Germaine Greer has suggested that intelligent women might be happier if they married ‘truck drivers’.
The feminist and author, 85, told the Louis Theroux Podcast the idea that couples should be ‘in competition’ together in their careers ‘is a bad notion’.
Explaining her comments, she told podcaster Theroux: ‘Women always think that we need that status in our husband.
‘He doesn’t think he needs that status in us. So there’s an imbalance at the very beginning.’
Speaking from Castlemaine in Australia, she referenced the relationship between married poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath saying history remembers Hughes as a ‘great poet’, while Plath is remembered as a ‘female poet or a martyr’.
Appearing on Louis Theroux’s podcast, academic and feminist Germaine Greer said that woman think they need their husbands to have ‘status’ – but said men don’t feel the same so ‘there’s an imbalance at the very beginning’
During the episode, which lasted an hour and 15 minutes, Theroux also pressed Greer on her flirtations with late footballer George Best.
Although she denied a full fling with the Manchester United legend, she admitted she had ‘got all tangled up’ with the late star.
She said: ‘I was down on him. He was a f***ing good footballer as well. But, I mean, what happened there is that I used to ignore George.’
The pair met in The Brown Bull pub in Manchester, she reveals, saying: ‘One night I was there sucking back the suds, and he said to me, you don’t fancy me, do you?’
Speaking about the ‘No platform’ or cancel culture that’s evolved, she told Theroux that no-one has a ‘God-given right to speak’
The academic also referenced a flirtatious friendship with George Best; saying while she did not ‘immediately leap upon him or vice versa’, she did fancy him
She replied: ‘George, for Christ’s sake, there’s not a woman in this room who doesn’t fancy you. What do you think I am? A monster? Abnormal.’
Despite the flirtation, she said: ‘I did not immediately leap upon him or vice versa.’
During the episode, Greer also said students were right to protest against her views on transgender issues, saying no-one has a ‘God-given right to speak’.
The intellectual was reflecting on her controversial appearance at Cardiff University in 2015, in which she made transphobic comments.
She told those at the guest lecture nearly a decade ago: ‘I don’t believe a woman is a man without a c**k. You can beat me over the head with a baseball bat. It still won’t make me change my mind.’
Students at the educational establishment protested before Greer’s appearance and outside the venue on the day.
Referencing the protests that took place against her over anti-trans comments she made in 2015 by students at Cardiff University, Greer said she respected their right to ‘shout her down’
In the podcast episode, Theroux suggested the ‘left is maybe more censorious and less tolerant of dissenting opinions and more opposed to free speech’.
Greer, who shot to fame after writing The Female Eunuch in 1970, responded saying of the students who protested: ‘I’m on their side. If they want me to be shut up, then fine. Go for it.
‘I expect students to rebel, I expect them to object and I expect as a teacher to have to play my corner. It doesn’t worry me this notion that people will shout me down, shout away!’
Source link
