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Women Over Fifty Already Form One Of The Largest Groups In The Population Structure Of The Western World. As Long As They Like Themselves, They Will Not Be An Oppressed Minority. In Order To Like Themselves They Must Reject Trivialization By Others Of Who And What They Are. A Grown Woman Should Not Have To Masquerade As A Girl In Order To Remain In The Land Of The Living.

-Germaine Greer

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Women Over Fifty Already

Germaine Greer

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Women Over Fifty Already Form One Of The Largest Groups In The Population Structure Of The Western World. As Long As They Like Themselves, They Will Not Be An Oppressed Minority. In Order To Like Themselves They Must Reject Trivialization By Others Of Who And What They Are. A Grown Woman Should Not Have To Masquerade As A Girl In Order To Remain In The Land Of The Living.

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Military Mythology Has To Pretend That Real Men Are In The Majority; Cowards Can Never Be Allowed To Feel That They Might Be The Normal Ones And The Heroes Are Insane.

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Kinkiness Comes From Low Energy. It's The Substitution Of Lechery For Lust.

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The Essence Of Pleasure Is Spontaneity.

War Is The Admission Of Defeat In The Face Of Conflicting Interests.

Sex For Many Has Become A Sorry Business, A Mechanical Release Involving Neither Discovery Nor Triumph, Stressing Human Isolation More Dishearte-ingly Than Ever Before.

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A Woman Is Never So Happy As When She Is Being Wooed. Then She Is Mistress Of All She Surveys, The Cynosure Of All Eyes, Until That Day Of Days When She Sails Down The Aisle, A Vision In White, Lovely As The Stefanotis She Carries, Borne Translucent On Her Father's Manly Arm To Be Handed Over To Her New Father-surrogate. If She Is Clever, And If Her Husband Has The Time And The Resources, She Will Insist On Being Wooed All Her Life; More Likely She Will Discover That Marriage Is Not Romantic, That Husbands Forget Birthdays And Aniversaries And Seldom Pay Compliments, Are Often Perfunctory.

The Compelled Mother Loves Her Child As The Caged Bird Sings. The Song Does Not Justify The Cage Nor The Love The Enforcement.

I Believe In Permanent Revolution.

At The Same Time As Woman Was Becoming The Showcase For Wealth And Caste, While Men Were Slipping Into Relative Anonymity And "handsome Is As Handsome Does," She Was Emerging As The Central Emblem Of Western Art.

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After Centuries Of Conditioning Of The Female Into The Condition Of Perpetual Girlishness Called Femininity, We Cannot Remember What Femaleness Is.

Now As Before, Women Must Refuse To Be Meek And Guileful, For Truth Cannot Be Served By Dissimulation. Women Who Fancy That They Manipulate The World By Pussy Power And Gentle Cajolery Are Fools. It Is Slavery To Have To Adopt Such Tactics.

Is It Too Much To Ask That Women Be Spared The Daily Struggle For Superhuman Beauty In Order To Offer It To The Caresses Of A Subhumanly Ugly Mate?

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Inalienable Rights

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We Still Make Love To Organs And Not People; That So Far From Realising That People Are Never More Idiosyncratic, Never More Totally There When They Make Love, We Re Never More Incommunicative, Never More Alone.

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Gender Reassignment Is An Exorcism Of The Mother

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If The Next Time Our Governments Propose To Make War On A Helpless Civilian Population We Were To Uncover Our Grief And Guilt Instead Of Our Anger, How Much Difference Might We Make?

The Crowning Insult [of Abortion] Is That This Ordeal Is Represented To Her As Some Kind Of A Privilege.her Sad And Onerous Duty Is Garbed In The Rhetoric Of A Civil Right.

Mother Is The Dead Heart Of The Family Spending Father's Earnings On Consumer Goods To Enhance The Environment In Which He Eats, Sleeps, And Watches The Television.

The Pain Of Sexual Frustration, Of Repressed Tenderness, Of Denied Curiosity, Of Isolation In The Ego, Of Greed, Suppressed Rebellion, Of Hatred Poisoning All Love And Generosity, Permeates Our Sexuality. What We Love We Destroy.

Security Is When Everything Is Settled, When Nothing Can Happen To You; Security Is The Denial Of Life.

The Treatment For Jaded Sensibilities Is Not To Shatter Them, After All.

The Principle Of The Brotherhood Of Man Is Narcissistic... For The Grounds For That Love Have Always Been The Assumption That We Ought To Realize That We Are The Same The Whole World Over.

Brotherhood Of Man

One May Not Reach The Dawn Save By The Path Of The Night.

The Fear Of Freedom Is Strong In Us. We Call It Chaos Or Anarchy, And The Words Are Threatening. We Live In A True Chaos Of Contradicting Authorities, An Age Of Conformism Without Community, Of Proximity Without Communication. We Could Only Fear Chaos If We Imagined That It Was Unknown To Us, But In Fact We Know It Very Well.

The Wedding Is The Chief Ceremony Of The Middle-class Mythology, And It Functions As The Official Entrée Of The Spouses To Their Middle-class Status. This Is The Real Meaning Of Saving Up To Get Married. The Young Couple Struggles To Set Up An Image Of Comfortable Life Which They Will Be Forced To Live Up To In The Years That Follow.

Women Who Were Housewives, Who Were Pretty Miserable ... Felt Inspired By Her Book And Their Life Changed. They Didn't Become Megastars, But They Became A Librarian Or Something. I've Heard Women Say Again And Again When The Subject Of Germaine Comes Up: 'well, Her Book Changed My Life For The Better.' And They'll Be Modest Women Living Pretty Ordinary Lives, But Better Lives.

Pigs May Like Honey, But That Doesn't Stop It Being Sweet.

As Angelo Discovered In Measure For Measure, Nothing Corrupts Like Virtue.

Measure For Measure

A Full Bosom Is Actually A Millstone Around A Woman's Neck.

Women Live Lives Of Continual Apology. They Are Born And Raised To Take The Blame For Other People's Behavior. If They Are Treated Without Respect, They Tell Themselves That They Have Failed To Earn Respect. If Their Husbands Do Not Fancy Them, It Is Because They Are Unattractive.

Man Is Jealous Because Of His Amour Propre; Woman Is Jealous Because Of Her Lack Of It.

We In The West Do Not Refrain From Childbirth Because We Are Concerned About The Population Explosion Or Because We Feel We Cannot Afford Children, But Because We Do Not Like Children.

Supergroupies Don't Have To Hang Around Hotel Corridors. When You Are One, As I Have Been, You Get Invited Backstage.

Too Many Women Are Forced To Abort By Poverty, By Their Menfolk, By Their Parents. A Choice Is Only Possible If There Are Genuine Alternatives.

The Housewife Is An Unpaid Worker In Her Husband's House In Return For The Security Of Being A Permanent Employee: Hers Is The Reductio Ad Absurdum Of The Employee Who Accepts A Lower Wage In Return For Permanence Of His Employment. But The Lowest Paid Employees Can Be And Are Laid Off, And So Are Wives. They Have No Savings, No Skills Which They Can Bargain With Elsewhere, And They Must Bear The Stigma Of Having Been Sacked.

Status Ought Not To Be Measured By A Woman's Ability To Attract And Snare A Man.

Bras Are A Ludicrous Invention; But If You Make Bralessness A Rule, You're Just Subjecting Yourself To Yet Another Repression.

A Garden Is A Kinetic Work Of Art, Not An Object But A Process, Open-ended, Biodegradable, Nurturant, Like All Women's Artistry. A Garden Is The Best Alternative Therapy.

Great Artists Are Products Of Their Own Time: They Do Not Spring Forth Fully Equipped From The Head Of Jove, But Are Formed By The Circumstances Acting Upon Them Since Birth. These Circumstances Include The Ambiance Created By The Other, Lesser Artists Of Their Own Time, Who Have All Done Their Part In Creating The Pressure That Forces Up An Exceptional Talent. Unjustly, But Unavoidably, The Very Closeness Of A Great Artist To His Colleagues And Contemporaries Leads To Their Eclipse.

The Most Highly Prized Curve Of All Is That Of The Bosom.

It Is In Our Interests To Let The Police And Their Employers Go On Believing That The Underground Is A Conspiracy, Because It Increases Their Paranoia And Their Inability To Deal With What Is Really Happening. As Long As They Look For Ringleaders And Documents They Will Miss Their Mark, Which Is That Proportion Of Every Personality Which Belongs In The Underground.

A Library Is A Place Where You Can Lose Your Innocence Without Losing Your Virginity.

Thought Provoking

If You Think You Are Emancipated, You Might Consider The Idea Of Tasting Your Own Menstrual Blood - If It Makes You Sick, You've Got A Long Way To Go, Baby.

English Children Have Lost Their Innocence, For Their First Lessons Have Been In The Exploitation Of Their Adult Slave.

Continuing Sexual Interest And Perfect Sexual Adjustment Between Partners Who Have Been Together For Thirty Years Is So Difficult And Rare That No One Should Feel Guilty Or Inadequate For Not Having Managed It.

I Do Think That Women Could Make Politics Irrelevant; By A Kind Of Spontaneous Cooperative Action The Like Of Which We Have Never Seen; Which Is So Far From People’s Ideas Of State Structure Or Viable Social Structure That It Seems To Them Like Total Anarchy — When What It Really Is, Is Very Subtle Forms Of Interrelation That Do Not Follow Some Heirarchal Pattern Which Is Fundamentally Patriarchal. The Opposite To Patriarchy Is Not Matriarchy But Fraternity, Yet I Think It’s Women Who Are Going To Have To Break This Spiral Of Power And Find The Trick Of Cooperation.

When I Was A Young Hippy, I Thought Marching Naked Would Be A Strong Protest, But I Don't Think It Would Be As Effective Now.

If The Present Economic Structure Can Change Only By Collapsing, Then It Had Better Collapse As Soon As Possible.

Lifelong Monogamy Is A Maniacal Idea.

The Drug Which Makes Sexuality Palatable In Popular Mythology.

The Castration Of Women Has Been Carried Out In Terms Of A Masculine-feminine Polarity, In Which Men Have Commandeered All The Energy And Streamlined It Into An Aggressive Conquistadorial Power, Reducing All Heterosexual Contact To A Sadomasochistic Pattern.

The Few Men Who Do A Hand's Turn Around The House Expect Gratitude And Recognition, So Sure Are They That, Though It Is Their Dirt, It Is Not Their Job.

The Hippie Is The Scion Of Surplus Value. The Dropout Can Only Claim Sanctity In A Society Which Offers Something To Be Dropped Out Of--career, Ambition, Conspicuous Consumption. The Effects Of Hippie Sanctimony Can Only Be Felt In The Context Of Others Who Plunder His Lifestyle For What They Find Good Or Profitable, A Process Known As Rip-off By The Hippie, Who Will Not See How Savagely He Has Pillaged Intricate And Demanding Civilizations For His Own Parodic Lifestyle.

The Surest Guide To The Correctness Of The Path That Women Take Is Joy In The Struggle. Revolution Is The Festival Of The Oppressed.

Human Beings Have An Unalienable Right To Invent Themselves; When That Right Is Pre-empted It Is Called Brain-washing.

The High-heeled Shoe Is A Marvellously Contradictory Item; It Brings A Woman To A Man's Height But Makes Sure She Cannot Keep Up With Him.

If Women Understand By Emancipation The Adoption Of The Masculine Role Then We Are Lost Indeed.

It Takes A Great Deal Of Courage And Independence To Decide To Design Your Own Image Instead Of The One That Society Rewards, But It Gets Easier As You Go Along.

Men Have Still Not Realized That Letting Women Do So Much Of The Work For So Little Reward Makes A Man In The House An Expensive Luxury Rather Than A Necessity.

There Have Been Women In The Past Far More Daring Than We Would Need To Be Now, Who Ventured All And Gained A Little, But Survived After All.

Two-up Is Australia's Very Own Way Of Parting A Fool And His Money.

The Struggle Which Is Not Joyous Is The Wrong Struggle. The Joy Of The Struggle Is Not Hedonism And Hilarity, But The Sense Of Purpose, Achievement And Dignity.

I Think That Testosterone Is A Rare Poison.

It Is Often Falsely Assumed, Even By Feminists, That Sexuality Is The Enemy Of The Female Who Really Wants To Develop These Aspects Of Her Personality, And This Is Perhaps The Most Misleading Aspect Of Movements Like The National Organization Of Women. It Was Not The Insistence Upon Her Sex That Weakened The American Woman Student's Desire To Make Something Of Her Education, But The Insistence Upon A Passive Sexual Role

Rescuing Women From Their Burden Of Unwarranted Guilt Is Going To Require "educational Practices And Socializing Agents" Even More Effective Than The Ones That Have Been Relentlessly Loading Female Humans With Responsibility For Other People's Behavior From Their Earliest Childhood.

You're Only Young Once, But You Can Be Immature Forever.

The Element Of Heroic Maleness Had Always Been Present In The Concept Of The Artist As One Who Rides The Winged Horse Above The Clouds Beyond The Sight Of Lesser Men, A Concept Seldom Applied To Those Who Worked With Colours Until The Nineteenth Century. When The Inevitable Question Is Asked, "why Are There No Great Women Artists?" It Is This Dimension Of Art That Is Implied. The Askers Know Little Of Art, But They Know The Seven Wonders Of The Painting World.

Every Wife Who Slaves To Keep Herself Pretty, To Cook Her Husband's Favourite Meals, To Build Up His Pride And Confidence In Himself At The Expense Of His Sense Of Reality, To Be His Closest And Effectively His Only Friend, To Encourage Him To Rejectthe Consensus Of Opinionand Find Reassurance Only In Her Arms Is Binding Her Mate To Her With Hoops Of Steel That Will Strangle Them Both.

Security Is The Denial Of Life

The Sight Of Women Talking Together Has Always Made Men Uneasy; Nowadays It Means Rank Subversion.

Common Morality Now Treats Childbearing As An Aberration. There Are Practically No Good Reasons Left For Exercising One's Fertility.

Marriage Made More Sense When It Was Indissoluble. It's The Woman Trying To Cope With The Strains Of A One-parent Family Who Will Suffer Most From The Relaxation Of The Divorce Laws.

The Blind Conviction That We Have To Do Something About Other People's Reproductive Behavior, And That We May Have To Do It Whether They Like It Or Not, Derives From The Assumption That The World Belongs To Us, Who Have So Expertly Depleted Its Resources, Rather Than To Them, Who Have Not.

I Grew Up Thinking There Was One Unpardonable Sin – To Be Boring.

Never Advise Anyone To Go To War Or To Get Married. Write Down The Advice Of Him Who Loves You, Though You Like It Not At Present. He That Has No Children Brings Them Up Well

Guilt Is One Side Of A Nasty Triangle; The Other Two Are Shame And Stigma. This Grim Coalition Combines To Inculpate Women Themselves Of The Crimes Committed Against Them.

There Are Poems About The Internet And About The Shipping Forecast But Very Few By Women Celebrating Men.

Love, Love, Love – All The Wretched Cant Of It, Masking Egotism, Lust, Masochism, Fantasy Under A Mythology Of Sentimental Postures, A Welter Of Self-induced Miseries And Joys, Blinding And Masking The Essential Personalities In The Frozen Gestures Of Courtship, In The Kissing And The Dating And The Desire, The Compliments And The Quarrels Which Vivify Its Barrenness.

It Strikes Me As Very Strange That Whereas Tennyson Could Support Most Of Mr. Buckley's Propositions About Free Trade, And The Private Sector, And Private Enterprise, Tennyson Found No Difficulty Also In Lending Intellectual Support To The Idea Of Women's Liberation.

The Goal Was 'every Child A Wanted Child'; It Should Also Have Been 'every Abortion A Wanted Abortion', But The Two Sides Of The Phony Debate Were Never To Meet.

Revolution Is The Festival Of The Oppressed.

A Garden Is The Best Alternative Therapy.

It [childbearing] Was Never Intended To Be As Time-consuming And Self-conscious A Process As It Is. One Of The Deepest Evils In Our Society Is Tyrannical Nurturance.

Only One Thing Is Certain: If Pot Is Legalized, It Won't Be For Our Benefit But For The Authorities. To Have It Legalized Will Also Be To Lose Control Of It.

Many A Housewife Staring At The Back Of Her Husband's Newspaper, Or Listening To His Breathing In Bed Is Lonelier Than Any Spinster In A Rented Room.

Women Have Been Charged With Deviousness And Duplicity Since The Dawn Of Civilization So They Have Never Been Able To Pretend That Their Masks Were Anything But Masks. It Is A Slender Case But Perhaps It Does Mean That Women Have Always Been In Closer Contact With Reality Than Men: It Would Seem To Be The Just Recompense For Being Deprived Of Idealism.

Unless The Concepts Of Work And Play And Reward For Work Change Absolutely, Women Must Continue To Provide Cheap Labor, And Even More, Free Labor Exacted Of Right By An Employer Possessed Of A Contract For Life, Made Out In His Favor.

Next Time Round Hitler Will Be A Machine.

Perhaps Catastrophe Is The Natural Human Environment, And Even Though We Spend A Good Deal Of Energy Trying To Get Away From It, We Are Programmed For Survival Amid Catastrophe.

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Stephen Ambrose

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