Monday 16 March 2009

Get Angry

"The future is female, we are told. Feminism has served its purpose and should now eff off. Feminism was long hair, dungarees and dangling earrings; post-feminism was business suits, big hair and lipstick; post-post-feminism was ostentatious sluttishness and disorderly behaviour.

On every side, we see women troubled, exhausted, lonely, guilty, mocked by the headlined success of the few. The reality of women's lives is work—most of it unpaid and, what is worse, unappreciated. Every day, we hear of women abused; every day, we hear of new kinds of atrocities perpetrated on the minds and bodies of women; yet every day, we are told that there is nothing left to fight for.

Even if it had been real, equality would have been a poor substitute for liberation; fake equality is leading women into double jeopardy. The rhetoric of equality is being used in the name of political correctness to mask the hammering that women are taking.

When "The Female Eunuch" was written, our daughters were not cutting or starving themselves. On every side, speechless women endure endless hardship, grief and pain, in a world system that creates billions of losers for every handful of winners.

It's time to get angry again."


-- Germaine Greer, 'The Whole Woman'

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