The Female Eunuch

Characterising oppression as 'castration' is the centrepiece of Greer's argument, and I think its sex-positive thrust is its most valuable contribution to the feminist second wave. But there are difficulties. While mocking Freudian theory as metaphysical, Greer deploys the dichotomy of Eros and Thanatos in articulating her ideal of a liberated, loving society – the former's freewheeling spontaneity preferable to the latter's cold ordering of reality, and you can question whether this unrestrained overflow of "energy" may not lead to chaos and abuse. Moreover, as Elizabeth Wurtzel points out, Greer doesn't shirk from condemning behaviour that doesn't fit her model of virtue. She is particularly insensitive regarding trans and BDSM sexuality, trusting that conditioning will remove these (scarequotes) disempowering desires.

Greer has kinder moments, however. One of the most moving passages for me comes at the end of the book: "We have but one life to live, and the first object is to find a way of salvaging that life from the disabilities already inflicted on it in the service of our civilization". Greer's familiar goal, that women and men are free to construct themselves, includes the familiar difficulty that women must "refuse, not only to do some things, but to want to do them". I don't accept all the "disabilities" Greer diagnoses, and often despair of our ability to escape those I do recognise – those horribly unsatisfying expectations we nonetheless set ourselves to fulfill. Then again, The Female Eunuch's uncompromising vision is a reminder that such self-definition is sometimes possible, if only we had the reserves of will, or "energy", Greer displays.