Germaine Greer Quotes on Society & Civilization (5 Quotes)

In our society, the pre-adolescent girl, the nubile virgin, the sexually active woman, the mother and the grandmother are all expected to look and behave in the same way. The correct body outline for them all is girlish their voices should remain sweet and low, their manner accommodating. ... Kicking off leg-lengthening high-heeled shoes, wiping the colored grease off your lips, raising your voice, letting the grey come through your hair, ceasing the simper that lifts your cheeks and letting your jowls settle into disapproving shapes is seen as letting yourself go.

All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysis and to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

The misery of the middle-aged woman is a gray and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.

The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.