005 |title=A Concise History of New Zealand |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
== In media ==
* {{cite journal |last1=Spongberg |first1=Mary |title=If She's So Great, How Come So Many Pigs Dig Her? Germaine Greer and the malestream press |journal=Women's History Review |date=1993 |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=(407–419), 407 |doi=10.1080/09612029300200036 |doi-access=free }}
Friedan was portrayed by actress [[Tracey Ullman]] in the 2020 [[FX (TV channel)|FX]] limited series ''[[Mrs. America (miniseries)|Mrs. America]]''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Sarah Paulson, John Slattery Among 11 Cast in Cate Blanchett's FX Limited Series 'Mrs America'|url=https://www.thewrap.com/sarah-paulson-john-slattery-among-11-cast-in-cate-blanchetts-fx-limited-series-mrs-america|work=[[TheWrap]]|date=May 14, 2019|publisher=Thewrap.com|access-date=May 14, 2019}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last1=Standish |first1=Ann |title=The Encyclopedia of Women & Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia |date=2014 |chapter-url=http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0350b.htm |publisher=Australian Women's Archives Project |location=Melbourne |page=263  |chapter=Greer, Germaine (1939–)|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180620001818/http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0350b.htm |archive-date=20 June 2018|url-status=live}}
 
* {{cite book |last1=Toynbee |first1=Polly |author-link1=Polly Toynbee |editor1-last=Cochrane |editor1-first=Kira |editor1-link=Kira Cochrane |title=Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism |date=2012 |publisher=Guardian Books |location=London  |chapter=Behind the Lines: Ironing in the Soul|orig-year=1988}}
Friedan was portrayed in Season 1 Episode 7 of the HBO Max series "Julia". The scene, which takes place at a Public Television gala in New York, depicts a conversation between Friedan and Julia Child, in which Friedan criticizes Child's cooking show on WGBH, suggesting that it harms women.
* {{cite book |last=Wallace |first=Christine |author-link=Christine Wallace |title=Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew |publisher=Faber and Faber|location=London|year=1999|orig-year=1997}}
 
* {{cite journal |last1=Winant |first1=Carmen |title=The Meaningful Disappearance of Germaine Greer |url=http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/57/winant.php |issue=57 |journal=Cabinet |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180325042922/http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/57/winant.php |archive-date=25 March 2018 |date=Spring 2015|url-status=dead}}
== Books ==
* {{cite book |last1=Wlodarczyk |first1=Justyna |title=Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |location=Newcastle upon Tyne }}
* ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' (1963)
* {{cite journal |last1=Yalom |first1=Marilyn |author-link=Marilyn Yalom |title=Review: The Second-Best Bed and Other Conundrums |journal=The Women's Review of Books |date=January–February 2009 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=29–30 |jstor=20476813}}
* ''It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement'' (1976)
* ''[[The Second Stage]]'' (1981)
* ''The Fountain of Age'' (1993)
* ''Beyond Gender'' (1997)
* ''Life So Far'' (2000)
 
== See also ==
{{Portal|Feminism|Biography}}
* [[List of women's rights activists]]
 
== Notes ==
{{reflist|group=Note}}
 
== References ==
{{Reflist|21em}}
 
===Bibliography===
{{refbegin|40em}}
* {{cite book |last=Farber |first=David |year=2004 |title=The Sixties Chronicle |publisher=Legacy Publishing |isbn=141271009X }}
* {{cite book |last=Friedan |first=Betty |year=1997 |editor=Brigid O'Farrell |title=Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=Woodrow Wilson Center Press |isbn=0-943875-84-6 }}
* {{cite book |last=Friedan |first=Betty |year=1998 |orig-year=1981 |title=The Second Stage |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=0-674-79655-1 |title-link=The Second Stage }}
* {{cite book |last=Friedan |first=Betty |year=2001 |title=Life So Far: A Memoir |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=0-7432-0024-1 }}
* {{cite book |last=Horowitz |first=Daniel |year=2000 |title=Betty Friedan and the Making of ''The Feminine Mystique'': The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |location=Amherst, MA |isbn=978-1558492769 }}
* {{cite book |last=Siegel |first=Deborah |year=2007 |title=Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild |location=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-4039-8204-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/sisterhoodinterr0000sieg }}
{{refend}}
{{refend}}


== Further reading ==
==External links==
{{refbegin|40em}}
{{Wikiquote}}
* Blau, Justine. ''Betty Friedan: Feminist'', paperback edition, Women of Achievement, Chelsea House Publications, 1990, {{ISBN|1-55546-653-2}}
{{Commons category|Germaine Greer}}
* Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. ''Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan'', hardcover edition, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2004, {{ISBN|1-931798-41-9}}
{{library resources box|by=yes}}
* [[Susan Brownmiller|Brownmiller, Susan]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070719200440/http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/html/in_our_time.html ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution''], [[The Dial Press]], 1999, {{ISBN|0-385-31486-8}}
*{{Australian Women's Register}}
* [http://dmr.bsu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/KPatrickMem&CISOPTR=1652&REC=1 Friedan, Betty. "Breaking Through the Age Mystique". 1991], Proceedings from the Kirkpatrick Memorial Conference. Muncie, IN.
*{{OL author}}
* Friedan, Betty. ''Fountain of Age'', Paperback Edition, Simon & Schuster, 1994, {{ISBN|0-671-89853-1}}
*[http://archives.unimelb.edu.au/ The University of Melbourne Archives].
* Friedan, Betty. ''It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement'', hardcover edition, Random House Inc. 1978, {{ISBN|0-394-46398-6}}
*{{YouTube|LOcMazsj6OQ|Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists}}, University of Melbourne, 8 March 2017.
* Friedan, Betty. ''Life So Far'', Paperback Edition, Simon & Schuster, 2000, {{ISBN|0-684-80789-0}}
*{{cite web |title=Germaine Greer |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06545/germaine-greer |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London}}
* Friedan, Betty. ''The Feminine Mystique'', hardcover edition, W. W. Norton and Company Inc. 1963, {{ISBN|0-393-08436-1}}
*{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6q27f|title=Germaine Bloody Greer|publisher=BBC Two|date=15 June 2018}}
* Friedan, Betty. ''The Second Stage'', paperback edition, Abacus 1983, {{ASIN|B000BGRCRC}}
*{{YouTube|id=AQrQnVWp9Yg&t=1321s|title=Ideas at the House: Germaine Greer – How Many Dangerous Ideas Can One Person Have|link=no}}, Talks & Ideas, Sydney Opera House, 9 October 2013.
* {{Cite journal | last1 = Horowitz | first1 = Daniel | title = Rethinking Betty Friedan and ''The Feminine Mystique'': Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America | journal = [[American Quarterly]] | volume = 48 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–42 | publisher = [[Johns Hopkins University Press]] | doi = 10.1353/aq.1996.0010 | date = March 1996 | s2cid = 144768306 }}
*{{Cite news|last1=Paglia|first1=Camille|author-link=Camille Paglia|title=Back to the Barricades|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=9 May 1999|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/books/back-to-the-barricades.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715152224/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/books/back-to-the-barricades.html|archive-date=15 July 2018|at=Review of Greer's biography, ''Untamed Shrew'' by [[Christine Wallace]]|ref=none}}
* Horowitz, Daniel. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1558491686 "Betty Friedan and the Making of ''The Feminine Mystique''"], [[University of Massachusetts Press]], 1998, {{ISBN|1-55849-168-6}}
*{{YouTube|O4LtOpjQrQo|Professor Germaine Greer—An Insight—full interview|link=no}}, [[Leeds Beckett University]], March 2010
* Hennessee, Judith. ''Betty Friedan: Her Life'', hardcover edition, Random House 1999, {{ISBN|0-679-43203-5}}
* Henry, Sondra. Taitz, Emily. ''Betty Friedan: Fighter for Women's Rights'', hardcover edition, Enslow Publishers 1990, {{ISBN|0-89490-292-X}}
* Kaplan, Marion. [http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/friedan-betty "Betty Friedan"], Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.
* [[Milton Meltzer|Meltzer, Milton]]. ''Betty Friedan: A Voice For Women's Rights'', hardcover edition, Viking Press 1985, {{ISBN|0-670-80786-9}}
* {{Cite journal | last = Moskowitz | first = Eva | author-link = Eva Moskowitz | title = It's Good to Blow Your Top: Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945–1965 | journal = [[Journal of Women's History]] | volume = 8 | issue = 3 | pages = 66–98 | publisher = [[Johns Hopkins University Press]] | doi = 10.1353/jowh.2010.0458 | date =Fall 1996 | s2cid = 144197986 }}
* Sherman, Janann. ''Interviews With Betty Friedan'', Paperback Edition, University Press of Mississippi 2002, {{ISBN|1-57806-480-5}}
* Siegel, Deborah, ''Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild'' (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 ({{ISBN|978-1-4039-8204-9}})), chap. 3 (author Ph.D. & fellow, Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership).
* Taylor-Boyd, Susan. ''Betty Friedan: Voice for Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights'', hardcover edition, Gareth Stevens Publishing 1990, {{ISBN|0-8368-0104-0}}
{{refend}}
 
===Obituaries===
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060206030655/http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/04/friedan.obit.ap/index.html Betty Friedan, philosopher of modern-day feminism, dies] – [[CNN]], February 4, 2006.
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05friedan.html Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in 'Feminine Mystique,' Dies at 85] – ''[[The New York Times]]'', February 5, 2006.
* {{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401385.html|title=Voice of Feminism's 'Second Wave'|date=February 5, 2006|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] | first=Patricia | last=Sullivan | access-date=March 31, 2010}}
* {{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-friedan5feb05,0,2296445.story|title=Betty Friedan, Philosopher Of Modern-day Feminism, Dies|date=February 4, 2006|work=[[Los Angeles Times]] | first=Elaine | last=Woo}}
* {{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-friedan5feb05,0,2472152.story|title=Catalyst of Feminist Revolution|date=February 5, 2006|work=Los Angeles Times | first=Elaine | last=Woo}}
* {{cite news|url=https://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/02/05/betty_friedan_feminist_visionary_dies_at_85/|title=Betty Friedan, feminist visionary, dies at 85|date=February 5, 2006|work=The Boston Globe | first=Mark | last=Feeney}}
* {{cite news|url=http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/pollitt|title=Betty Friedan, 1921–2006|date=February 9, 2006|work=The Nation}}
* [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/gender.bookscomment Anything you can do, Icon do better] – [[Germaine Greer]] remembers Betty Friedan
 
== External links ==
{{commons|Betty Friedan|Betty Friedan}}
{{wikiquote}}
* [https://theworthyhouse.com/2020/12/28/the-feminine-mystique-betty-friedan/ The Feminine Mystique – 50 years on]
* [https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_81-9995xhm0 Interview with Betty Friedan in WNED public television series ''Woman'', 1974] from the [[American Archive of Public Broadcasting]]
* [http://www.bradley.edu/bettyfriedantribute/ The Betty Friedan Tribute website hosted by Bradley University, Peoria, IL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190624050233/https://www.bradley.edu/bettyfriedantribute/ |date=June 24, 2019 }}
* [https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/betty-friedan/ National Women's Hall of Fame: Betty Friedan]
* {{C-SPAN|878}}
** [http://www.c-span.org/video/?170790-1/writings-betty-friedan "Writings of Betty Friedan"] from [[C-SPAN]]'s ''[[American Writers: A Journey Through History]]''
* [http://www.encyclopaediajudaica.com/sample-articles/article_view.php?sid=betty-friedan Betty Friedan's Biography from The Encyclopaedia Judaica]
* [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/friedan.htm The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud] (chapter 5 of ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'')
* [https://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/friedan.htm First Measured Century: Interview: Betty Friedan]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140421173719/http://www.latebloomerstories.com/2009/07/betty-friedan-1921-2006.html Betty Friedan: Late Bloomer.]
* [http://cf.en.cl/ Cheerless Fantasies, A Corrective Catalogue of Errors in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique]
* [http://www.moondance.org/2006/spring2006/nonfiction/friedan.html After a Life of Telling It Like It Is: Betty Friedan Dies at Age 85], Lys Anzia, ''[[Moondance (magazine)|Moondance]]''. Spring 2006
* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00059 Papers of Betty Friedan, 1933–1985: A Finding Aid.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120509153246/http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles |date=May 9, 2012 }}, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00210 Video collection of Betty Friedan, ca.1970–2006: A Finding Aid.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120509153246/http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles |date=May 9, 2012 }}, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch01317 Audio collection of Betty Friedan, 1963–2007: A Finding Aid.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120509153246/http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles |date=May 9, 2012 }}, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
* [http://jewishhistorylectures.org/2013/05/24/betty-friedan-jews-and-american-feminism/Video Lecture on Betty Friedan: Jews and American Feminism]{{dead link|date=November 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} by [[Henry Abramson|Dr. Henry Abramson]] of [[Touro College South]]
* Michals, Debra [https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/betty-friedan "Betty Friedan"]. National Women's History Museum. 2017.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzXYvv1ClnM Interview with Betty Friedan], ''A DISCUSSION WITH National Authors on Tour'' TV Series, Episode #120 (1994)
 
{{s-start}}
{{succession box | before = (none) | title = [[List of Presidents of the National Organization for Women|President of the National Organization for Women]] |years=1966–1970| after = [[Aileen Hernandez]]}}
{{s-end}}
{{Feminism}}
{{Liberal feminism}}
{{National Women's Hall of Fame}}
{{Authority control}}
 
[[Category:20th-century American writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:American agnostics]]
[[Category:American feminist writers]]
[[Category:American humanists]]
[[Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:American abortion-rights activists]]
[[Category:American tax resisters]]
[[Category:American women's rights activists]]
[[Category:Feminist theorists]]
[[Category:Free speech activists]]
[[Category:Jewish agnostics]]
[[Category:Jewish American writers]]
[[Category:Jewish feminists]]
[[Category:Jewish humanists]]
[[Category:Jewish women writers]]
[[Category:Presidents of the National Organization for Women]]
[[Category:Smith College alumni]]
[[Category:Writers from Peoria, Illinois]]
[[Category:Equal Rights Amendment activists]]
[[Category:Jewish American activists]]

Latest revision as of 10:25, 2 September 2024

Germaine Greer in 2013.

Germaine Greer (1939 - ?) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century.[1]

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 the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name.[2] An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed.[3]Template:Sfn

Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including Sex and Destiny (1984), The Change (1991), The Whole Woman (1999), and The Boy (2003). Her 2013 book, White Beech: The Rainforest Years, describes her efforts to restore an area of rainforest in the Numinbah Valley in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Independent, and The Oldie, among others.

Greer is a liberation (or radical) rather than equality feminist.[4] Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in The Whole Woman (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting difference and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".[5]

The Female Eunuch (1970)

Writing

Further information: The Female Eunuch

When she began writing for Oz and Suck, Greer was spending three days a week in her flat in Leamington Spa while she taught at Warwick, two days in Manchester filming, and two days in London in a white-washed bedsit in The Pheasantry on King's Road.[6] When she first moved to London, she had stayed in John Peel's spare room before being invited to take the bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under Martin Sharp's; accommodation there was by invitation only.Template:Sfn

She was also writing The Female Eunuch. On 17 March 1969 she had had lunch in Golden Square, Soho, with a Cambridge acquaintance, Sonny Mehta of MacGibbon & Kee. When he asked for ideas for new books, she repeated a suggestion of her agent, Diana Crawford, which she had dismissed, that she write about female suffrage.[7] Crawford had suggested that Greer write a book for the 50th anniversary of women (or a portion of them) being given the vote in the UK in 1918.Template:Sfn The very idea of it made her angry and she began "raging" about it. "That's the book I want", he said. He advanced her £750 and another £250 when she signed the contract.Template:Sfn In a three-page synopsis for Mehta, she wrote: "If Eldridge Cleaver can write a book about the frozen soul of the negro, as part of the progress towards a correct statement of the coloured man's problem, a woman must eventually take steps towards delineating the female condition as she finds it scored upon her sensibility."Template:Sfn

Explaining why she wanted to write the book, the synopsis continued: "Firstly I suppose it is to expiate my guilt at being an uncle Tom to my sex. I don't like women. I probably share in all the effortless and unconscious contempt that men pour on women." In a note at the time, she described 21 April 1969 as "the day on which my book begins itself, and Janis Joplin sings at Albert Hall. Yesterday the title was Strumpet Voluntary—what shall it be today?"Template:Sfn She told the Sydney Morning Herald in July 1969 that the book was nearly finished and would explore, in the reporter's words, "the myth of the ultra-feminine woman which both sexes are fed and which both end up believing".[6] In February 1970, she published an article in Oz, "The Slag-Heap Erupts", which gave a taste of her views to come, namely that women were to blame for their own oppression. "Men don't really like women", she wrote, "and that is really why they don't employ them. Women don't really like women either, and they too can usually be relied on to employ men in preference to women."Template:Sfn Several British feminists, including Angela Carter, Sheila Rowbotham and Michelene Wandor, responded angrily.Template:Sfn Wandor wrote a rejoinder in Oz, "On the end of Servile Penitude: A reply to Germaine's cunt power", arguing that Greer was writing about a feminist movement in which she had played no role and about which she knew nothing.Template:Sfn

Publication

Christine Wallace called Paladin's cover, designed by John Holmes, one of the most "instantly recognizable images in post-war publishing".Template:Sfn

Launched at a party attended by editors from Oz,Template:Sfn The Female Eunuch was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970,[8] dedicated to Lillian Roxon and four other women.[9] The first print run of Template:Frac thousand copies sold out on the first day.[10] Arguing that the suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses and devitalizes women, the book became an international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement.Template:Sfn According to Greer, McGraw-Hill paid $29,000 for the American rights and Bantam $135,000 for the paperback.[11] The Bantam edition called Greer the "Saucy feminist that even men like", quoting Life magazine, and the book "#1: the ultimate word on sexual freedom".Template:Sfn Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly,Template:Sfn and it has never been out of print.[2] Wallace writes about one woman who wrapped it in brown paper and kept it hidden under her shoes, because her husband would not let her read it.Template:Sfn By 1998 it had sold over one million copies in the UK alone.

The year 1970 was an important one for second-wave feminism. In February 400 women met in Ruskin College, Oxford, for Britain's first Women's Liberation Conference.[12] In August Kate Millett's Sexual Politics was published in New York;[13] on 26 August the Women's Strike for Equality was held throughout the United States; and on 31 August Millett's portrait by Alice Neel was on the cover of Time magazine, by which time her book had sold 15,000 copies (although in December Time deemed her disclosure that she was a lesbian as likely to discourage people from embracing feminism).[14] September and October saw the publication of Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan, and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex.Template:Sfn On 6 March 1971, dressed in a monk's habit, Greer marched through central London with 2,500 women in a Women's Liberation March.[15] By that month The Female Eunuch had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing.Template:Sfn McGraw-Hill published it in the United States on 16 April 1971.[16][17] The toast of New York, Greer insisted on staying at the Hotel Chelsea, a haunt of writers and artists, rather than at the Algonquin Hotel where her publisher had booked her; her book launch had to be rescheduled because so many people wanted to attend.[18] A New York Times book review described her as "[s]ix feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and a profile reminiscent of Garbo".[16] Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear".Template:Sfn

A Paladin paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by René Magritte,[19] showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip.[20] Clive Hamilton regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created".[19] Likening the torso to "some fibreglass cast on an industrial production line", Christine Wallace wrote that Holmes's first version was a faceless, breastless, naked woman, "unmistakably Germaine ... hair fashionably afro-frizzed, waist-deep in a pile of stylised breasts, presumably amputated in the creation of a 'female eunuch' based on an assumed equivalence of testicles and mammary glands".Template:Sfn The book was reissued in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux at the instigation of Jennifer Baumgardner, a leading third-wave feminist and editor of the publisher's Feminist Classics series.Template:Sfn According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist".Template:Sfn

Arguments

"When a woman may walk on the open streets of our cities alone, without insult or obstacle, at any pace she chooses, there will be no further need for this book."

[21]

The Female Eunuch explores how a male-dominated world affects a female's sense of self, and how sexist stereotypes undermine female rationality, autonomy, power and sexuality. Its message is that women have to look within themselves for personal liberation before trying to change the world. In a series of chapters in five sections—Body, Soul, Love, Hate and Revolution—Greer describes the stereotypes, myths and misunderstandings that combine to produce the oppression.Template:Sfn She summarized the book's position in 2018 as "Do what you want and want what you do ... Don't take it up the arse if you don't want to take it up the arse."[22] Wallace argues that this is a libertarian message, with its background in the Sydney Push, rather than one that rose out of the feminism of the day.Template:Sfn The first paragraph stakes out the book's place in feminist historiography (in an earlier draft, the first sentence read: "So far the female liberation movement is tiny, privileged and overrated"):Template:Sfn

Template:Blockquote

The Eunuch ends with: "Privileged women will pluck at your sleeve and seek to enlist you in the 'fight' for reforms, but reforms are retrogressive. The old process must be broken, not made new. Bitter women will call you to rebellion, but you have too much to do. What will you do?"Template:Sfn

Greer in Amsterdam, 6 June 1972, on a book tour for The Female Eunuch

Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to Sex and Destiny 14 years later, namely that the nuclear family is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children, and that the manufacture of women's sexuality by Western society is demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate them. Later, when women embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity, they develop a sense of shame about their own bodies, and lose their natural and political autonomy. The result is powerlessness, isolation, a diminished sexuality, and a lack of joy.[23] "Like beasts", she told The New York Times in March 1971, "who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives—to be fattened or made docile—women have been cut off from their capacity for action."[16] The book argues that "[w]omen have very little idea of how much men hate them", while "[m]en do not themselves know the depth of their hatred."[24] First-wave feminism had failed in its revolutionary aims. "Reaction is not revolution", she wrote. "It is not a sign of revolution where the oppressed adopt the manners of the oppressors and practice oppression on their own behalf. Neither is it a sign of revolution when women ape men ..."Template:Sfn The American feminist Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), wants for women "equality of opportunity within the status quo, free admission to the world of the ulcer and the coronary", she argued.Template:Sfn

Although Greer's book made no use of autobiographical material, unlike other feminist works at the time, Mary Evans, writing in 2002, viewed Greer's "entire oeuvre" as autobiographical, a struggle for female agency in the face of the powerlessness of the feminine (her mother) against the backdrop of the missing male hero (her father).Template:Sfn Reviewing the book for The Massachusetts Review in 1972, feminist scholar Arlyn Diamond wrote that, while flawed, it was also "intuitively and brilliantly right", but she criticized Greer for her attitude toward women:

Template:Blockquote

Celebrity

Debate with Norman Mailer

Further information: Town Bloody Hall

Template:Quote box

In the UK Greer was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971, and in the US the following year, she was "Playboy Journalist of the Year".[25] Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at the Town Hall in New York, she famously debated Norman Mailer, whose book The Prisoner of Sex had just been published in response to Kate Millett. Greer presented it as an evening of sexual conquest. She had always wanted to fuck Mailer, she said, and wrote in The Listener that she "half expected him to blow his head off in 'one last killer come' like Ernest Hemingway."Template:Sfn Betty Friedan, Sargent Shriver, Susan Sontag and Stephen Spender sat in the audience, where tickets were $25 a head (c. $155 in 2018), while Greer and Mailer shared the stage with Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling and Jacqueline Ceballos.[2]Template:Sfn Several feminists declined to attend, including Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kate Millett, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem.Template:Sfn Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the event in the documentary Town Bloody Hall (1979).

Template:External media

Wearing a paisley coat she had cut from a shawl and sewn herself, and sitting with her feet on a park bench, Greer appeared on the cover of Life magazine on 7 May 1971, under the title "Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like"; there were five more photographs of her inside.[26] Also in May, she was featured in Vogue magazine, photographed by Lord Snowdon, on the floor in knee-length boots and wearing the same paisley coat.Template:Sfn (In 2016 the coat, now in the National Museum of Australia, got its own scholarly article, and the photograph by Lord Snowdon is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.)Template:Sfn On 18 May Greer addressed the National Press Club in Washington, the first woman to do so; she was introduced as "an attractive, intelligent, sexually liberated woman".Template:Sfn She also appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape.Template:Sfn


Later writing about women

On gender

Sex-gender distinction

In The Whole Woman, Greer argued that, while sex is a biological given, gender roles are cultural constructs. Femininity is not femaleness. "Genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity", she wrote.Template:Sfn Girls and women are taught femininity—learning to speak softly, wear certain clothes, remove body hair to please men, and so on—a process of conditioning that begins at birth and continues throughout the entire life span.Template:Sfn "There is nothing feminine about being pregnant", she told Krishnan Guru-Murthy in 2018. "It's almost the antithesis of that. There's nothing feminine about giving birth. It's a bloody struggle, and you've got to be strong and brave. There's nothing feminine about breastfeeding. God knows it drives everybody mad; they want to see nice big pumped-up tits, but they don't want to see them doing their job."[27]

Transgender identity

Greer's writing on gender has brought her into opposition with transgender activists. In a chapter in The Whole Woman entitled "Pantomime Dames", she wrote: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex."Template:Sfn Her position first attracted controversy in 1997, when she unsuccessfully opposed the offer of a Newnham College fellowship to physicist Rachael Padman, a trans woman, arguing that, because Padman had been "born male", she should not be admitted to a women-only college.[28] She reiterated her views several times over the following years, including in 2015 when students at Cardiff University tried unsuccessfully to "no platform" her to stop her from speaking on "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century".[29] Greer responded by reaffirming, during an interview with Kirsty Wark for BBC Newsnight, that she did not regard transgender women as women; she argued that the nomination of Caitlyn Jenner for Glamour Woman of the Year had been misogynist.[30][31][32] Over 130 academics and others signed a letter to The Observer in 2015 objecting to the use of no-platform policies against Greer and feminists with similar views; signatories included Beatrix Campbell, Mary Beard, Deborah Cameron, Catherine Hall, Liz Kelly, Ruth Lister, and the Southall Black Sisters.[33]

On rape

Arguments

Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch (1970) that rape is not the "expression of uncontrollable desire" but an act of "murderous aggression, spawned in self-loathing and enacted upon the hated other".Template:Sfn She has argued since at least the 1990s that the criminal justice system's approach to rape is male-centred, treating female victims as evidence rather than complainants, and reflecting that women were once regarded as male property. "Historically, the crime of rape was committed not against the woman but against the man with an interest in her, her father or her husband", she wrote in 1995. "What had to be established beyond doubt was that she had not collaborated with the man who usurped another's right. If she had, the penalty, which might have been stoning or pressing to death, was paid by her."[34]

Template:Quote box

Rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman, she writes; if a woman allows a man to have sex with her to avoid a beating, then arguably she fears the beating more. A woman who has been raped has no reason to feel shame (and therefore no need for anonymity), and a female-centred view of rape will not fashion it as something that can "ruin" a woman. "She may be outraged and humiliated", Greer writes, "but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."[34] If a woman feels she has been destroyed by such an attack, "it is because you've been told lies about who and what you are", she argued in 2018.[35] She suggested in 1995 that the crime of rape be replaced by one of sexual assault with varying degrees of seriousness and swifter outcomes.[34] In 2018 she said she had changed her mind about calling rape "sexual assault", because most rape (in particular, sex without consent within marriage) is not accompanied by physical violence.[36] "There is no way that the law of rape fits the reality of women's lives", she said in 2018.[37] Her book, On Rape, was published by Melbourne University Press in September 2018.[38]

Me Too movement

Greer has commented several times on the Me Too movement. In November 2017, she called for women to show solidarity when other women are sexually harassed.[39] Just before she was named Australian of the Year in Britain in January 2018, she said she had always wanted to see women react immediately to sexual harassment, as it occurs. "What makes it different is when the man has economic power, as Harvey Weinstein has. But if you spread your legs because he said 'be nice to me and I'll give you a job in a movie' then I'm afraid that's tantamount to consent, and it's too late now to start whingeing about that."[40] In May that year, she argued—of the high-profile cases—that disclosure was "dishonourable" because women who "claim to have been outraged 20 years ago" had been paid to sign non-disclosure agreements, but then had spoken out once the statute of limitations had lapsed and they had nothing to lose.[41]

Awards and honours

Template:External media Greer has received several honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Letters from York University in 1999,[42] a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2003,[43] a Doctor of Letters at Anglia Ruskin University in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney in 2005.[44][45]

The National Portrait Gallery in London has purchased eight photographs of Greer, including by Bryan Wharton, Lord Snowdon and Polly Borland, and one painting by Paula Rego.[46] She was selected as an Australian National Living Treasure in 1997,[47] and in 2001 was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.Template:Sfn In 2011 she was one of four feminist "Australian legends" (along with Eva Cox, Elizabeth Evatt and Anne Summers) represented on Australian postage stamps.[48] In the UK she was voted "Woman of the Year" in 1971,[25] and in 2016 BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour placed her fourth on its annual "Power List" of seven women who had the biggest impact on women's lives over the previous 70 years, alongside (in order) Margaret Thatcher, Helen Brook, Barbara Castle, Jayaben Desai, Bridget Jones, and Beyoncé.[49]

Controversial views

Writer Yvonne Roberts referred to Greer as "the contrarian queen".[50] Sarah Ditum wrote that Greer "doesn't get into trouble occasionally or inadvertently, but consistently and with the attitude of a tank rolling directly into a crowd of infantry".[51] The Sydney Morning Herald has labelled her a "human headline".[52] British actor and comedian Tracey Ullman has portrayed Greer as an elderly woman picking fights at bus stops.[51] In response to criticism of Greer, Polly Toynbee wrote in 1988: "Small minds, small spirits affronted by the sheer size and magnetism of the woman."Template:Sfn

Greer said that the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses (1988)[53] was his own fault, although she also added her name that year to a petition in his support.[54] In 2006, she supported activists trying to halt the filming in London's Brick Lane of the film Brick Lane (based on Monica Ali's novel of the same name) because, she wrote, "a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name" had portrayed Bengali Muslims as "irreligious and disorderly". Rushdie called her comments "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but ... not unexpected".[53]

In May 1995, in her column for The Guardian (which the newspaper spiked), she referred to Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore's "bird's nest hair" and "fuck-me shoes".[55] She called her biographer, Christine Wallace, a "flesh-eating bacterium" and Wallace's book, Untamed Shrew (1999), "a piece of excrement".Template:Sfn (She has said "I fucking hate biography. If you want to know about Dickens, read his fucking books.")[56] Australia, she said in 2004, was a "cultural wasteland"; the Australian prime minister, John Howard, called her remarks patronising and condescending.[57] After receiving a fee of £40,000,[58] she left the Celebrity Big Brother house on day six in 2005 because, she wrote, it was a squalid "fascist prison camp".[59][60][61] Kevin Rudd, later Australia's prime minister, told her to "stick a sock in it" in 2006, when, in a column about the death of Australian Steve Irwin, star of The Crocodile Hunter, she concluded that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge".[62][63] She criticized the wife of the newly elected American president Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, for her dress on the night of the 2008 U.S. election,Template:Sfn and in 2012 she advised Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, to change the cut of her jackets because she had "a big arse".[64]

Later life

In June 2022 Germaine Greer was among the women highlighted in the Australian Women Changemakers exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy.[65]

In 2021 Greer had returned to Australia to sell her home and put herself into aged care. In 2022 the 83 year old Greer noted more women are in care than men. She described herself as 'not a patient, but an inmate' and spoke frankly about residential aged care being one of the more pressing feminist issues today.[66][67]

Germaine Greer archive

Greer sold her archive in 2013 to the University of Melbourne.[68] As of June 2018 it covers the period 1959–2010, filling 487 archive boxes on 82 metres of shelf space.[69][70] The transfer of the archive (150 filing-cabinet drawers) from Greer's home in England began in July 2014; the university announced that it was raising Template:AUD to fund the purchase, shipping, housing, cataloguing and digitising. Greer said that her receipt from the sale would be donated to her charity, Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.[71]

Selected works

Template:Div col

  • (1963). Template:Cite thesis
  • (1968). Template:Cite thesis
  • (1970). The Female Eunuch. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
  • (1979) as Rose Blight. The Revolting Garden. HarperCollins.
  • (1979). The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. London: Martin Secker and Warburg.
  • (1984). Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility. London: Harper & Row.
  • (1986). Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past Masters series).
  • (1986). The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings. London: Picador.
  • (1988) with Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, Melinda Sansone (eds). Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • (1989). Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
  • (1989) (ed.). The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn. London: Stump Cross Books.
  • (1990) with Ruth Little (eds). The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, Volume III, The Translations. London: Stump Cross Books.
  • (1991). "The Offstage Mob: Shakespeare's Proletariat", in Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanley Wells (eds). Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions. Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 54–75.
  • (1991). The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause. London: Hamish Hamilton.
  • (1994). "Macbeth: Sin and Action of Grace", in J. Wain (ed.). Shakespeare: Macbeth. London: Macmillan, pp. 263–270.
  • (1995). Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet. Viking.
  • (1997) with Susan Hastings (eds). The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton. London: Stump Cross Books.
  • (1999). The Whole Woman. London: Doubleday.
  • (2000). John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. London: Northcote House Publishers.
  • (2001) (ed.). 101 Poems by 101 Women. London: Faber & Faber.
  • (2003). The Boy. London: Thames & Hudson.
  • (2003) (ed.). Poems for Gardeners. London: Virago.
  • (2004). Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood. London: Profile Books (first published 2003 in Quarterly Essay).
  • (2007). Shakespeare's Wife. London: Bloomsbury.
  • (2007). Stella Vine. Oxford: Modern Art Oxford.
  • (2008). "Shakespeare and the Marriage Contract", in Paul Raffield, Gary Watt (eds). Shakespeare and the Law. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 51–64.
  • (2008). On Rage. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
  • (2011) with Phil Willmott. Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes. Samuel French Limited.
  • (2013). White Beech: The Rainforest Years. London: Bloomsbury.
  • (2018). On Rape. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Template:Div col end

Sources

Notes

Template:Notelist

References

  1. Magarey 2010, pp. 402–403; Medoff 2010, p. 263; Standish 2014, p. 263; Francis & Henningham 2017. For the date of birth, Wallace 1999, p. 3.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Winant 2015.
  3. Saracoglu, Melody (12 May 2014). "Melody Saracoglu on Germaine Greer: One Woman Against the World", New Statesman.
  4. Germaine Greer, "All About Women" (2015): "I've always been a liberation feminist. I'm not an equality feminist. I think that's a profoundly conservative aim, and it wouldn't change anything. It would just mean that women were implicated."
  5. Germaine Greer (The Whole Woman, 1999): "In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. The Female Eunuch was one feminist text that did not argue for equality."
  6. 6.0 6.1 "Doctor who refuses to be type-cast", The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1969, p. 19.
  7. Kleinhenz 2018, p. 137; also see Packer 1984, p. 98; Wallace 1999, p. 141.
  8. "Goodbye love", The Guardian, 28 September 1970, p. 9.
    Shooting down The Female Eunuch, The Sunday Times, 10 October 2010.
    .
  9. Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 136–137
  10. Germaine Greer on Marriage, Children And Society, The Late Late Show, RTÉ, 24 October 1986.
  11. Template:Cite magazine
  12. Lake 2016, p. 10; The first Women's Liberation Movement Conference, Woman's Hour, BBC, 25 February 2010.
  13. Template:Cite magazine
  14. Poirot 2004, pp. 204–205; Mosmann 2016, p. 84; Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 166–167.
  15. "Women who came out in the cold", The Observer, 7 March 1971, p. 1.
    Women's Liberation Movement march, 1971 – in pictures, The Guardian, 3 March 2018.
    From the archive, 8 March 1971: Women march for liberation in London, The Guardian, 8 March 2013.
  16. 16.0 16.1 16.2 Weintraub, Judith. Germaine Greer – Opinions That May Shock the Faithful, March 22, 1971.
  17. Books of the Times, The New York Times, 20 April 1971.
    The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, The New York Times, 25 April 1971.
  18. Spongberg 1993, p. 407; for the Hotel Chelsea, Kleinhenz 2018, p. 169.
  19. 19.0 19.1 Hamilton 2016, p. 44.
  20. Russell, Marlowe (18 October 2011). "John Holmes obituary", The Guardian.
  21. "The Female Eunuch first draft", University Library, The University of Melbourne. This quote is the first draft's opening line.
  22. Template:YouTube, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Sydney Opera House
  23. Template:YouTube, BBC, 9 June 2018
  24. Greer 2001, pp. 279, 281–282; also see Greer 1999, p. 359.
  25. 25.0 25.1 Spongberg 1993, p. 407.
  26. Smith 2012, p. 309; Kleinhenz 2018, pp. 171–172.
  27. Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:29:54
  28. Garner, Clare. Fellows divided over don who breached last bastion, The Independent, 25 June 1997.
  29. Morris, Steven. Germaine Greer gives university lecture despite campaign to silence her, 18 November 2015.
  30. Germaine Greer: Transgender women are 'not women' (24 October 2015).
  31. De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer, 24 October 2015.
  32. Germaine Greer and the scourge of 'no-platforming', ABC News, 27 October 2015.
  33. We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals, The Observer, 14 February 2015.
  34. 34.0 34.1 34.2 Greer, Germaine. "Call rape by another name", 6 March 1995, p. 20.
  35. Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018, at 00:13:00
  36. Template:YouTube, The Wright Stuff, Channel 5, UK, 6 April 2018, at 2m49s
  37. Template:Cite AV media How to:Academy and The New York Times.
  38. Greer, Germaine (2018). On Rape. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 978-0522874303. 
  39. Template:Cite AV media
  40. Miller, Nick. Germaine Greer challenges #MeToo campaign, 21 January 2018.
  41. Template:YouTube, Channel 4 News, 23 May 2018
  42. Manfred Erhardt, Germaine Greer, Golda Koschitzky, Francesca Valente to Receive Hon. Docs. .... York University (1 November 1999).
  43. Roll out the honours, The Age, 13 June 2005.
  44. Germaine Greer speaks to University of Sydney graduates. The University of Sydney (4 November 2005).; Francis & Henningham 2017.
  45. Germaine Greer - ARU (en).
  46. Germaine Greer. National Portrait Gallery, London.
  47. Australian National Living Treasure. University of Queensland.
  48. Feminists feature on Aussie legends stamps, ABC News (Australia), 19 January 2011.
  49. "Margaret Thatcher tops Woman's Hour Power List", BBC News, 14 December 2016.
  50. Reading Germaine: three generations respond to On Rape, 9 September 2018.
  51. 51.0 51.1 Ditum, Sarah. Germaine Greer has always refused to be 'nice' – if only there were more of her, New Statesman, 6 June 2018.
  52. Greer given enough rope, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 2004.
  53. 53.0 53.1 'You sanctimonious philistine' – Rushdie v Greer, the sequel, The Guardian, 29 July 2006.
  54. "World Statement, International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers", The Observer, 5 March 1989, p. 4.
  55. "Middle-aged feminist rage shocks and amuses", The Observer, 21 May 1995, p. 12.
  56. Funny, unkind, provocative: please don't make me have an opinion on Germaine Greer, New Statesman, 7 November 2018.
  57. Oz outrage at Germaine Greer's attack on 'cultural wasteland', The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2004. Template:Cbignore
  58. Greer walks out of 'bullying' Big Brother, The Guardian, 12 January 2005.
  59. Greer, Germaine. Filth!, 16 January 2005.
  60. Lyall, Sarah. Germaine Greer's Orwellian Ordeal on 'Big Brother', 20 January 2005.
  61. Why I said yes to Big Brother's shilling, The Daily Telegraph, 12 January 2005. Template:Cbignore
  62. Greer draws anger over Irwin comments, The Age, 6 September 2006.
  63. Greer, Germaine. That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin, The Guardian, 5 September 2006.
  64. Template:YouTube, Q&A, 2012
  65. Haussegger, Virginia (2022-06-18). The incredible women reshaping our nation (en-AU).
  66. Females to the fore: The women at this year's Canberra Writers Festival (en-AU) (2022-08-05).
  67. The Australian - Germaine Greer's life as an aged-care 'inmate' (1 July 2022).
  68. "An introduction to the Germaine Greer collection at the University of Melbourne Archives". University of Melbourne.
  69. "The Germaine Greer Collection", University of Melbourne.
  70. Gulliver, Penny (23 March 2017). "Friday essay: reading Germaine Greer’s mail", The Conversation.
  71. University to house Germaine Greer archive. University of Melbourne (28 October 2013).

Works cited

Websites and news articles are listed in the References section only.

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  • (1998) Even the Stars Look Lonesome. New York: Bantam Books. 
  • (2001) “Why the Female Eunuch?”, The Female Eunuch. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1–7. 
  • (2011) F 'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls. New York: Da Capo Press. 
  • (2016) Writing Feminist Lives: The Biographical Battles over Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • (1998) Australian Feminism: a companion. Melbourne and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • (1996) Sex And Anarchy: The Life And Death of the Sydney Push. Viking. 
  • (Winter–Spring 1972) "Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer". The Massachusetts Review 13 (1/2): 275–279.
  • (2010) Hippie Hippie Shake. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. 
  • (1984) No Return Ticket. Angus & Robertson. ISBN 9780207150289. 
  • (1999) Thatcher's Theatre: British Theatre and Drama in the Eighties. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 
  • (Summer 2004) "Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse: Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, and Feminism's Second Wave". Women's Studies in Communication 27 (2): 204–235. DOI:10.1080/07491409.2004.10162473. Research Blogging.
  • (2012) A Concise History of New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  • (1993) "If She's So Great, How Come So Many Pigs Dig Her? Germaine Greer and the malestream press". Women's History Review 2 (3): (407–419), 407. DOI:10.1080/09612029300200036. Research Blogging.
  • (2014) “Greer, Germaine (1939–)”, The Encyclopedia of Women & Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Melbourne: Australian Women's Archives Project. 
  • (2012) “Behind the Lines: Ironing in the Soul”, Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism. London: Guardian Books. 
  • Wallace, Christine (1999). Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. London: Faber and Faber. 
  • (Spring 2015) "The Meaningful Disappearance of Germaine Greer". Cabinet (57).
  • (2010) Ungrateful Daughters: Third Wave Feminist Writings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 
  • (January–February 2009) "Review: The Second-Best Bed and Other Conundrums". The Women's Review of Books 26 (1): 29–30.

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External links

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