The Female Eunuch

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Authors: Germaine Greer
Tags: Social Science, womens studies
Hair, embared Breasts; vermilion Cheeks, alluring looks, Fashion gates, and artfull Countenances, effeminate intangling
    and insnaring Gestures, their Curls and Purls of proclaiming Petulancies, boulstered and laid out with such
    example and authority in these our days, as with Allowance and beseeming Conveniency?
    Doth the world wax barren through decrease of Generations, and become, like the Earth, less fruitfull heretofore?
    Doth the Blood lose his Heat or do the Sunbeams become waterish and less fervent, than formerly they
    have been, that men should be thus inflamed and persuaded on to lust?
    Alex. Niccholes, ‘A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving’,
    1615, p. 143–52

    fabrics, jewels, furs, make-up, the love and protection of men. So he was impotent. He couldn’t fancy women at all, although he did not particularly welcome homosexual addresses. He did not think of himself as a pervert, or even as a transvestite, but as a woman cruelly transmogrified into manhood. He tried to die, became a female im- personator, but eventually found a doctor in Casablanca who came up with a more acceptable alternative. He was to be castrated, and his penis used as the lining of a surgically constructed cleft, which would be a vagina. He would be infertile, but that has never affected the attribution of femininity. April returned to England, resplendent. Massive hormone treatment had eradicated his beard, and formed tiny breasts: he had grown his hair and bought feminine clothes during the time he had worked as an impersonator. He became a model, and began to illustrate the feminine stereotype as he was perfectly qualified to do, for he was elegant, voluptuous, beautifully groomed, and in love with his own image. On an ill-fated day he married the heir to a peerage, the Hon. Arthur Corbett, acting out the highest achievement of the feminine

    dream, and went to live with him in a villa in Marbella. The marriage was never consummated. April’s incompetence as a woman is what we must expect from a castrate, but it is not so very different after all from the impotence of feminine women, who submit to sex without desire, with only the infantile pleasure of cuddling and af- fection, which is their favourite reward. As long as the feminine stereotype remains the definition of the female sex, April Ashley is
    a woman, regardless of the legal decision ensuing from her divorce. 6
    She is as much a casualty of the polarity of the sexes as we all are. Disgraced, unsexed April Ashley is our sister and our symbol.

    Energy

    Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it, for it is a faculty of the psyche. It is driven to perverted manifestations by curbs and checks. Like the motive force that drives the car along the highway, when it meets with an obstacle it turns to destructive force and shakes its source to pieces. It is not too hard to point out to the averagely perceptive human being that women have plenty of the destructive kind of energy, but far fewer people see that women’s destructiveness is creativity turned in upon itself by constant frustration. Nervous diseases, painful menstruation, unwanted pregnancies, accidents of all kinds, are all evidence of women’s energy destroying them. It extends beyond them wreaking havoc with the personalities and achievements of others, especially their husbands and their children. That is not to say that women must hate all their relatives, but that

    The pure animal spirits which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes, or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and sharpening the understanding before it gains proportional strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterizes the female mind and I fear will characterize it whilst women remain the slaves of power .
    Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘A

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