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A young Germaine GreerImage by Anefo from

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and public intellectual who rose to international influence with her book published in 1970, The Female Eunuch. It was a watershed text in second-wave feminism, a bestseller around the world, and it made Greer a household name.

Germaine Greer is an Australian journalist who was a major feminist voice of the mid-1900s. She was born in 1939 in Melbourne,  Australia to Reginald Greer, a newspaper Ad representative and Peggy Greer.

Greer had two younger siblings and grew up in Sandringham. She attended a private school Star of the Sea College and won a scholarship to the University of Melbourne.

In 1959 Germaine graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and French language and literature. She began teaching and earned a first-class Master’s in 1963 in romantic poetry. Her theses The Development of Byron’s Satiric Mode won Germaine Greer a Commonwealth Scholarship.

Greer’s approach is different to that of some other feminists; she has defined her goal as ‘women’s liberation instead of ‘equality with men’. This is because she does not think women should want to be like men who also have problems in society.

Here are the top 10 amazing facts about Germaine Greer.

1. Germaine Greer was a part of the 鈥楽ydney Push鈥� Group

launch of Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman. Image by Dom Pates from

Greer was born in Melbourne in 1939, growing up in the bayside suburb of Mentone. Her father was an insurance executive, who served as a Wing Commander in the wartime RAAF.

After attending a private convent school, Star of the Sea College, in Gardenvale, she won a scholarship in 1956 and enrolled at the University of Melbourne.

After graduating with a degree in English and French language and literature, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved with the Sydney Push, a group of intellectual anarchists.

“I was already an anarchist,” she later said. “I just didn’t know why I was an anarchist. They put me in touch with the basic texts and I found out what the internal logic was about how I felt and thought”

2. Female Eunach is her Seminal work on Feminism

A novel by Greer Image by Amazon from

Her first book 鈥楾he Female Eunuch鈥� published in 1971 provoked some feminists of the time but nevertheless became a landmark in the women鈥檚 liberation movement. The book got translated into many languages.

Germaine Greer was very headstrong in her views that she did not hold back in her words.

She penned more books in the following years all of them having the same topic as her first book. 鈥楽ex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility鈥� (1984), 鈥楧addy, We hardly Knew You鈥� (1989), 鈥楾he Change: Women, Ageing and menopause鈥� (1991), 鈥楽hakespeare鈥檚 Wife鈥� (2007) and 鈥楾he Whole Woman鈥� published in 1999 were written using the same basic thought.

3. Germaine Greer was a Magazine Writer and Editor

Germaine Greer edited Magazines. Image by from

She used many pen names. As 鈥淩ose Blight,” she wrote a gardening column for the satirical magazine Private Eye.

As “Dr. G,” she became a regular contributor to the underground London magazine Oz, owned by the Australian writer Richard Neville.

She also posed nude for Oz on the understanding that the male editors would do likewise; they did not.

Greer was also editor of the Amsterdam underground magazine, Suck, which published a full-page photograph of Greer: “Stripped to the buff, looking at the lens through my thighs.”

4.  Greer Resigned from University for her Book Tour

Germaine Greer (looking at the camera). Image by Helen Morgan from

Following her great success with the publication in 1970 of The Female Eunuch, Greer resigned her post at Warwick University in 1972 after travelling the world to promote her book.

During this time co-presented a Granada Television comedy show called Nice Time with Kenny Everett and Jonathan Routh.

She then travelled through Africa and Asia. She also went to Bangladesh to investigate the situation of women who had been raped during the conflict with Pakistan.

On the New Zealand leg of her tour in 1972, Greer was arrested for using the words “bullshit” and “fuck” during her speech, which attracted major rallies in her support. By this time Greer identified herself as an anarchist communist, close to Marxism.

5. Germaine paid for her Controversial stand on Gender Politics

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In 1989, Greer was appointed as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, but resigned after attracting negative publicity in 1996, for her actions regarding Dr. Rachael Padman, a transsexual colleague.

Greer unsuccessfully opposed Padman’s election to a fellowship on the grounds that Padman had been born male, and Newnham was a women’s college.

She has also been criticized by trans-gendered writer Julia Serano for disparagement of transsexuals (Serano, 2007). Over the years Greer has continued to self-identify as an anarchist or a Marxist.

6.   Greer Posed nude for a Photo Exhibition

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In 1999, Greer sat for a nude photograph by the Australian photographer Polly Borland. The photo was part of a National Portrait Gallery exhibition in 2000 and later appeared in a book titled Polly Borland: Australians.

Celebrities, sportspeople, academics and artists photographed in various states of undress form part of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Bare: Degrees of Undress was launched to celebrate Australian portraiture that shows a bit of skin.

With more than 90 portraits, predominantly men from the gallery’s existing collection, the exhibition includes photographs of entertainer Dame Edna Everage, academic Germaine Greer, model Megan Gale and rugby league player Billy Slater, each wearing varying amounts of clothing.

7.  Germaine Greer Assault was a real Life Recreation of a Scene from a Play 

On April 23, 2003, Greer was assaulted in her home by a 19-year-old female student from the University of Bath who had been writing to her.

The student broke into her home in Essex, tied Greer up in the kitchen, and caused damage to her home.

Dinner guests eventually found Greer lying in a distressed state on the floor, with the student hanging onto her legs. She was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Greer was not hurt and told reporters: “I am not angry, I am not upset, I am not hurt. I haven’t lost my sense of humour. I am not the victim here.” This incident is the initial plot premise for Joanna Murray-Smith’s play The Female of the Species (2006); the main character’s name in that play is Margot Mason.

8.  She was Bitten by the TV Bug at one Time

Germaine Greer’s plaque Sydney Writers Walk series. Image by Snapandrattle33 from

Since 1990, Greer has made numerous appearances on the British television panel show Have I Got News For You, a record she holds jointly with Will Self.

Greer was one of nine contestants in the 2005 series of Celebrity Big Brother UK. She had previously said that the show was “as civilized as looking through the keyhole in your teenager’s bedroom door.”

She walked out of the show after five days inside the Big Brother house, citing the psychological cruelty and bullying of the show’s producers, the dirt of the house and the publicity-seeking behaviour of her fellow contestants.

However, since then she has appeared on spin-off shows Big Brother’s Little Brother and Big Brother’s Big Mouth.

9. Germaine Greer has an Acerbic tongue

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In September 2006, Greer’s column in The Guardian about the death of Australian Steve Irwin attracted criticism for what was reported as a “distasteful tirade.” Greer said that “The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin.”

In the same month, she presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the life of American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa. She confirmed that she had been a friend of Zappa’s since the early 1970s and that his orchestral work “G-Spot Tornado” would be played at her funeral.

In another column, Greer attacked U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for wearing pearls. “Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in Europe, wouldn’t be seen dead in the full-on row of pearls,” she wrote. “Diana Spencer wore her jewelled ligatures as signifiers of subjection. Condie Rice is George Bush’s creature, and when he steps down he will take her with him. The consensus is that she will not find another job in politics鈥�.

10.  Germaine Greer does not believe in Biographies for Living Persons

Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference.  She 鈥渋nsists on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination鈥�.

Germaine Greer is no fan of biography. She鈥檚 said: 鈥淚 fucking hate biography. If you want to know about Dickens, read his fucking books鈥�. She also called her previous biographer, Christine Wallace (author of 1997鈥檚 Untamed Shrew), a 鈥減arasite鈥� and 鈥渂rain-dead hack鈥�.

The Wallace biography on Greer, Germaine Greer: The Untamed Shrew, was published in 1997. Greer responded that biographies of living persons are morbid and worthless because they can only be incomplete.

Although many find her writings crude and offensive, she unquestionably moved the status quo of women’s rights forward.

Her writings have made an important contribution in the fields of literary criticism, art history, and women’s studies, as well as to the women’s rights movement directly.