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Ooh, Germaine, you are awful but we love you

There she goes again: this time taking Tony Blair to task for bothering Cherie in the bedroom. But, asks Yvonne Roberts, is Sister Soundbite barking up the wrong tree?

Sunday 18 August 2002 00:00 BST
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Men can't get enough of it, while women of a certain age endure it as a duty. Last week, these sexist, ageist, patronising stereotypes were served up not by a pale, male, chauvinist member of the establishment but by the woman dubbed the mother of modern feminism, Germaine Greer.

On consideration, who else would have the nerve?

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she referred to "the weird relationship" of Tony Blair and Cherie Booth QC, who recently suffered a miscarriage. "I want to say to him," Professor Greer continued, "leave her alone, for Christ's sake! She's 47 years old. She doesn't practise contraception because she is a Catholic. So stay off her!"

Professor Greer, of course, has never had cause to watch her mouth. She has always simultaneously infuriated, inflamed, influenced and inspired, never disguising her contempt for what she sees as a girl's capacity frequently to act as her own worst enemy. "She shimmers," said one critic accurately of Professor Greer's polemical powers, "between madness and terrifying sense."

Now, however, at 63, she has become Sister Sound Bite, with something to say at any time about absolutely everything. Does this hold the danger that, spread so thin, she will transform from libertarian terror to eccentric national treasure? And who cares, so long as she retains her bite?

The American academic Elaine Showalter rates Greer hugely as "a diva" and a rule-breaker. At a recent conference on feminism, however, Showalter says Professor Greer criticised the "phallic crime" of male competitiveness.

"This is one of the most competitive women in the world!" she said. "What does this say about her self-awareness? In many ways Germaine is a product of the 20th-century phenomenon that embraced the media, competition and celebrity. They are part of what's made her. The danger is that without self-awareness she runs the risk of caricature."

Professor Greer, of course, has always been larger than life, built for the job of one-woman catalyst. "She is brave, bold, and very un-English," says the feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham. Born in Melbourne, Australia, into a Catholic family, Germaine Greer doted on her dissembling father and loathed her mother, "the mad dog in the kitchen".

At university she moved in anarchist and sexual-libertarian circles, hence her abiding mistrust of mainstream politics. In 1964 she arrived at Cambridge and subsequently moved to Warwick University.

She was six-foot tall with an Afro hairstyle. She said "fuck" a lot and showed more brio than any male on campus. She was a star, a member of the counter-culture. In The Female Eunuch (published in 1970), she mocked the way women allowed their "natural" femininity to be neutered by male desires – and then flirted outrageously. This was definitely a different way to be a woman and hugely influential – but one of the girls? Never!

Lynne Segal, professor of psychology and gender studies, knew Professor Greer in Australia. "She's always made a big splash on the public stage. That's important because she's cleared the space for debates that might otherwise not have happened. But she's a prima donna, she doesn't get the collective voice. Her attitude is, 'Whatever I'm experiencing now, will become every woman's experience later'. But Germaine has had no children, no long-term partner, her life couldn't have been more different," Segal points out.

Professor Greer is now Professor of English Literature at Warwick University. Students say her lectures are life-changing. "People forget that first and foremost, Germaine is a scholar with a breadth of knowledge that can be astounding," says Sarah Dunant, broadcaster and novelist. Critics complain about Professor Greer's U-turns. But, like everybody else, she has fallen for a rat or two. She also deeply regrets her inability to bear a child.

Why should such experiences not make her think again? It is true, however, that having had her cake, she now seems reluctant to allow anyone else a taste of the gâteau.

In the 1960s, she argued that "Pussy power" – assertive female sexuality – could undo patriarchy. Fifteen years later, in Sex and Destiny, she was advocating celibacy. And in the 1990s, despairing at the invisibility of middle-age in a youth-obsessed culture, she attempted to sell the alleged pleasures of the sexless crone.

She has also been clobbered, among other issues, for her support for female circumcision. Yet, buried deep even in her daftest generalisations, uncomfortable truths are often to be found.

For instance, she gave early warning of the dangers of HRT.

"I have disagreed profoundly at times with Germaine," says Ms Dunant. "But I also know that she has such strength of character, she can take your fury as well as your admiration."

Professor Greer's light appeared to dim briefly as a result of the menopause, but the battler is back, as enraged and as contrary as ever.

And she is needed as much as ever. Women's dissatisfaction with themselves continues apace. Once, men shelled out for a girl's breast implants – now high-flying women meet their own bills. Sisters are doing it for themselves, but not quite in the way revolutionaries envisaged.

"Germaine could never become a national treasure," Ms Dunant says. "That implies someone soft and sentimental. People love her or they hate her. She's one of a kind."

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