Eggs not Sex: The Functionalism of Germaine Greer

Abstract

Ann Hale and Mary Hawkins are both postgraduate students in the department of anthropology, University of Sydney. Ann Hale is also a lecturer at the Cumberland College of Health Sciences. Many would claim that the Germaine Greer of The FemaleEunuch (FE)1 and the Greer of SexandDestiny (SD)2 differ over such fundamental issues as the family, sex and birth control. In FE, published in 1975, Greer urged women to free themselves from the bondage of the nuclear family. For Greer, the nuclear family was built on a concept of 'male mastery' (p.46), the woman a vassal of her mate's 'colonizing sexual urge' (p.46). Greer condemned what she perceived to be the genitally oriented sexuality of the nuclear couple, 'the substitution of the clitoral spasm for genuine gratification' (p.42) for the woman, the mechanical performance lacking in emotional content for the man. In short, nuclear family sex becomes 'masturbation in the vagina' (p.43). This sex-as-masturbation Greer saw as a denial of women's sexual potential; 'real gratification is not enshrined in a tiny cluster of nerves but in the sexual involvement of the whole person' (p.43).