40 Years of Feminism and Fun – Germaine Greer at The Sage

27Apr12

I have to hold my hands up and say before I start that I absolutely adore Germaine Greer and, when she told the audience at The Sage that she had a ‘nutters and stalkers’ pile in her office into which she sorts her post, I wondered if I had ever graced it. It was after she published her book The Whole Woman in 1999 that I realised the extent of my admiration. The book blew me so far away that I wrote Professor Greer a letter, a letter of abject adoration. This woman seriously rocks my world (and she wrote back *swoon*).

Sunday night’s lecture at The Sage dealt with the furore over Samantha (and yes Professor Greer, I will forever say that name with an Australian accent and think of your cat) Brick’s recent dressing down at the hands of the media (Hadley Freeman – another hero – excepted), the site of a gaggle of plucked pheasants (women in fascinators) at The Grand National and why it would be a great thing for women to stop despising each other quite so much (it saps our energy and gives yet more power to our oppressors).

She talked about David Beckham’s tattoos, about the beauty of Etonian students and about her dodgy knee (and about Pamela Stephenson’s perfect kneecaps)

And she made such sense. Such clear and perfect sense.

Education, motherhood, what to wear if you aren’t what the high street deems to be a womanly shape (where woman means without hips, bust or – heaven forbid – stomach).

She was thought provoking, hilarious, passionate and warm.

Greer puts into words the feelings I get when things don’t quite seem fair, when my emotions cloud what I want to say – and she encourages saying what you want to say – a lot.

Where are the women’s voices in the pub? Where are the women’s voices on TV (as Kira Cochrane discovered recently they are pretty hard to find).

Professor Greer has a voice. And it’s a bloody good one – and it was brilliant to hear it in real life.

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