> So what's wrong with Greer's comments?
> By Tracee Hutchison September 9, 2006
>
> I can't help thinking that if Clive James, a fellow traveller with
> Germaine Greer in the great exodus of Australian intellectuals to
> London in the 1950s and 60s, had made the same observations as Greer
> did this week about the outpouring of Australian grief over Steve
> Irwin's death it would have been viewed very differently.
>
> To me, Greer's assertion - that Irwin was a cross between an old-time
> lion tamer, modern Peter Pan and dinky-di Aussie larrikin who had no
> place being canonised in life or in death - was right on the money.
> He'd lived as he'd died: a daredevil entrepreneur who had deftly
> ridden on the back of Paul Hogan's Dundee coat-tails all the way to
> the bank and good on him.
>
> I've got no problem with how he made his money, his political
> persuasions or his fondness for shouting "crikey" loudly into the
> eardrums of unsuspecting creatures. His circus-like act entertained
> millions all over the world and there are surely worse things to do
> with a life's work. And I don't doubt for a moment that his
> motivation for buying huge tracts of land as habitat protection was
> in the best interests of the animals he shared a stage with.
>
> The problem I have is the way this country has turned Irwin into some
> kind of wildlife saint in death when most of us seemed to have had
> scant regard for his antics in life and simultaneously turned with
> such vengeance on Greer for expressing a view that has been deemed to
> be out of step with those of ordinary Australians.
>
> If Steve Irwin's story was a celebration of the boy who wouldn't grow
> up, then Greer's is a modern equivalent to the witch-hunts of Salem.
>
> The outpouring of grief at Irwin's death has been matched only by the
> outpouring of vitriol poured on Greer. It has been astounding. Men,
> mostly, have lined her up and taken aim with the kind of venom you
> would associate with the kind of snake Irwin was most fond of
> handling.
>
> And the message has been heard loud and clear; if you're a woman of a
> certain age in this country - and a childless one at that - don't you
> dare step out of the shadows and shout out that the emperor might not
> be wearing any clothes. You will be shouted down and marginalised and
> your situation will be thrown back at you as a weapon.
>
> In our increasingly family-focused Australia, the perspective of the
> lone childless woman is not only the least credible, but it seems it
> is also the least defensible of circumstances. It has become the most
> potent of dismissals and the most loaded and discriminatory of
> accusations that carries with it implicit allegations of
> heartlessness, selfishness and elite myopia.
>
> And it is fascinating that men seem to find this particular
> description so necessary when their intention to demean women is at
> its most ferocious. John Birmingham did it this week. I had thought
> better of him.
>
> Somehow because Greer has not had the blessed revelations of the
> mothering kind, she is by natural extension some kind of shrieking
> harridan whose views should be roundly discredited, her character
> undermined and her unsightly behaviour removed from public view.
>
> Suspicion, disdain and pity have coloured most of the commentary on
> Greer's thesi. It has been revealing not only for what it has brought
> out in our men but the complicity of so many women in the process.
>
> As a childless product of The Female Eunuch generation, Germaine
> Greer's influence on my life has been profound. The book predated me
> but its influence loomed large in the decisions women of my
> generation embraced. The women Helen Reddy told to roar. And we are,
> to a large extent, a terrifying entity.
>
> It is for this reason I have empathised and identified so strongly
> with the prevailing sentiment of what underscored Greer's perspective
> as it shone like a beacon of reassurance and likemindedness in an
> Australia - and a world - still dominated by an overwhelmingly male
> sensibility.
>
> Very little of the anti-intellectual hot air blown about this week
> has been about what Germaine Greer may or may not have thought about
> Steve Irwin. It had everything to do with a dominant male power-base
> telling women to be seen and not heard. Of marginalising a particular
> kind of woman and reducing us to condition and circumstance. Of
> reminding those of us who like to speak our mind to watch our step,
> to remember our place and to shut up and agree with the menfolk. We
> are all a lot poorer for the unsightly fallout.
>
--ravi
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