Rating: 
Summary: Trivializes the plight for women's equality!
Review: "You've come a long way baby!" Remember the cigarette ad from the 70s? To hear Germaine Greer tell it we haven't, unless progress is having won the right to smoke thin cigarettes in public and take our chemotherapy like a man.Since writing The Female Eunuch, Dr. Greer is still angry after these thirty-one years-with good reason. In her latest book, The Whole Woman, Greer carefully and wittily lays out excruciating truths. Women still earn 60% of a man's salary and shoulder most of the household tasks including child rearing. When fathers abscond it's the single impoverished mothers who bear the blame for rearing the maladapted children that contribute to the ills of society. Greer also states that the incidence of rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence is much higher than it was thirty years ago. In all cultures, women continue (especially when pregnant) to be insulted, threatened, molested, beaten, raped and murdered by men with impunity. So just how far have we come? Are the starved, hobbled, high-heeled, battered celebrity babes with their lifted faces, tucked tummies and liposuctioned hips our new role models? Has boob inflation replaced bra burning as the symbol of liberation? Erudite, witty and unapologetic The Whole Woman is better than a shot of HRT. Read it and weep.
Rating: 
Summary: Germaine's Still Angry!
Review: Germaine Greer is back and she's still angry. The Whole Woman is the self-proclaimed sequel to 1971's The Female Eunuch, a sequel she had said she would never write. She took up the cause again because "the fire flared up in her belly" when the feminists of her generation said that feminism had gone too far and the "lifestyle feminists" (whoever they may be) said that it had gone far enough.
For Greer, almost everything about being a woman today is terrible, because she sees that all women are cruelly manipulated by the media and society's constructs to become "disabled" beings. So "a woman's first duty to herself is to survive this process, then to recognize it, then to take measures to defend herself against it." Mass culture has spread the "gospel of salvation according to hipless, wombless, hard-breasted Barbie" to the rest of the world with terrible efficiency so that even the "whole women" of the third world (including, presumably, the "infibulated woman who taught her about sexual pleasure") are being transformed into the dreaded stereotype. "If only all women were like me!" Greer seems to be saying.
It is this apparent solipsism that infects all of Greer's writing. She has, in one of her many well-documented tirades, accused her mother of having Asperger's syndrome but now Greer herself seems to be heading towards the same affliction.
Nevertheless, the fierce polemicism of all of Greer's writing (evident even in the autobiographical Daddy We Hardly Knew You) is stirring. She has the prodigious ability to irritate, to get under the skin, and not just of men. A friend of mine bought a copy of The Madwoman's Underclothes (also available at Penrith Library) for his wife and after she read it (she's a feminist) she spent at least a month feeling angry, frustrated and depressed. An Australian cartoonist has invented some modern-day curses, including "may your wife read the latest Germaine Greer book."
A lot of Greer's writing in The Whole Woman is poorly executed and some of it is stunningly incomprehensible (what is anyone to make of this sentence: "Millions of women sit knitting garments that nobody wants because the hours of fiddling work give them an opportunity gradually to release the intolerable pressure of their unspoken love."?), but there are passages of great fire and real beauty. The chapter titled "Sorrow" is the best writing in the book - an espousal of the right of woman to feel sorrow - sometimes only for themselves because their lot is, in Greer's estimation, so terrible. She feels there are powerfully good aspects to female sorrow, and we feel the poignancy as her wounded psyche becomes transparent beneath external rage. (Certainly she is probably also sure that women's propensity for sadness irritates men.)
The chapter called "Fathers", however, made me angry, distressed and outraged. Greer more or less baldly asserts that all fathers wish to molest their daughters: "it is a rare (non-abusing) father who can permit himself any degree of physical intimacy with a daughter." As the father of a daughter I'm amazed that she could get so much so wrong. Nevertheless, there is a deep poignancy in Greer's reiteration of the theme of being unloved. The tragic climax of Daddy We Hardly Knew You was Greer's realization that her late father had never been really interested in her. Again, because she feels this pain so acutely, she draws the conclusion that this is how all women feel - they have all been neglected by their fathers: "The boy baby learns that he can have what he wants and quickly, the girl baby that she has to learn patience. The sociability and intuitiveness valued in...girls (possibly) has its roots in the insecurity that the little girl feels in her relationship with both her parents. Daughters will develop more self-confidence if their fathers are encouraging and appreciative of their efforts, but fathers seldom give such matters much attention.."
Greer has taken a big stand against sexual equality and argues the point cogently: "equality is an utterly conservative aim. Equality is cruel to women because it requires them to duplicate behaviors that they find profoundly alien and disturbing. Men like the masculine world that they have built for themselves; if enough men had not enjoyed what they euphemistically call the 'cut and thrust' - the sanctioned brutalities of corporate life - such behavior would never have been institutionalized and women would not now be struggling with it. In constructing its male elite, masculinist society contrives to be cruel to most men, all women and all children. If women can see no future beyond joining the masculinist elite on its own terms, our civilization will become more destructive than ever. There has to be a better way."
It seems true that women should (if they only had more sense, like Greer) get rid of men from their lives and live independently (as she does, but then, she's independently wealthy from the sales of her books); then all would be well. I wonder how many women are as eager as she to cast off all association with the "useless" sex.
Don't read The Whole Woman unless you are prepared to be annoyed and maybe to take to the barricades. The Female Eunuch was a watershed in popular feminist writing; The Whole Woman probably won't have the same impact but it shows there's plenty of life and fire in the belly of this 60 year-old feminist.
Rating: 
Summary: Germaine Greer is a genius!
Review: I am so glad that Ms. Greer has once more emerged from wherever she keeps herself to grace us with her passion, wit and insight. The Female Eunuch is one of my all-time favorite books, and finding The Whole Woman was like discovering precious gems in a hidden treasure chest. This woman has more guts than the average truck driver, and I for one appreciate this. As a woman, I cannot imagine a culture in which she did not exist. Critics have broken their necks in the race to marginalize and minimize her work, but as Elwood P. Dowd said, "That's just envy, my dear." This is an impressive legacy to women, and I can't fathom the bad reviews here. Are you in the bargain for some food for thought? I suggest that you get this amazing book.
Rating:
Summary: A Book to Make Its Readers Angry (For the Wrong Reasons)
Review: I found The Whole Woman more antagonistic and needlessly controversial than enlightening. Greer makes it quite clear that there is exactly one feminist left on the planet, and she is it.
I'm hard-pressed to think of any third-wave feminists who live up to her standards. To do so, you would have to be an earth-mother living in a separatist commune with her lesbian lover. There's nothing wrong with that lifestyle, but it's not one to which most feminists would aspire. It's not one to which I aspire.
Also, it's as limiting a construction of womanhood as the patriarchal one she deplores. What do you do if you are heterosexual? It's all very well for her to say that you can reconstruct yourself as a lesbian, but that's as insulting as the implication that homosexuals just need to try hard enough and they can be heterosexual.
In a similar vein, I found her views of men particularly unpleasant. She suggests in no uncertain terms that they're all potential adulterers, rapists, child-abusers, wife-beaters, misogynists, etc . . . etc . . ., and that any woman who wants an equal, non-exploitative relationship had better become a lesbian. It's hard to see it as anything but pure slander, backed up by the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence. Just because you can cite a few cases of sickos who get turned on by their baby daughters in their nightgowns does not mean that all fathers will inevitably turn to abuse.
The rest of the book is no better. It's very poorly researched and argued, and parts of it verge into the insane. She seems particularly taken with the idea of "primitive" women as whole women, because they aren't bound by Western concepts of femininity. What she doesn't mention is that those women experience the same oppression that Western feminists fought long and hard to overcome. They might not wear bras or high-heels, but that doesn't make them any less oppressed by patriarchy. It seems obvious to me that women from tribal societies do not generally have much real political power, but are doomed to bear lots of children and die young. When she does look at the appalling aspects of those societies, she puts a positive spin on them. There's even a section where she seems to defend female genital mutilation.
Also, I can imagine that some of her ill-informed views are extremely offensive to people in those situations. She describes IVF as patriarchal appropriation of and interference into the process of reproduction. Similarly, she suggests that women who don't opt for natural childbirth (without anaesthetic, of course) are allowing men to remove them from the process. It's utterly disrespectful of the choices women may choose to make, not because they've internalised their oppression but because inseminating themselves with a turkey-baster seems vaguely ludicrous or because they don't want to experience agonising pain.
It's been a while since I read a feminist book that made me angry and this one does so for all the wrong reasons. It makes me embarrassed to call myself a feminist.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I was looking for
Review: I had seriously been seriously frustrated with feminism, especially in the academic setting, as everything seemed to be about inane differences between what is the 'body' and what is the 'flesh', and generally focused on a very small group of privileged women-- a long standing criticism of the feminist movement. Unexpectantly, I came upon Germaine Greer's latest book. I had read The Female Eunuch the summer before, and it had marked my behaviour, despite its being written 10 years before I was born. The Whole Woman topped it. It provided evidence about the continuing sexism in society, including in policies viewed as feminist, such as the right to abortion, routine pelvic exams, issues on maternal care, female circumcision, and many other controversial and non-controversial topics. She seemed to have read my mind about all the problems I was seeing and provided strong, though-provoking statements about all of them. About make-up and beauty standards, problems for low-income women, the third-world, and women in positions of power. She goes beyond the tipical routine of familiar feminism: abortion isn't pro-choice, pro-choice would be information about egalitarian birth control, information about the numerous options in abortions, a revision in treatment for women who decide to abort, and most importantly, the option for women to viably raise their child if they so wish, with monetary assistance. She also writes about women in the military, police force and motherhood. One review on the back said that this book would make me angry, and they were not kidding. Her writings are telling us not to be too comfortable-- feminism has a long way to go, baby.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but an ultimate disappointment
Review: I have been, no doubt, a fan of Ms. Greer since "The Female Eunuch". But this book was a major disappointment. At some points her arguments managed to light up a spark of interest. But altogether this book is poorly researched, horribly written, and grammatically incorrect to a fault. Her arguments are incredibely shaky, this is something I would expect to read as a high school term paper. In the end, she adds nothing new to the pursuit of women's liberation other than a frivolous, pathetic, and lazy critic (if you can even call it that) of female pop culture. I certainly wouldn't suggest this book to anybody interested in feminism unless I wanted to completely repel or humor them. Skip this one, it's not worth the time or energy.
Rating:
Summary: Who says you have to agree with everything?
Review: I love this book. It is amazing, and, it has to be said, very few people still write anything like this. I don't agree with everything Greer says, but then i don't have to: she is forty years older than me and if her book inspires someone of my generation to write the next 'Female Eunuch' then it will have served its purpose. When I read her first novel, the Female Eunuch, it wasn't so much as a piece of feminist literature as a primary historical source. Yet I feel I owe a debt to Greer and her contemporaries for writing such works and creating the workd in which I grew up. Many criticisms of The Whole Woman have centred on Greer's discussion of 'Pantomine Dames' and supposed defence of female genital mutilation. Whether or not you agree with her conclusions, I think she raises some extremely valid points surrounding these topics, such as, do we construct the Female negatively (ie. by the omission of a male genitalia rather than the possession of female genitalia?) - and, of course, the post-colonial relationship between Western women and women in developing nations. Whilst I will support any woman, anywhere, in her struggle for recognition and emancipation, Greer points out that it isn't my job to tell her how to do it. The West has been doing that for far too long. This isn't, to me, a book of answers. It's a book of questions which I haven't heard asked before. My greatest problem with Greer is that I still find her somewhat dismissive of men. After all, men are our lovers and our sons, and I think few women want that to change. But she reminds us that we have a long way to go in reconstructing our society and redefining the gender roles within it to improve life for men and women. To all those twenty year olds out there: our mothers did a hell of a lot for us. We owe it to them to do a hell of a lot more!!!
Rating:
Summary: This is not feminism
Review: In fact, this book is as anti-feminist as they come. Motherhood as a career? Puhhhhleese. Ms. Greer clearly writes for shock value and what was shocking in the 70s is commonplace now, so instead she decides to go the anti-feminist route and pretend it's some kind of "new" feminism.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: There are a lot of mixed reviews about this book. I picked up this book (hardcover edition) just out of curiosity because my knowledge of this subject is rather limited. I didn't know what to expect, but what I found was a very thoughtful and provocative piece of work that has opened me into a subject matter that I had yet to explore. I love the book. Greer points out some of the flaws of what some might call modern feminism, and even before this book I felt the same way. I really like how "The Whole Woman" looked at how consumerism and the economics of women have affected not just feminism, but women as a whole. Bottom line this brought forth questions that I would not have considered, and did get me inspired. If you agree with her or not, this is a must read book.
Rating:
Summary: Superb! Wonderful! An Important Work
Review: Well, you can easily imagine just how many cowardly white males will pretend to admire this book while actually thinking, in their confused little minds, that the ideas in this book will simply go away - not so! This is an excellent book that challenges white male assumptions, and points towards a better future for Women. It may seem strange that there are still a few Women who claim not to sympathize with Feminists even after all we've done for them. But in fact, Women, irregardless of class or race, are challenging patriarchy. A recent poll showed that a slight majority of Women who earn $125,000 dollars or more in this society are now Democrats or, more importantly, further to the Left. Because Women are challenging sexist assumptions about the way they are "supposed" to look, it is now conservative women who are helping to preserve the Barbie Doll mentality; a conservative Woman who attempts to exhibit sexuality is simply enforcing oppressive codes against all Women, including themselves. The conservative Woman lacks the intellect and empathy to lead other Women, even if she went to an elite school - and most smart Women are feminists of course! By holding back Women from empowerment, conservative Women are sometimes described by the old white male sexist term of Barbie Doll. One would think that if a Martian landed on the earth and observed which political affiliation it was in the best interests for a Woman to have, she would choose Feminism without pause - it's a no-brainer. A conservative Woman who is conventionally "attractive", and who attends an elite university, is still a Barbie Doll, make no mistake.
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