Reflections on the Female Eunuch

This year is the fortieth anniversary of Germaine Greer’s seminal and very important book, The Female Eunuch. She argued, at its most basic, that men hate women and that because women don’t realise that men have this hatred, they learn to hate themselves.

Most famously, she gives the following example of female self-hatred. If you are unwilling to consume your own menstrual blood, if you think it’s gross or dirty, if you think doing so is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘wrong’, then that is a sign of discomfort towards your own femininity.

We are taught very early to behave like girls and all girls are feminised from quite early on. We are taught ‘normal’ feminine behaviour – wearing dresses, playing with dolls, gracefully accepting compliments about our beauty (rarely about our abilities). The biology surrounding childbirth forces us into a certain role in which we are forced to take on a whole host of gender related activities as well as feminine dispositions and ways of thinking.

Sexuality is particularly highlighted as something women have been divorced from. This is why women are ‘eunuchs’, they are taught not to have sexual desires of their own. Being monogamous, getting married, having children, and living in Greer’s condemned ordinary suburbia is meant to quelch any kind of self-determination. It also oppresses the imagination, and one’s ability to think beyond the menial and the utterly trivial.

A big problem with the way women lived, according to Greer, was that if a woman were to become a housewife, she would not make her own money. This would mean that she relied on her husband to give her money for the things she wanted. This creates an uneven power relationship. In order to get the means to own things, she has to be pleasant towards her husband. Maintaining his happiness is like a job in itself, as his happiness is a necessary gate to open in the pursuit of gaining resources. It becomes necessary to have sex, even if she doesn’t feel like it, necessary to make him dinner, raise his children, etc.

Needless to say, the book has caused much debate amongst feminist circles. I personally agree with Germaine Greer’s premise, that women are fundamentally repressed in many ways for no reason other than our biology. At the same time, I’m not by any means a second-wave feminist. I don’t think that all women have to be for the cause of feminism (though I would say that they ought to be), and I don’t think my decisions necessarily should (or even do) reflect on all of women-kind. There is additionally nothing inherently wrong with a suburban, monogamous life, if that’s what you want. My feelings are decidedly third-wave – feminism that ultimately comes down to choice. The key problem for me, as it was for Greer, is that choice becomes incredibly difficult when you’ve been indoctrinated into behaving and even thinking in certain ways in the first place. In fact, you could say that choice is an illusion for many women.

I was first exposed to this book when I was in year ten. I had always thought of myself as a ‘feminist’ from early on, I liked the idea of equality, though at a young age I never quite knew what that might entail. I knew, for example, that for my entire life it has been illegal to discriminate against women in hiring processes, that women are able to vote and own property, that it’s not okay to assume that a girl or woman is inherently weak or stupid by virtue of the fact that she is a girl or woman, I was always told that I could do anything. But, underneath my consciousness, I feel like I knew better, that somehow things weren’t equal, even though women are equal to men under Australian law.

I remember for a year 10 history essay I had to write an essay about John Macarthur. For those who don’t know, he is an important man in the Australian wool industry – he basically established it. At the same time, he was also a bit of a rogue. In the end, he was banished from Australian soil and had to go back to England. He left his wife in Australia to look after the sheep, and indeed, one of the most important farms that have ever existed in building the Australian wool industry and subsequently the Australian economy.

I remember the exact wording of my essay about John Macarthur’s life, ‘If John Macarthur was the father of the Australian wool industry, than his wife Elizabeth must have been the mother in that she did all the work.’

That feminist aside made my teacher prescribe me the Greer text. Although it was probably a little bit above my level at the time, it was formative for me as a feminist. To me, it highlighted this pervasive yet insipid gender imbalance that I had been noticing. It showed me how women are taught to not be themselves from a very young age, and moreover are actually taught to be disgusted by themselves, their body and their sexuality. It also taught me the fundamental importance of being economically independent, even though a high-paying job never particularly appealed to me.

This 40 year anniversary is for me a 6 year anniversary of actually trying to understand and pursue these issues of feminism and equality. While The Female Eunuch remains a controversial text, it’s also a firm reminder that, even after all this time, we have a long way to go.

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