The International Women's Film Festival ( IWFF ) was a one-off film festival focusing on women's issues and films made by women, run in several capital cities of Australia in 1975.
109-974: During the early 1970s, there was a growing feminist movement in Australia , and women's cinema gained prominence. The role of women's films was discussed at the Women's Liberation Conference in Melbourne in 1970. Groups such as the Sydney Women's Film Group (SWFG) and Reel Women in Melbourne were established. A number of filmmakers, including Jeni Thornley , Sarah Gibson , Susan Lambert, Martha Ansara , Margot Nash , and Megan McMurchy collaborated and explored ideas related to women by creating stories in film. Owing to poor distribution by commercial distributors, feminist films were shown by film societies, educational institutions, community groups and film festivals across Australia and
218-491: 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. Also in May, she was featured in Vogue magazine, photographed by Lord Snowdon , on the floor in knee-length boots and wearing
327-780: A Melbourne-based newspaper columnist claimed in a 2004 column that 'feminism had failed us'. Virginia Haussegger has also criticised feminism for promising she 'could have it all'. Miranda Devine consistently argued that feminism has been a mistake and failed to liberate. In 2016, feminist and sociologist Eva Cox writing in The Conversation said that feminism has failed and needs a radical rethink using, "feminist perspectives to set social goals that are sustainable, and create social resilience". Holly Lawford-Smith , feminist and Lecturer in Political Philosophy wrote 'Academic mobbing needs to be challenged, both inside and outside
436-708: A Whore". In parallel with her involvement in Suck , Greer told Robert Greenfield of Rolling Stone in January 1971 that she was an admirer of the Redstockings , a radical feminist group founded in New York in January 1969 by Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone . Criticised by feminists for her involvement with Suck , in May 1971 she told an interviewer for Screw : There's a big cleft between sexual liberation and women's liberation. My sisters get mad at me when I say gay liberation
545-686: A bestseller, but it was hotly debated both in Australia and the United States by some critics and feminists as an example of victim blaming . Janet Malcolm , writing for the New Yorker in a 1997 review of The First Stone , says that Garner "closes ranks with the abuser". Australia's first woman Premier was Carmen Lawrence , becoming Premier of Western Australia in 1990. The short-lived Australian Women's Party sought to ensure equal representation of men and women at all levels of government. Quentin Bryce
654-459: A book for the 50th anniversary of women (or a portion of them) being given the vote in the UK in 1918. 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. 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
763-564: A boy. Her father called himself Eric Reginald ("Reg") Greer; he told her he had been born in South Africa, but she learned after his death that he was born Robert Hamilton King in Launceston, Tasmania . She also learned he was christened Robert Henry Eric Ernest Hambert. He and her mother, Margaret ("Peggy") May Lafrank, had married in March 1937; Reg converted to Catholicism before the wedding. Peggy
872-574: A convent school run by the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; a school report called her "a bit of a mad-cap and somewhat erratic in her studies and in her personal responses". Greer described her childhood as a "long remembered boredom", and has said it was her Catholic school that introduced her to art and music. That year, artwork by her was included in the under-14 section of
981-631: A feminist arts magazine founded by Spunner in 1976. The Melbourne Women in Film Festival (MWIFF), launched in 2017, "inherited the aims and intentions of the original 1975 International Women’s Film Festival". The inaugural event included a keynote panel on which several of the original organisers of the IWFF were panellists, and ran a shorts program screening some of the rare films from the IWFF. Feminism in Australia#1970 onwards Australia has
1090-529: A formal dinner in Newnham. The principal had asked for silence for speeches. "As a hush descended, one person continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice": At the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining with passion that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long as we were required to cram our breasts into bras constructed like mini- Vesuviuses , two stitched, white, cantilevered cones which bore no resemblance to
1199-611: A friend, someone she knew from her time with the Sydney Push and to whom she later dedicated The Female Eunuch : "Anyone who wants group sex in New York and likes fat girls, contact Lillian Roxon ." During a 1970 Amsterdam film festival organized by Suck , the judging panel, which included Greer, gave first prize to Bodil Joensen for a film in which a woman has sex with animals. Suck reproduced one interview with Greer (first published in Screw , another pornographic magazine), entitled "I Am
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#17330854127061308-406: A homemaker, which Greer suggests leads to a repression. The predominant critical theory of feminism in Australia is that male dominance of business, politics , law and the media has resulted in gender inequality . Feminism research has expanded the scope of political science in Australia to include issues related to femininity , motherhood and violence against women . Joanna Murray-Smith ,
1417-413: A housewife, she had tatted lengths of batik, draped bolts of brocade, swathed silk, swagged satin, niched, ruffed, hemmed and hawed. There were oriental carpets and occidental screens, ornamental plants and incidental music. The effect was stunning. ... Romaine, however, once she had got her life of luxury up and running, did not luxuriate. She had a typewriter the size of a printing press. Instantly she
1526-460: A jail sentence, she offered to pay a fine instead, then left the country without paying it. In August 1973 Greer debated William F. Buckley Jr. at the Cambridge Union on the motion "This House Supports the Women's Liberation Movement". "Nothing I said", Buckley wrote in 1989, "and memory reproaches me for having performed miserably, made any impression or any dent in the argument. She carried
1635-544: A long-standing association with the protection and creation of women's rights. Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote (after New Zealand in 1893) and the first to give women the right to be elected to a national parliament. The Australian state of South Australia , then a British colony, was the first parliament in the world to grant some women full suffrage rights. Australia has since had multiple notable women serving in public office as well as other fields. In Australia, European women (with
1744-424: 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
1853-644: A member of Playboy ' s editorial board, who flew from the United States to Italy to conduct the interview in her home. Playboy published the article in January 1972: "Germaine Greer – a Candid Conversation with the Ballsy Author of The Female Eunuch ". It was during this interview that she first discussed publicly that she had been raped in her second year at the University of Melbourne. Busy with her journalism and publicity tours, she resigned her teaching position at Warwick that year. In March 1972, she
1962-514: A natural ability to project her voice". Other members of the Footlights when she was there included Tim Brooke-Taylor , John Cleese , Peter Cook and David Frost . Greer lived for a time in the room next to Clive James at Friar House on Bene't Street , opposite The Eagle . Referring to her as "Romaine Rand", James described her room in his memoir of Cambridge, May Week Was In June (1991): Drawing on her incongruous but irrepressible skills as
2071-476: A new and vital cast. ... The new emphasis is different. Then genteel middle-class ladies clamoured for reform, now ungenteel middle-class women are calling for revolution. 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?" Two of
2180-671: 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?" 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". In February 1970, she published an article in Oz , "The Slag-Heap Erupts", which gave
2289-437: A profile reminiscent of Garbo ". Her publishers called her "the most lovable creature to come out of Australia since the koala bear". A Paladin paperback followed, with cover art by British artist John Holmes, influenced by René Magritte , showing a female torso as a suit hanging from a rail, a handle on each hip. Clive Hamilton regarded it as "perhaps the most memorable and unnerving book cover ever created". Likening
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#17330854127062398-483: 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 . 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
2507-478: 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. Launched at a party attended by editors from Oz , The Female Eunuch was published in the UK by MacGibbon & Kee on 12 October 1970, dedicated to Lillian Roxon and four other women. The first print run of 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 thousand copies sold out on
2616-578: A ring from a pawn shop. Du Feu had already been divorced and had two sons, aged 14 and 16, with his first wife. The relationship lasted only a few weeks. Apparently unfaithful to du Feu seven times in three weeks of marriage, Greer wrote that she had spent their wedding night in an armchair, because her husband, drunk, would not allow her in bed. Eventually, during a party near Ladbroke Grove , "'[h]e turned to me and sneered (drunk as usual): 'I could have any woman in this room.' 'Except me,' I said, and walked away for ever.'" In addition to teaching, Greer
2725-517: 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. "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." The book argues that "[w]omen have very little idea of how much men hate them", while "[m]en do not themselves know
2834-423: 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." Several British feminists, including Angela Carter , Sheila Rowbotham and Michelene Wandor , responded angrily. Wandor wrote
2943-507: A woman entailed. 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
3052-649: A women-only college. She had been encouraged to move from Sydney by Sam Goldberg , a Leavisite , who had been Challis Chair of English Literature at Sydney since 1963. Initially joining a BA course at Cambridge—her scholarship would have allowed her to complete it in two years—Greer managed to switch after the first term ("by force of argument", according to Clive James ) to the PhD programme to study Shakespeare , supervised by Anne Barton (Shakespearean scholar) , then known as Anne Righter. She said she switched because she "realized they were not going to teach [her] anything". It
3161-648: Is an Australian writer and feminist , regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge , and in the United States at the University of Tulsa . Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since
3270-654: Is depicted on the back of the Australian fifty-dollar note . In August 1943, Enid Lyons and Dorothy Tangney became the first two women to elected to the federal parliament . Between the World Wars, the Country Women's Association was founded in New South Wales and Queensland , spreading throughout the rest of Australia over the following 14 years. An overarching, national group was formed in 1945. The popular magazine,
3379-475: Is part of our whole movement, and we've got to combine them. They want me to wear pants and be unavailable, and carry a jimmy to bash people over the head with if they feel my ass in the street. They get mad at me for calling myself superwhore, supergroupie, and all that stuff. They think I'm cheapening myself, I'm allowing people to laugh at me, when the whole point is that if my body is sacred and mine to dispose of, then I don't have to build things around it like it
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3488-538: The Women's Weekly , created for a female market by Frank Packer , was also founded during this period. However, from its first edition in 1933, the magazine was edited by men until Ita Buttrose was appointed in 1975. During World War II, Australia, like other Allied countries, encouraged the introduction of women into the workforce, replacing many male workers who had joined the military e.g. Australian Women's Land Army . The second-wave of Feminism in Australia began during
3597-763: The Royal Australian Air Force , he worked on ciphers for the British Royal Air Force in Egypt and Malta . Greer attended St Columba's Catholic Primary School in Elwood from February 1943—the family was by then living at 57 Ormond Road, Elwood—followed by Sacred Heart Parish School, Sandringham , and Holy Redeemer School, Ripponlea . In 1952 Greer won a scholarship to Star of the Sea College in Gardenvale ,
3706-468: The Royal National Theatre , as guests of Michael White , the impresario. The group had dinner one evening with Princess Margaret , Lord Snowdon and Karim Aga Khan . Greer had arrived with little luggage, and before dinner found her hair had been blown about by the wind on the ferry. Princess Margaret sat Greer down at her dressing table and spent five minutes brushing out her hair. The point of
3815-532: The Sydney Push and the anarchist Sydney Libertarians. "[T]hese people talked about truth and only truth", she said, "insisting that most of what we were exposed to during the day was ideology, which was a synonym for lies—or bullshit, as they called it." They would meet in a back room of the Royal George Hotel on Sussex Street . Clive James was involved with the group at the time. One of Greer's biographers, Christine Wallace , wrote that Greer "walked into
3924-568: 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 ." Betty Friedan , Sargent Shriver , Susan Sontag and Stephen Spender sat in
4033-606: The University of Warwick in Coventry, living at first in a rented bedsit in Leamington Spa with two cats and 300 tadpoles. In 1968 she was married for the first and only time, a marriage that ended in divorce in 1973. She met Paul du Feu , a King's College London English graduate who was working as a builder, outside a pub in Portobello Road , London, and after a brief courtship they married at Paddington Register Office, using
4142-563: The Whitlam Government. It was not until 1993 that the second woman was appointed to the court, Mitchell's former student, Margaret Nyland. As the feminist movement led to the organisation of British, Canadian and American feminists in the late 1960s, so too did Australian women move to address oppressive social conditions. The social base of the Australian feminist movement was boosted by the growing segment of women employed as juniors in
4251-632: The Women's Suffrage League , which led to the granting of suffrage rights to women in South Australia. In the early 1900s the Australian Labor Party displayed reluctance toward women and their entrance to the parliament. During World War I, women were introduced into the workforce at higher rates than previous years, although often in fields already populated by women. Edith Cowan , the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament in 1920,
4360-399: The 1960s with the confrontation of legal and social double standards as well as workplace discrimination and sexual harassment. Equally, feminists worldwide began a push for female sexual freedom. Germaine Greer rose to international prominence during the later part of this period, with the publication and widespread adoption of, her ideas in her book, The Female Eunuch in 1970. At the time of
4469-502: The 1970s. Feminist authors have been credited with stimulating the movement at the time. By the early 1970s the feminist movement in Australia was divided. On one side was the Women's Liberation Movement which leaned left and believed men did not have a role in women's liberation. The other side was represented by the Women's Electoral Lobby which was considered more mainstream and sought to engage change within existing structures. The first Australian state to deal with marital rape
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4578-452: The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War . In the summer of 1971, Greer moved to Cortona , Tuscany , where she rented Il Palazzone , a cottage near the town, then bought a house, Pianelli . She told Richard Neville that she had to spend time away from England because of its tax laws . She spent part of that summer in Porto Cervo , a seaside resort, with Kenneth Tynan , artistic director of
4687-516: 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. 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
4796-608: The Children's Art Exhibition at Tye's Gallery , opened by Archbishop Mannix . Greer achieved the second highest exam results in the state. A year after leaving school, Greer left the Catholic faith, having found the nuns' arguments for the existence of God unconvincing. She left home when she was 18. She had a difficult relationship with her mother who, according to Greer, probably had Asperger syndrome . In 2012 she said that her brother might have forgiven her for "abandoning" them, but she
4905-565: The International Women's Film Festival. From September 1974, groups in each state worked towards creating a film festival, and in January and February 1975, two women from the coordinating group went to Europe and America to negotiate for films that they wanted to show. The International Women's Film Festival, which was the first of its kind in Australia, ran from August to October in 1975, in every state capital city, and Canberra ( Australian Capital Territory ). In Melbourne and Sydney
5014-675: The Jewish community. She learned Yiddish , joined a Jewish theatre group, and dated Jewish men. In addition to English, Greer had learnt three European languages by the age of 12. The family lived in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood , at first in a rented flat in Docker Street, near the beach, then in another rented flat on the Esplanade. In January 1942 Greer's father joined the Second Australian Imperial Force ; after training with
5123-517: The Melbourne event, which screened at the historic Palais Theatre . The festival inspired women filmmakers around the country and empowered activists, helped build momentum for the Australian Women's Liberation Movement , and was the first event that demonstrated that women audiences existed as a distinct group. It also enabled networking for women in various art, theatre and film groups, who later collaborated. Out of these meetings arose LIP ,
5232-485: The Royal George Hotel, into the throng talking themselves hoarse in a room stinking of stale beer and thick with cigarette smoke, and set out to follow the Push way of life, 'an intolerably difficult discipline which I forced myself to learn'". Greer already thought of herself as an anarchist without knowing why she was drawn to it; through the Push, she became familiar with anarchist literature. She had significant relationships in
5341-522: The United States on 16 April 1971. 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. A New York Times book review described her as "[s]ix feet tall, restlessly attractive, with blue-gray eyes and
5450-626: The University of Melbourne features her as a housewife bathing in milk delivered by Everett the milkman. Greer began writing columns as "Dr. G" for Oz magazine, owned by Richard Neville , whom she had met at a party in Sydney. The Australian Oz had been shut down in 1963 after three months and the editors convicted of obscenity, later overturned. Neville and his co-editor, Martin Sharp, moved to London and set up Oz there. When Neville met Greer again, he suggested she write for it, which led to her article in
5559-399: The air while another rapes her anally". One of Greer's biographers, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, wrote that almost nothing was off limits for Suck , including descriptions of child abuse, incest and bestiality. Greer's column, "Sucky Fucky" by "Earth Rose", included advice to women about how to look after their genitals and how they ought to taste their vaginal secretions. She published the name of
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#17330854127065668-474: 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 . Several feminists declined to attend, including Ti-Grace Atkinson , Kate Millett , Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem . Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the event in the documentary Town Bloody Hall (1979). Wearing
5777-599: The bedsit in The Pheasantry, a room just under Martin Sharp 's; accommodation there was by invitation only. 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. Crawford had suggested that Greer write
5886-649: The book "#1: the ultimate word on sexual freedom". Demand was such when it was first published that it had to be reprinted monthly, and it has never been out of print. 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. 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. In August Kate Millett 's Sexual Politics
5995-400: 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 criticised Greer for her attitude toward women: 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
6104-501: The book's publication, Greer was considered a radical feminist , with her ideas and claims at times described as "polemic". During this period Aboriginal Women's rights also became more prominent, with Fay Gale earning her Ph.D from the University of Adelaide in 1960. Her thesis was titled "A Study of Assimilation: Part Aborigines in South Australia". Other notable female Indigenous Australians during this period include Lyndall Ryan and Aileen Moreton-Robinson . This contributed to
6213-434: 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
6322-622: The campus, aware that she was much talked about", according to the journalist Peter Blazey , a contemporary at Melbourne. During her first year she had some kind of breakdown as a result of depression and was briefly treated in hospital. She told Playboy magazine, in an interview published in 1972, that she had been raped during her second year at Melbourne, an experience she described in detail in The Guardian in March 1995. Just before she graduated from Melbourne in 1959 with an upper second, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved with
6431-566: 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
6540-458: The depth of their hatred." 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 ..." The American feminist Betty Friedan , author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), wants for women "equality of opportunity within
6649-732: The editorial board had been to try to steer Suck away from exploitative, sadistic pornography. 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 . When she first moved to London, she had stayed in John Peel 's spare room before being invited to take
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#17330854127066758-570: The female anatomy. The willingly suffered discomfort of the Sixties bra, she opined vigorously, was a hideous symbol of male oppression. As soon as she arrived, Greer auditioned (with Clive James , whom she knew from the Sydney Push ) for the student acting company, the Footlights , in its club room in Falcon Yard above a Mac Fisheries shop. They performed a sketch in which he was Noël Coward and she
6867-419: 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". Greer was born in Melbourne to a Catholic family, the elder of two girls followed by
6976-399: The festivals ran for nine days (with an audience of around 56,000), and in the other states they spanned two to three days. The festival was devoted to films by and for women, and was tied to the International Women's Year movement. Jeni Thornley , Margot Oliver, Pat Longmore and Sue Johnston were all part of the original organising group in Sydney, while Suzanne Spunner was co-ordinator of
7085-461: The first day. 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. According to Greer, McGraw-Hill paid $ 29,000 for the American rights and Bantam $ 135,000 for the paperback. The Bantam edition called Greer the "Saucy feminist that even men like", quoting Life magazine, and
7194-447: The first edition in 1967, "In Bed with the English". Keith Morris photographed her ("Dr G, the only groupie with a PhD in captivity") for issue 19 in early 1969; the black-and-white images include one of her posing for the cover with Vivian Stanshall and another in which she pretends to play the guitar. The July 1970 edition, OZ 29 , featured "Germaine Greer knits private parts", an article from Oz ' s Needlework Correspondent on
7303-543: The first sentence read: "So far the female liberation movement is tiny, privileged and overrated"): This book is part of the second feminist wave. The old suffragettes , 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
7412-573: The group with Harry Hooton and Roelof Smilde, both prominent members. She shared an apartment with Smilde on Glebe Point Road , but the relationship did not last; according to Wallace, the Push ideology of " free love " involved the rejection of possessiveness and jealousy, which naturally worked in the men's favour. When the relationship with Smilde ended, Greer enrolled at the University of Sydney to study Byron , where, Clive James wrote, she became "famous for her brilliantly foul tongue". One of her friends there, Arthur Dignam , said that she "was
7521-402: The hand-knitted Keep it Warm Cock Sock, "a snug corner for a chilly prick". As "Rose Blight", she also wrote a gardening column for Private Eye . In 1969 Greer was co-founder of an Amsterdam-based pornography magazine, Suck: The First European Sex Paper (1969–1974), along with Bill Daley, Jim Haynes , William Levy , Heathcote Williams and Jean Shrimpton , the stated purpose of which
7630-518: The house overwhelmingly." Greer, then 37, had an affair in 1976 with the novelist Martin Amis , then 26, which was discussed publicly in 2015 after she sold her archives to the University of Melbourne. In them Margaret Simons discovered a 30,000-word letter to Amis which Greer had begun writing on 1 March 1976 while in the British Airways Monarch lounge at Heathrow Airport, and continued during
7739-498: The institution'. Australia has and has had several notable feminist authors, academics and activists whose work has been recognised internationally. Perhaps most widely recognised is Germaine Greer, whose book The Female Eunuch was held in high acclaim after its publication. The book's content was considered highly radical at the time of its publication in 1970, with Greer recommending female practices like tasting their own menstrual blood . From June 2010 to June 2013, Australia
7848-399: The members of the Women's movement she mentions. ... 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. "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
7957-748: The notable exception of Indigenous women and most women not of European descent) were granted the right to vote and to be elected at federal elections in 1902. Australia has also been home to several prominent feminist activists and writers, including Germaine Greer , author of The Female Eunuch ; Julia Gillard , former prime minister; Vida Goldstein , suffragist; and Edith Cowan , the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament. Feminist action seeking equal opportunity in employment has resulted in partially successful legislation, but more changes are required. Laws against sex discrimination exist and women's units in government departments have been established. Australian feminists have fought for and won
8066-549: The only woman we had met at that stage who could confidently, easily and amusingly put men down". She became involved in acting at Sydney and played Mother Courage in Mother Courage and Her Children in August 1963. That year she was awarded a first-class MA for a thesis entitled "The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode", and took up an appointment at Sydney as senior tutor in English, with an office next door to Stephen Knight in
8175-481: The oppression. 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." 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. The first paragraph stakes out the book's place in feminist historiography (in an earlier draft,
8284-457: 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." 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
8393-406: The publication of Sisterhood Is Powerful , edited by Robin Morgan , and Shulamith Firestone 's The Dialectic of Sex . 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. By that month The Female Eunuch had been translated into eight languages and had nearly sold out its second printing. McGraw-Hill published it in
8502-400: The push for basic women's rights like granting of full suffrage , financial independence from husbands, access to abortions, and equal pay. Other high-profile Australian feminists include Eva Cox and Jocelynne Scutt . The first examples of Australian feminism occurred during the mid 1800s to 1900. The early movement mostly concerned the applications of basic human rights to women, including
8611-457: The relationship so Greer changed her plans. Rising before dawn, she would wash herself at a well, drink black coffee and start typing. She was awarded her PhD in May 1968 for a thesis entitled The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies . Her family did not fly over for the ceremony. "I had worked all my life for love, done my best to please everybody, kept going till I reached
8720-399: The right to federally funded child care and women's refuges . The success gained by feminists entering the Australian public service and changing policy led to the descriptive term 'femocrats'. Germaine Greer's 1970 novel The Female Eunuch became a global bestseller and a highly influential text in the feminist movement. It discusses and challenges the role of Australian housewives as
8829-457: The right to vote, the right to stand for parliamentary election, and protection from sexual exploitation. Mary Lee , an Australian-Irish woman, was influential in garnering support for many women's rights movements in Australia. From 1883 onwards, Lee was involved in the raising of the Age of Consent for girls in Australia from 13 to 16, the founding of The Working Women's Trades Union , and co-founded
8938-533: The rise in Indigenous feminism in Australia. Dame Roma Mitchell was made the first female Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1965, at the recommendation of Don Dunstan , South Australia's 38th Attorney-General. She was still the only female judge in South Australia when she retired 18 years later in 1983 although Justices Elizabeth Evatt and Mary Gaudron had been appointed to federal courts by
9047-765: The same paisley coat. (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.) 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". She also appeared on The Dick Cavett Show , and on 14 and 15 June guest-presented two episodes, discussing birth control, abortion and rape. Greer
9156-458: The script was re-worked and produced by Phil Willmott as Germaine Greer's Lysistrata: The Sex Strike . Greer has described the freedom she felt at her home in Italy, which had no electricity when she first moved there. While living in Italy, Greer interviewed Primo Levi , Luciano Pavarotti and her friend and lover Federico Fellini . In or around July 1971 Greer was interviewed by Nat Lehrman,
9265-614: The state of New South Wales in 1981, followed by all other states from 1985 to 1992. Prominent writer Helen Garner attracted widespread controversy for her 1995 non-fiction reportage The First Stone , which details the fallout from a sexual harassment scandal aimed at a well-respected master at the University of Melbourne . Garner, who could not access the two female complainants due to their refusal to speak to her, used her own personal experiences to highlight feminism, female and male sexuality, sexual harassment, as well as abuse of power and fraternalism in universities. The book became
9374-440: The status quo, free admission to the world of the ulcer and the coronary", she argued. 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). Reviewing
9483-450: The top, looked about and found I was all alone." The Female Eunuch relies extensively on Greer's Shakespearean scholarship, particularly when discussing the history of marriage and courtship. In 1986 Oxford University Press published her book Shakespeare as part of its Past Masters series , and in 2007 Bloomsbury published her study of Anne Hathaway , Shakespeare's Wife . From 1968 to 1972, Greer worked as an assistant lecturer at
9592-403: 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". The book
9701-585: The university's Carslaw Building. "She was undoubtedly an excellent teacher", he said. "And one of the best lecturers—one of the few who could command the Wallace Lecture Theatre, with its 600 students. She had a kind of histrionic quality which was quite remarkable, added to her real scholarship." The MA won Greer a Commonwealth Scholarship , with which she funded further studies at the University of Cambridge , arriving in October 1964 at Newnham College ,
9810-482: The visit for Greer was to discuss Tynan's commission of a translation of Aristophanes 's Lysistrata . First performed in 411 BCE, the play explores an attempt by women to force the end of the Peloponnesian War by going on sex strike . The project was not produced; Greer and Tynan fell out during the trip, and Greer left Porto Cervo in tears. Her adaptation of the play found belated appreciation in 1999, when
9919-638: The world. In 1974, ahead of International Women's Year in 1975, a group of around 20 women submitted a proposal to the Film and Television board of the Australia Council for the Arts , providing a list of reasons as to why a women's film festival was necessary. These included: As a protest at the low number of women filmmakers featured in the Sydney Film Festival , the Sydney Women's Film Group (SWFG) organises
10028-686: Was Gertrude Lawrence . Joining on the same day as James and Russell Davies , Greer was one of the first women to be admitted as a full member, along with Sheila Buhr and Hilary Walston. The Cambridge News carried a news item about it in November 1964, referring to the women as "three girls". Greer's response to being accepted was reportedly: "This place is jumping with freckle-punchers. You can have it on your own." She did take part in its 1965 revue, My Girl Herbert , alongside Eric Idle (the Footlights president), John Cameron , Christie Davies and John Grillo . A critic noticed "an Australian girl who had
10137-421: Was Muriel Bradbrook , Cambridge's first female Professor of English, who persuaded Greer to study Shakespeare; Bradbrook had supervised Barton's PhD. Cambridge was a difficult environment for women. As Christine Wallace notes, one Newnham student described her husband receiving a dinner invitation in 1966 from Christ's College that allowed "Wives in for sherry only". Lisa Jardine first encountered Greer at
10246-520: Was South Australia , under the progressive initiatives of Premier Don Dunstan , which in 1976 partially removed the exemption. Section 73 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act Amendment Act 1976 (SA) read: "No person shall, by reason only of the fact that he is married to some other person, be presumed to have consented to sexual intercourse with that other person". Criminalization of marital rape in Australia began with
10355-468: Was a milliner and Reg a newspaper-advertising salesman. Despite her Catholic upbringing and her father's open antisemitism , Greer became convinced that her father was secretly of Jewish heritage. She believed her grandmother had been a Jewish woman named Rachel Weiss, but admits that she probably made this up out of an "intense longing to be Jewish." Despite not knowing whether she had any Jewish ancestry, Greer "felt Jewish" and began to involve herself in
10464-542: Was also discussed internationally across media, with the feminist blog , Jezebel , calling Gillard " one badass motherfucker ". Other world leaders were also said to have offered praise in public and private conversations with Gillard. Former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has frequently been accused of sexism and misogyny . In David Marr 's article in the Australian "Quarterly Essay", titled Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott , Marr describes several alleged incidents occurring of which Abbott committed or
10573-505: Was arrested in New Zealand for saying "bullshit" and "fuck" in a speech during a tour, which she had done deliberately because Tim Shadbolt (who would later be elected mayor of Invercargill in 1993) had recently been arrested for the same thing. Six hundred people gathered outside the court, throwing jelly beans and eggs at the police. After defending herself, she was "acquitted on 'bullshit' but convicted for 'fuck'", Kleinhenz writes. Given
10682-466: Was at it, ten hours a day. Through the lath-and-plaster wall I could hear her attacking the typewriter as if she had a contract, with penalty clauses, for testing it to destruction. Greer, who speaks fluent Italian, finished her PhD in Calabria , Italy, where she stayed for three months in a village with no running water and no electricity. The trip had begun as a visit with a boyfriend, Emilio, but he ended
10791-737: Was in a relationship at the time with Tony Gourvish, manager of the British rock band Family , one that began while she was writing The Female Eunuch . Kleinhenz writes that they lived together for a time, but Greer ended up feeling that he was exploiting her celebrity, a sense she developed increasingly with her friends, according to Kleinhenz. In June 1971 she became a columnist for the London Sunday Times . Later that year her journalism took her to Vietnam, where she wrote about " bargirls " made pregnant by American soldiers, and to Bangladesh, where she interviewed women raped by Pakistani soldiers during
10900-420: Was involved with, that were highly offensive and sexual in nature towards women. Australia has and has had a wide array of supporting groups and agencies that have been funded by governments, public donations, and members. These groups include: [REDACTED] Media related to Feminism in Australia at Wikimedia Commons Germaine Greer Germaine Greer ( / ɡ r ɪər / ; born 29 January 1939)
11009-608: Was led by its first female prime minister , Julia Gillard. Gillard is perhaps best known, internationally, for the Misogyny Speech delivered in the Australian Federal Parliament on 9 October 2012 to then Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott . In 2020, Gillard's speech was voted 'Most Unforgettable" moment in Australian television history by readers of The Guardian newspaper. Australia has had several feminist organisations during its history, many of which helped
11118-416: Was not so sure about her sister, "whom I love more than anyone else on earth". From 1956 Greer studied English and French language and literature at the University of Melbourne on a Teacher's College Scholarship, living at home for the first two years on an allowance of £8 a week. 1.8 metres (6 feet) tall by the age of 16, she was a striking figure. "Tall, loose-limbed and good-humoured, she strode around
11227-474: Was property that could be stolen. Greer parted company with Suck in 1972 when it published a naked photograph of her lying down with her legs over her shoulders and her face peering between her thighs. The photograph had been submitted on the understanding that nude photographs of all the editors would be published in a book about a film festival. She resigned, accusing the other editors of being "counter-revolutionary". Greer said later that her aim in joining
11336-464: Was published in New York; 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). September and October saw
11445-489: 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. According to Justyna Wlodarczyk, Greer emerged as "the third wave's favorite second-wave feminist". "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." The Female Eunuch explores how
11554-552: 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." 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". Much in demand, she embraced the celebrity life. On 30 April 1971, in "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at
11663-448: Was the first woman to hold the position of Governor-General of Australia between September 2008 and March 2014. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard gained international attention and praise in 2012 for an off-the-cuff speech in the Australian federal parliament directed at then Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. The speech, known as The Misogyny Speech has been uploaded to YouTube multiple times, with several thousand views each. The speech
11772-525: Was to create "a new pornography which would demystify male and female bodies". The first issue was reportedly so offensive that Special Branch raided its London office in the Arts Lab in Drury Lane and closed its postbox address. According to Beatrice Faust , Suck published "high misogynist SM content", including a cover illustration, for issue 7, of a man holding a "screaming woman with her legs in
11881-592: Was trying to make a name for herself in television. In 1967 she appeared in the BBC shows Good Old Nocker and Twice a Fortnight and had a starring role in a short film, Darling, Do You Love Me (1968), by Martin Sharp (the Australian artist and co-editor of Oz magazine) and Bob Whitaker. From 1968 to 1969 she featured in a Granada Television slapstick show, Nice Time , with Kenny Everett , Sandra Gough and Jonathan Routh . One set of outtakes found in Greer's archive at
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