[MUSIC PLAYING]
Good evening, my
name's Julie Willis.
I'm a professor of
architecture and dean
of the faculty of architecture,
building, and planning.
Before we commence
tonight's proceedings,
I want to acknowledge
the traditional owners
of the land on
which we meet today,
the Wurundjeri people
of the Kulin nations.
And I pay my respects to their
elders, past and present.
They are the first
archivists, the makers
of records, the
keepers of records
over thousands of generations.
Welcome to you all, on
behalf of the university.
Thank you for being here
in the Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Theatre, a perfect venue for
International Women's Day.
This theater honors the
outstanding work of one woman.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
obtained her BA at Melbourne
in the 1920s and then
progressed to a second BA
from Oxford in 1928, completing
the three-year degree in two.
The first time she applied for
an academic post at Melbourne
was in 1935, but the
appointments board
knocked her back,
saying women were only
wanted as secretaries.
In 1937 she applied again
and was awarded a lectureship
in history here, doubling
the number of women
in the program from one,
Jessie Webb, to two.
The only other member of
the staff at that time
was Professor Max Crawford.
And perhaps it's the only
moment in the history
of history at Melbourne where
women academics outnumbered
men.
In 1956 Fitzpatrick
was the only woman
on the foundation Australian
Humanities Research Council.
That same year, an
18-year-old Germaine Greer
enrolled in an arts
degree at Melbourne,
and here are their
student cards.
[LAUGHTER]
Two scholarly pioneers
a generation apart--
these cards are two of
the millions of records
in the custody of the
University of Melbourne
archives repository
in Brunswick.
The Greer Archive is
also housed there.
The earliest records in
the Greer Archive document
Germaine's time as a student
here in the university,
between 1956 and '59,
including her lecture
notes on Greek tragedy,
Elizabethan tragedy,
Jacobean tragedy,
Kant, and Aristotle--
all the male greats of a
classical humanities education.
As you will hear tonight,
one of Germaine's sometimes
overlooked contributions
to feminism
is her determination
to insert women
into the canon of
literature and art.
The Greer Archive
is a vast collection
that documents 60
years of her work
as a student, a scholar, a
feminist, an environmentalist,
a journalist, a star of
reality TV and talk shows,
an author, and a correspondent.
It is a major acquisition,
and in the past 16 months,
the university has put in
unprecedented resources
to cataloging and processing it.
Tonight Dr. Rachel Buchanan,
curator of the Greer Archive,
and four of the archivists
who have cataloged
the collection are going
to introduce a Germaine
Greer you do not know--
the archivist.
Professor Greer will
respond with a discussion
of why she created
the archive and what
her ambitions are for it.
So without further ado, I
will pass over to Dr. Buchanan
to coordinate the
rest of the program.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
In 2014, Germaine Greer met
university archivist Dr.
Katrina Dean.
Here they are in the sunshine,
enjoying Greer's beautiful
garden at her home in
Essex, Germaine talking,
Katrina listening, taking
notes with an archivist's tool
of choice, a 2B
lead grey pencil.
[LAUGHTER]
Katrina went to England
to appraise and pack up
Greer's archive.
This was a really massive task.
The archive is fast, and it was
stored in more than 100 filing
cabinet drawers
in two locations--
an office and an outhouse--
an outbuilding.
[LAUGHTER]
Sorry, Germaine,
an outbuilding--
after three weeks,
the job was done.
The records were packed
up, shipped to Melbourne,
and then put into the
University of Melbourne
repository in Brunswick.
Here it is.
The building used to
be a whiskey store.
It's very hush-hush out there--
shelves of paper
doing time in a paper
penitentiary, secure,
climate controlled, quiet.
Archivists are quiet too.
They like to let the
records do the talking.
This is the Greer archive.
Greer Town, as I
like to call it,
occupies 82 meters
of shelf space, which
is about three times the space
of a near neighbor, Geoffrey
Blainey.
Talk about man spreading.
[LAUGHTER]
Since October 2015,
I've been working
with this wall of paper.
My title is curator, but perhaps
boxer would be a better one.
Sometimes I even wear gloves.
There are days when I look
at this wall of boxes,
and it feels like
a tsunami, a king
tide of second-wave emotion,
a great swell of greasy faxes,
and rusty staples, and furry
brown folders that I need
to exchange for acid-free ones.
I look at this wall, and I see
a mausoleum or a morgue, a jail,
shelves of human remains,
everything locked up,
locked down, secure, sanitized.
But if I tilt my head
sideways, I see something else.
I see a skyscraper,
and every box
is a window into another
room, and each room
is bursting with life.
Open one of the windows.
Here's unit 10 in the
early years' series.
This is my mediocre handwriting
on the acid-free folders.
In here you can
find an invitation
to a party at a
hunting lodge; a copy
of Oz magazine with
Germaine on the front,
mischievously unzipping
Vivian Stanshall's fly;
and a 1968
appointment diary that
documents a marriage,
a graduation,
and the end of a marriage, all
in the space of three weeks.
[LAUGHTER]
Listen, it's noisy in here.
Next to the diary,
there's the only piece
of vinyl in the archive--
a bootleg of MC5's
"Kick Out the Jams,"
soundtrack to a revolution.
I like to imagine
Germaine blasting this out
as she typed the first sentences
of the book that would become
The Female Eunuch,
grabbing a blue [INAUDIBLE]
to rescue a tedious
sentence and turn it
into something immediate.
In the next 20 minutes,
four archivists
who have worked on this
archive will open windows
into some of the rooms
they have explored.
We have met many versions
of Germaine Greer,
and now Germaine
Greer will meet us.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Meet Christopher Greer--
Germaine Greer has
written, "I have once too
often been photographed
with a cat on my shoulder
or in my arms.
It makes as much sense to say
I love cats as that a heroin
addict loves heroin.
Cats have been a
bad habit of mine."
But this is a
favorite photograph
with her most
anthropomorphic puss.
Germaine Greer and Christopher
have gazed out on me
from our office noticeboard
for the months I've
spent with the archives of
Professor Greer's major works,
the archival series concerned
with her published works.
This series of over 600 files
primarily gives us access
to Greer as
researcher and writer.
It provides the history of
how her books have come to be.
It also clearly shows
that the major works
are but one part of
her prodigious output
as scholar, writer,
academic, commentator.
Is there ever a down time?
And the series also
reveals the interweaving
of Germaine Greer's
work and her life--
constantly working,
but with the energy
and aesthetic to
create environments
of beauty and practicality
in houses in London;
rural England; Italy;
even in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
and returning, at last,
to save a Queensland
rain-forest at Cave Creek.
Articles on Greer have
featured her homes and haunts,
one of the Library
of Congress subject
headings we've added
to direct researchers.
They describe her kitchen
design, her lush textiles,
her menageries of
animals, her gardens.
She's been pictured in her
Missoni dresses; tanned
in sundress in Tuscany;
and, of course, looking
fabulous farming and gardening
at Stump Cross, Essex,
in overalls with pearls.
As I've busily uncreased,
refolded, listed, and boxed,
I've found myself picturing
Germaine Greer's life,
imagining her beavering
away on The Female
Eunuch in The Pheasantry,
an icon of '60s bohemian
London; the celebrity at
New York's Chelsea Hotel;
venturing into dark
churches in Italy
to seek out forgotten
paintings by female artists
and to record them in
one of her many notebooks
of diligent research.
Here we have a sketch
depicting typically
unglamorous inhabitant
of gorgeous vestments,
with the essential small dog.
I've also thought of her
chronically unsuccessful
attempts to create a
garden at her house
in Westbourne Terrace, described
in her hilarious private-eye
column "The Revolting
Garden" by Rose Blight,
or beginning The Whole Woman,
the sequel to The Female Eunuch
she said she would never
write, in a white-hot heat
at The Mills, her
fervor possibly tempered
by a comforting cat on the lap.
These photographs
of Greer at work
seem to show the pleasure
of an amiable cat--
Christopher again, and I
think Shanghai Jim, one
of a long line of tabby cats.
Most of all, I would have
loved to have been a visitor--
or better, a fly on the wall--
at the old stone house in
Tuscany, Pianelli, which Greer
purchased in 1973,
this photo showing
some early visitors enjoying
their first summer there.
Here are some pages from
The Unaccompanied Guest
at Pianelli, a guide by
Greer for her guests,
having made the generous offer
of loan of her Italian house
to Newnham colleagues in 1990--
I'm sure, taken
up with alacrity.
We're now so used to online
guides in the era of Airbnb,
but this is a carefully
produced booklet containing
alphabetically arranged advice
on everything the visitor could
possibly need, from
ambulance-- advising,
with a degree of
Italian pragmatism,
to not wait for an ambulance,
but just load the sufferer
into the car and have someone
hold a white pillowcase,
and drive to the hospital
sounding the horn
continuously--
to wine, noting, "There
is plenty of wine
to be had for remarkably
little money, most
of it not very good."
[LAUGHTER]
Mention is also made of
Greer's makeshift still.
This Heath Robinson-like
contraption
was used to distill essential
oils from Pianelli plants.
A 1983 letter to
Camille Nash describes
being distracted
from her writing
one day as she prepares a
master tincture of myrtle
of minced leaves, drowned in a
liter of ethanol and distilled
water, in secret
proportions known only
to very senior homeopaths
and unscrupulous individuals
like me.
In a lively exchange with her
publisher on a copy-editing
matter for the change--
English language
usage is another
of the Library of Congress
subject headings we've added--
Greer writes, "What you
are buggering about with
is my life, not my job--
my life."
As archivists, we keep
records as evidence
of activities and catalog
to make the records usable
for researchers.
We favor a light
touch with description
which preserves the context in
which the records were created
and the arrangement
of their creator,
and guides the researcher
to make their own heuristic
discoveries.
While it's not
traditional for archivists
to insert themselves,
the exceptional richness
of this archive
and its, at times,
excoriating honesty has meant
I have sometimes felt immersed
in Germaine Greer's
life, I hope providing
some solid stepping stones
for future researchers,
and not buggering
about too much with it.
[APPLAUSE]
In April 1972,
Germaine Greer was
approached by Playboy assistant
managing editor Nat Lehrman
to write an article on rape.
This piece was billed
by Playboy as a plea
for an honest,
contemporary sexual ethic,
and argued for a
definition of rape that
encompasses the various forms
of emotional and psychological
coercion which were then and
are often still considered just
a normal part of courtship.
The story, from commission,
research, drafting, publication
and reader response,
can be traced
through the records of
the correspondence series
in the Germaine Greer Archive.
So how does the high priestess
of women's liberation,
as she was called, end
up writing for Playboy?
In the Playboy
interview in 1971,
from which this
image is taken, she
stated, "My role is simply
to preach to the unconverted.
I'm the one who
talks to Playboy."
Greer had expressed
in The Female Eunuch
that she considered both
men and women were victims
of patriarchy, and little could
be achieved without involving
men in the discourse.
In a letter from the period,
she states, "At the moment
I'm preparing an article on rape
for Playboy-- that is to say,
for the rapists."
In the same letter, she
says of sexual violence,
"It is obviously connected
with distorted feelings
of some kind.
One does attack the weaker--
children or ladies-- because
one feels weak and impotent
oneself."
So is there any point talking
to misogynists and rapists?
A document from the
correspondence series
gives us an indication of
the effect the article had
on Playboy readers.
This editorial mail
memorandum tells us
Playboy received 67
total responses--
28 positive, 25 negative,
12 forwarded to Germaine,
and two requests on reprints.
" 'Seduction Is a Four-Letter
Word' made me realize that I
was a two-faced, conniving
prick with absolutely no regard
for the feelings of those
girls who believed in my phony
sincerity.
As my penance, I have made
Germaine's essay required
reading for my teenage
sons, as well as
a topic of family discussion."
Another reader shared
the shocking revelation
that women speak
differently to each other,
as opposed to when
speaking to men.
"I think the first real
awakening came when I
heard some women talking alone.
They were in the root
cellar sorting jars,
and I was reading.
And I guess they
forgot I was there.
I heard them talking
and listened,
and it suddenly hit me that
they were talking differently.
So I went over and
said something,
and they talked,
knowing I was there--
shit."
So from this, can we say
that Germaine and Playboy
shared the same aims?
Freelance journalist
Craig [INAUDIBLE]
asked her, in
1973, to contribute
to a spread in which 10
noted personalities tell
what prominent individual
they think the world
would be best off
without and why.
Her selection was Hugh Hefner.
The phenomenal
presentation skills
developed by the
Hefner cartel can
persuade people who should know
the terror and beauty of love
that sex is wholesome
and sensible,
a necessary supplement to the
low-fat and expensive liquor
diet in building the
world's ruling class.
So when Playboy
telegrammed to advise
that she had won an award
for best article of the year,
she declined to attend
the presentation.
[LAUGHTER]
"Can't go to New York City
as Hefner's creature--
can't accept prize if don't go--
damned if I'll let
them keep the money,"
and donated the $1,000
prize money to the National
Organization for Women's
Legal Defense Fund.
Now, as an archivist working
on the Germaine Greer archive,
I've read somewhere in the
vicinity of 40,000 letters.
Many of these are
fairly routine--
things like printed
emails, requests
for comment, requests
for autographs,
offers to be a talking
head on BBC documentaries.
But interspersed are
some remarkable items
that drop you out of time,
such as this Playboy reader's
letter.
Seeing the trace of
a blue-collar guy
from Philomath,
Oregon, perhaps reading
Playboy in his lunch
break at the cannery,
picking out the
closest piece of paper
to hand to share his thoughts
on the social-sexual melodrama
of male-female relations to
arche-feminist Germaine Greer
feels like an
extraordinary gift.
[APPLAUSE]
Two lettuce leaves, two
thin slices of boiled egg;
five thin slices of
cucumber; an incomplete slice
of pressed tongue; a slice of
ham, six inches by four inches;
six thin slices of tomato;
and Schweppes tomato juice
and vodka--
the Women in Literature Series,
like others in Greer's archive,
juxtaposes material of
serious research interest
with other more
whimsical records.
A file of religious
sheet music also
contains a
handwritten transcript
of the lyrics to Lucille
Bogan's 1930s dirty blues
song, "Shave 'Em Dry."
The blank backs
of meeting minutes
showcase sketches and shopping
lists that, like this example,
are a kind of found poetry.
These touches of whimsy
sit within a series
which documents Greer's
serious and self-consciously
feminist work as a researcher
and publisher of early women
writers.
Chief among this work is her
setup of university programs
and centers like Tulsa that
research and teach women's
writing, and the conception
of Stump Cross Books
as a platform for the
careful republication
of scholarly works of neglected
and pioneer women poets.
Stump Cross produced
editions of the works
of 17th-century writers
Aphra Behm Katherine Philips,
and Anne Wharton.
Looking through these files
reveals Greer's commitment
to publishing craft
and tradition.
One folder holds this
small metal stamp,
used to emboss the spine of the
Stump Cross hardback edition
of Anne Wharton's works.
Held with samples of the
edition's cover boards,
the stamp sits alongside
files of correspondence
investigating and evaluating
printing and binding processes.
The Wharton edition was the
only Stump Cross volume produced
in both hard and soft covers.
Each of the softcover books
were bound, in Greer's words,
like French ones
in off-white paper.
Other collocated files hold
designs for the publisher's
phoenix emblem.
This phoenix reappears
in the corners
of Stump Cross Books' letterhead
and form correspondence,
slipped inside other files.
It is one of
Greer's many animals
which has left its
mark on this archive.
Throughout the archive,
we see an image
of Greer committed to doing
things right or not at all.
One of these
unrealized projects is
a collection of the poetry
of Anne Finch, Countess
of Winchilsea.
The Finch volume was
prepared in the late 1990s,
with publication slated
for the early 2000s.
Pieces of correspondence held
with the draft and research
materials for the volume
show the difficulties
that Greer encountered in
copy-editing and typesetting
it, and later attempting
to convert it to an e-book.
Reading through
this correspondence,
I had such a clear mental
image of Greer lying awake
at night, stressing out
over this cyber-book.
I was fascinated by
the design challenges
that the project threw up
and the reminder that 2004
was before the widespread
uptake of Kindle
and before publishers
agreed on clear standards
for e-book publication.
I also loved the idea
of Greer approaching
Bill Gates for funding.
[LAUGHTER]
The last item from the
series that I want to share
showcases another very
different type of technology.
This brochure advertises the
fantastically 1980s McLeod
portable collator.
This scholarly
editing device was
invented to allow the quick
visual comparison of two
copies of a published text.
This brochure sits
in the series,
along with 46 other
boxes' worth of material--
boxes that hold handwritten
correspondence and notebooks,
old published
volumes, photocopies
of manuscripts, library
call slips, index cards,
and even the occasional
sheet of microfiche.
These artifacts reveal
an image of Greer
poring over old
manuscripts, peering
into strange 1980s
mirrored devices,
and scrutinizing
elements of printing.
Moreover, in her
careful application
of these techniques, both
traditional and innovative,
these artifacts show a
researcher and a publisher
dedicated to promoting
the work of other women.
[APPLAUSE]
An archive is a
collection of things
that we want to remember, not
things that we want to forget.
But Germaine Greer doesn't
want to be remembered.
She wants to be forgotten.
And in the audio series of
the Germaine Greer Archive,
we have proof.
What do you want to
be remembered for?
Oh, I don't want
to be remembered.
Everyone always thinks
I'm making this up,
but I don't have ambitions
to clutter up the future.
I'm not a pharaoh.
I'm not building a
pyramid to myself.
That was Greer being
interviewed by Liz Green
for BBC Radio in 1999, long
after she'd begun preparations
for the eventual
sale of her archive.
So what does Greer
mean by, "I don't
want to be remembered;
I am not a pharaoh;
I am not building a pyramid"?
While the collection and sale
of an archive in some ways
contradicts her, there is
some logic to the statement,
"I don't want to be remembered."
Working with the
Germaine Greer Archive,
I have listened to roughly
150 hours of audio material.
Most of that is Greer talking.
The recordings are primarily
lectures, interviews,
radio appearances, and
personal audio diaries.
Listening through
these recordings,
I've had the opportunity to
travel through the everyday
with Greer, often sitting in
on lectures, conversations,
and long-distance car trips.
My purpose in
listening to the audio
has been to create
time-coded summaries, which
will guide the researchers
through the material.
Here is an example.
Basically, for every
couple of minutes of audio,
I wrote a sentence or two,
outlining what was happening
or what was said.
I've selected a short
sample to illustrate
how the time-coded summary
corresponds to the audio.
Here, Greer is discussing
the fetishization of women's
breasts in Western society.
I hadn't actually
realized how weird that
is until I was talking
to women in Sudan,
and I was talking about
augmentation mammoplasty
and breast surgery generally.
And they said to me, but
why would a woman do that?
Why would a woman have
her breasts operated on?
And I said, well, to
make them perkier.
[LAUGHTER]
Bigger-- and the women
said, but what for?
And I said, well, just--
well, I-- it's so men
would play with them.
And the women went, oh!
[LAUGHTER]
This photograph was taken by
Time-Life photographer Harry
Benson in 1971.
It shows Greer having
just arrived in the USA
for the book tour for
The Female Eunuch.
While on that tour,
Greer conducted
several lectures and
public appearances.
At the Archives, we have
recordings of two of them.
One is Greer in discussion
with students at Berkeley
on the topic, the
culture of rape,
and the other is Greer's
address to the National Press
Club in Washington, where
she was the first woman
to ever take the stage.
Listening to these
recordings today
highlights both how far we
have come in some areas,
but also how little in others.
The content of this archive
is extremely varied.
And in addition to
material focused on Greer,
there are Greer's recordings
of her interviews with others.
One of the more
recent recordings
is Greer interviewing
visual artist Rose
Wylie at her studio, for an
article for the Guardian.
During the recorded
interview, Greer
purchases a painting, Pretty
Dancer, from the artist.
We also have that
in the collection.
Over the years, Germaine
has been fully aware
that she was
building an archive.
It was done very
much with intention,
and there is evidence of this
throughout the archive itself.
Here are some examples
from the audio series.
I think we're going
to have to concentrate
on the side of the archive.
Got to finish the archive--
one hour a day on the archive.
The archive will put
matters right for posterity,
supposing posterity
should be interested.
[LAUGHTER]
At one point in an audio diary,
Greer gives the date and states
on the recording that it will
make it easier for whoever
gets her paws on the tape.
Being the person with
her paws on the tape,
I appreciate that gesture.
[LAUGHTER]
Archives are not
just for historians,
but they're also for
artists and creatives.
They're not frozen
in time, but they
transform as we
transform, as they're
read in the context of their
immediate surroundings,
as well as their
historical ones.
Maybe Germaine Greer really
doesn't want to be remembered.
While she will not
be easily forgotten,
my hope for the archive is
that, like her previous work,
it can act as a catalyst
for inspiration and growth,
not just nostalgia.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
16 months ago I entered the slow
world of the archive, not just
as a researcher,
but as a creator
of records for researchers.
There's been a few
challenges along the way,
and sometimes when I've
been unsure how to proceed,
the records have
provided an answer.
"As I would not be a slave,
so I would not be a master."
This is written in
Greer's hand on the first
of 551 double-sided
index cards that Germaine
prepared for The Female
Eunuch in 1969 and 1970.
Although the phrase
suggests equality--
neither master nor slave--
it also offers something more--
a liberation from these
categories and the frozen
tedium of patriarchy, which
is another form of slavery,
after all.
But I really like it
because it captures
something about the work
of archivists as well.
As these four outstanding
talks have demonstrated,
archivists are people who are
subtle, sophisticated, humble,
modest intellectual laborers.
And one of the best things
about my job in the last year
has been working
alongside archivists
and learning from them.
Archivists seek to not dominate
and not be enslaved by records,
but to free them.
When I pitched the idea
of a "Meet the Archivists"
event to Germaine, she
suggested we hold it
on International Women's Day.
Thank you, Germaine.
And she ended that email
with the observation,
"It is rare to find an
archivist who wishes to be met."
[LAUGHTER]
But I'm really glad to
have met Sarah, Laughlin,
Millie, and Kate, and
I reckon you are too.
I'm also glad to have met
Sebastian [INAUDIBLE],
who time coded the Italian
language audio interviews
with Primo Levi, Pavarotti,
and Federico Fellini.
I'd also like to acknowledge
Natasha Story, who's
a library cadet, but we
let her into the archive.
And she has cataloged
the Greer Archive books.
I'd especially like to
acknowledge Dr. Katrina
Dean, the university
archivist who
took this collection in and,
until about a month ago,
managed the Greer
Archive project.
Katrina has just left
Australia for a new role
at the University of Cambridge
as the curator of science.
But the archivist I want
to acknowledge most of all
is Germaine Greer herself.
Her record keeping is
diligent and self-conscious,
and this archive
has been constructed
with the subtle
mastery and mischief,
and the subversive brilliance of
her arrangements, inventories,
and file titles are yet
to be fully recognized.
So I'm just going to end
on this image of Germaine
and Katrina Dean
in the small wood
that Germaine planted
at her house in Essex,
thirty years ago.
Like a forest, the Greer
Archive is a seed bank,
a message to the future, whose
meaning is only just beginning
to unfurl.
And I'd really like
to welcome Germaine
to the stage to hear you talk
about your archive, Germaine.
So let's welcome Germaine
Greer, archivist.
[APPLAUSE]
Well, I'm feeling a
bit breathless, really.
[LAUGHTER]
I had no idea I
was so interesting.
[LAUGHTER]
But I am still earnest
in saying to you
that the point of this
archive is not me.
This is not about me.
It was never about me.
That may seem perverse
and odd, but some of you
will know, for example, that I
will not do print interviews.
Why don't I do print interviews?
Because the journalist
who comes to interview
me will have been given a job
by the commissioning editor
and will have been asked for
a particular kind of copy.
Give me knocking copy.
Catch her off her guard,
or give me gossip copy.
Tell me who she's
been in bed with.
And you can spend hours
with these people,
trying to get their questions
into a groove which is going
somewhere, and you can't do it.
You can talk to them
earnestly about things
you think are wrong and
things that could be changed.
And they will say--
they will describe your
demeanor as frenzied or savage
or something, when all
you were suggesting
was that maybe the editorial
in that morning's newspaper
was half-witted.
But you will be accused
of raving, and snarling,
and foaming at the mouth.
Everything will be described
as a confrontation.
And actually, I just--
the way this would go is that
you would be the celebrity.
And they would build
you up as this monster,
this strange human
and mythical hybrid,
and I did not want to go there.
And ironically,
I think it begins
when I came back to
Australia for the first time,
because I was known in England.
I was known from writing
in university papers.
I was known from
Cambridge University.
There was a real
surrounding for me.
But when I came
back to Australia,
I was a kind of mythical beast
that was returning from abroad.
And everybody had a
Germaine Greer story,
and I didn't
recognize any of them.
[LAUGHTER]
I realize that people were
reaching back into their past
and thinking of
something that was maybe
an anecdote that
they could maybe
reproduce in a new context.
So they were all
friends of mine--
that was one thing.
I was at Melbourne
University, and I think
we had 12,000 students then.
And I would think, you were.
You could well have been, but
that doesn't mean you knew me.
And in fact, I had
made myself conspicuous
at Melbourne University,
but through things
that I was earnest
about, like giving
lectures about sexual guilt
and the importance of escaping
from the conditioning of your
childhood and things like that.
I stuck my neck out, not that
anybody ever took any notes
or remembered what I said.
So I come back from England,
and I get told, oh, yes.
Yes, I remember when you
danced naked on the pub table
in, I don't know, The
Builders Arms, let's say.
And I'd think, you did?
Because ever since I've
been a little girl,
my one nightmare was
that I'd be caught
in public with no clothes on.
The idea that I would
actually get my kit off--
I can't dance at the best of
times, but naked on a pub--
and the thing is, by the
time I'd been here a month,
I'd danced on every
table in Melbourne.
[LAUGHTER]
And I thought, this can't go on.
This falsification
of real events
can't be allowed to continue.
What can I do about this?
But already, in a sort
of unthinking way,
I'd begun to keep things.
They weren't necessarily
things about me,
because one of the
most interesting things
about the second
wave of feminism
is that it coincided
with terrific creativity
from young women.
They were producing
these little fanzines,
these little magazines that were
drawn, that were photocopied,
that were stapled.
And I thought they
were amazing, and I
had a big collection of them.
But I had nowhere to put them,
and most of them rotted away,
and they weren't
on acid-free paper.
But there are--
I hope, I think--
there are a lot of
them in the archive.
And what I would
say now is-- now
that we're beginning to raise
the profile of the archive,
that we can say to people who
have some of these things,
let us have them.
Please, don't let them be lost.
Don't throw them away.
Let us have them, and
we'll take care of them,
because the point
about the whole archive
is that it's a portrait
of a moment, of a time,
not a portrait of me.
I cannot understand
why you would want--
well, I really can, I suppose.
I can, because the
celebrity section
of the Daily Mail
in England is edited
by a man who married
one of my best students
and somebody whom
I know pretty well.
And that's his job.
His job is to build these
ridiculous cabezudos they would
be called-- these
giant puppets who
are celebrities, who are
really famous for nothing
except being famous.
And this is a
media construction,
and they would've done
the same thing to me.
So I had to find
a way to avoid it,
and I could never be
completely successful.
So there was an image of me
as this kind of mad termagant
who would attack anybody
and who would do anything
for publicity.
Australians actually
believed that I
would go to the opening
of an envelope, which
wasn't the case at all.
And they never worked it out.
They still haven't
worked it out--
that I'm never on
the red carpet.
I could have been on the
red carpet, but I never was.
I've never had a dress made
to wear on the red carpet.
I never, ever, ever had
a celebrity lifestyle.
My life was work, and teaching,
and gardening, and animals,
and all those things.
It was not show
business, although I
did lots of show business.
I did lots of comedy,
started off doing comedy.
But comedy, for me, was
always a political weapon.
So I was in the
Cambridge Footlights.
I was one of the first intake
of women members of that.
That was partly because of
my background in university
theater in Australia.
It was just continuing
a habit, but it also
meant that there was a
different kind of life
from academe, for which I do
not have enormous respect.
I think when really
serious issues become
embroiled in academic discourse,
they are usually done to death.
But when you put
them on the stage,
and when you present them,
when you act them out,
it's a different thing.
So I did university
review, and then I
did Nice Time, which was
a very odd television
program, which I loved
because it was not satirical.
It did not take the
usual Cambridge position
of intellectual superiority.
It was about being very,
very silly and having fun.
And so we did things like,
we went to Barry Town Hall.
I mean, Barry in
northern England.
And we got ladies to
slide down the banisters,
or I would walk up to people
in the street and say,
can I give you a kiss?
And the old ladies would
say, yes, of course, dear.
And gentlemen in
pinstriped suits would say,
I think you're very rude.
[LAUGHTER]
But there were hard
things as well.
I remember once we paid--
we offered a man five pounds
to climb a lamppost.
And the bloody man climbed
it right to the top,
and he wasn't sober.
I stood there with the five
pounds thinking, don't fall.
We're all dead.
He didn't fall, and he was
a poor old chippy who'd
had to pawn his tools, which
is what happens when you drink
your wages, that you
then pawn your tools,
and you can't get
them back again.
So you're out of work
and da, da, da, da.
So there was always this nexus.
I was always trying
to dig into reality
and make things
vivid that might not
be in the normal run of things.
So get involved in the
underground press and all
of that, which has resulted
in the usual bugger up.
I mean, there's
Play Power, which
has a good deal of information
about my reproductive system.
What it's doing in the
book, I have no idea.
Richard sent me
the book and said
anything could be removed
that I didn't like,
and my position on
that is, if you're
prepared to do that, then you
have no privity as a writer.
Either you wrote it and
you want it published,
or you shouldn't have
written it at all,
and I won't even read your book.
And this has been the
position with every book,
so that me saying to Christine
Wallace, I won't help you.
If you have no better
way of earning a living
than to exploit
me, go right ahead.
But I won't help you,
and you shouldn't
expect me to help you.
And I didn't help her.
And the reason I
didn't attack her--
I didn't attack the book.
I didn't read the book,
but then found out
that I was supposed to have an
abortion about every six weeks,
and had to point out that this
is a physical impossibility.
Sorry, Christine, they might
be able to do it in Canberra,
but I don't think they
can even do it there.
So I've lived in this atmosphere
of fiction-making about me,
personally, and
had to resist it.
But also, I'm not interested.
When people want to talk
to me about me, I'm bored.
I don't want to even--
I don't want to explain myself.
I don't want to explain--
is it because of my
relationship with my mother
or my relationship
with my father.
I don't know why
I am the way I am,
but I don't feel any
necessity to explain myself.
I don't think it's interesting.
And I don't want--
the one thing I really
don't want the archive to be
is self-justification.
You can make
whatever judgment you
want of the way I've behaved.
Once I am no longer here,
I am yours to reinterpret.
And I can't control that, and
I don't want to control it.
I'm an old-fashioned
libertarian,
which means that I'm
actually an anarchist.
I do not believe in
censorship of any kind,
and that includes
pornography and all the rest,
which means that I've come
up against other feminists
in this regard.
But we have been controlled
by having our lips taped
shut for generations.
Why would I say, tape
somebody else's mouth shut?
I want to hear your reality.
I'll fight it, if I must.
But I won't ban it, and
I won't silence you,
and I won't want a
safe place where I can
say I can avoid being offended.
I'm offended every day.
[LAUGHTER]
The Sun newspaper
offends me every day.
The Guardian
offends me even more
because it is the world's most
hypocritical of newspapers.
It is the Sainsbury's
of newspapers.
It is just like all
the other newspapers,
but it pretends that
it's something different.
And that really
gets up my nerves.
So I'm prepared.
Let me tell you why I
don't want to explain--
I will never write
an autobiography.
My assistant keeps saying--
because occasionally,
I give her a little
tidbit to keep her going--
[LAUGHTER]
And she will say, oh,
you have to write a book.
You have to write a book.
And I say, no.
The autobiography
won't be written.
I will never write it.
And I was really upset
for Doris Lessing--
great writer,
Nobel Prize winner.
And her reaction when she was
told was she said, oh, god.
And I know that
feeling, absolutely.
Oh, god-- you give me the
one prize I didn't want.
But that's life.
But she capitulated to people
who started to pressure her
about her biography.
She capitulated by writing one.
Don't do it.
A biography is always
self-justifying.
You are explaining yourself.
And in a way, I
suppose I do subscribe
to that notion that says,
never apologize, never explain.
Do what it is you
have to do, and hope
that eventually
someone will understand
why you did it that way.
But don't ask pardon, and
don't excuse yourself.
And if you got it
wrong, you got it wrong.
Now, some of you may
know, for example,
that one day the Guardian
rang me up and said,
Steve Irwin's just been
killed by a stingray,
and are you upset?
[LAUGHTER]
And I said, no.
And they said,
are you surprised?
And I said, no.
[LAUGHTER]
And they were offended.
They said, why aren't
you surprised and upset?
And I said, because
he had it coming--
oop.
[LAUGHTER]
So I tried to explain
that he treated animals
without respect, that he created
ridiculous fantasies about them
having wicked intentions,
being vicious and cruel,
and that he was
leading understanding
of the natural world into an
impasse, a ridiculous impasse.
And I was kind of
relieved, really,
that the stingrays had
been there to do the job.
[LAUGHTER]
And the result of
that was a huge drawer
full of hate mail,
which I think,
perhaps, the archivists
haven't found yet.
[LAUGHTER]
But it was very interesting,
because people would come up
to me in the street.
They'd come up,
and they'd go, ah,
I think you were quite
right about Steve Irwin.
[LAUGHTER]
Which, I now realize
there's more than one kind
of censorship, that
people were afraid to say
that he was an embarrassment.
And then, of course, after
at least two months, academe
tiptoed into the
limelight and said,
well, we tend to think that
maybe he had, in some way, hm.
And they managed
to say-- what I'd
said two months before,
in words of 1 syllable,
they managed to obfuscate
in words of 25 syllables.
But it came to the
same thing in the end,
and I think it's true to
say that that way of dealing
with native Australia,
natural Australia,
is no longer acceptable--
that we no longer fantasize
about the intentions of
animals who we're harassing,
and corralling, and
sentencing to death
in myriad dreadful ways.
So the reason for
the archive, then,
is not to give a picture
of me, but to try and give
a picture of the moment,
because it would be encapsulated
in all kinds of ways.
It would have been described
under various cliches,
and people would have no way
of knowing what it actually
felt like at the time.
When a mother writes
a letter to me,
telling me what a
slut her daughter
has become because
of my writing,
that, itself, is interesting.
It's interesting that
the mother would be so
disloyal to her own daughter.
But then my job is to
write back to her and say,
is it any surprise to you
that your daughter behaves
the way she does, when
you're prepared to write
to a total stranger
in these terms?
Now, those letters
will turn up in time.
The important thing about them--
[LAUGHTER]
They're there-- I know.
But the important thing about
them is not that I wrote them.
That's not the issue about them.
What is really
important about them
is the two different
ways of thinking
about things that are
coming into sharp conflict
at this point.
There are all kinds
of letters like that.
The letters from
ordinary people are
more important to
me than the letters
from celebrities, of which
there are very few, in fact.
But when-- and in
the very beginning,
when I began thinking about
finding a home for the archive,
the first question, the
first queries we were given--
and I think they might
have come from the National
Library of Australia--
were, what letters
from celebrities
are there in the collection?
And so I had to go
through the collection,
and it's full of, god
help me, ordinary people.
I don't actually think that
ordinary people are ordinary,
as it happens.
I think it's
probably celebrities
who are truly, truly ordinary.
And so I was caught
up in this thing
where I had to try and maximize
the number of celebrities.
And that was a
funny exercise too,
because there are
quite a few in there
who wrote to me before
they were celebrities.
And the trick there is
to find out who's who.
It'll be great fun, I
hope, for the people
involved in actually
sorting out the archive.
I tried to make it
as clear as I could.
Everything is labeled carefully
and, generally speaking, dated.
Now that I'm here,
I think I'm going
to supply a key to
the people who've
annotated the letters, because
I know their handwriting,
so I can tell you who they were.
This is only by way of setting
things in their context
as much as you can.
The important thing is
to avoid mythologizing.
There are all kinds of things
in the archives, some of which
I might've destroyed.
There are some really, I think
for me, very painful tapes
that I recorded
when I was involved
in a really damaging
relationship, in which I'm
in absolute anguish.
And I would rather the
people didn't hear that,
but it has its relevance to
who, and what, and where.
I'm nervous about it.
I don't mind what happens
to nude images of me.
They were published at the
time, and they had a purpose.
It may seem very odd to
you, and it is kind of mad,
that when I was-- when
Suck magazine was set up--
now you've heard
[INAUDIBLE] magazine.
You've probably
never heard of it.
All of this is
happening in Europe.
And one of the things that's
really important to me
here is that Australians
have no idea what
I've been doing for 78 years,
because no Australian newspaper
took up any of my work.
The Age did occasionally,
towards the end,
but decided I was too expensive.
So you never knew that,
whereas English people
know how my mind works.
They really do know,
because they've
been reading me every week for
years, and years, and years.
And the ones who disagree
know they disagree,
and the ones who
don't are the people I
talk to every week in England.
But I have never spoken
to these audiences here.
And so because I
am Australian, I'm
really pleased that you
have this muniment now.
And you can find out
what it is that I've
been doing all this time,
but not because it's me,
but because I couldn't
have done any of it
if I hadn't been Australian.
And this may sound
very odd, but it's
one reason for my
thinking in my own way,
and being content to
think in my own way,
and to follow what I would have
thought of as common sense.
Unfortunately, in
latter years, Australia
has fallen for all kinds
of ridiculous bullshit.
And it's no longer hard-headed
and no longer says,
this is crap.
We fall for all kinds of
crap, especially the kind
that has silk flags, and
incense, and all that.
And people say--
people ask me about,
how important is
the thinking of one
or other Buddhist
to my position?
Especially the ones
in Gucci loafers,
I really can't be
doing with them.
They want me to like
Aung San Suu Kyi,
and I don't because of
what's happening to tribals
in the Rohingya and Myanmar.
And she is a daughter
of one of the founders
of the military
state, and she hasn't
upset their apple cart one tiny
little bit, and so it goes on.
But so, not going to write
my own self-justification,
not going to write
concessions, not going to write
a kiss-and-tell--
my big worry about
writing a kiss-and-tell
is, I think that most
of the men involved
have actually forgotten.
[LAUGHTER]
And I'm beginning to forget.
I keep meeting people
and thinking, did I?
[LAUGHTER]
Could That have?
This man is obviously
a total prick.
How could I?
And then I think,
well, maybe I didn't.
It's not quite that
bad, but it's not good.
And I suppose somebody
will come along.
I'm told there are a
number of new biographies
in the pipeline, and
I wish them well.
They can sit and puzzle about
who various people might be,
who've signed various bits
and pieces of paper like,
we can't go on meeting
like this, that I've kept,
because I know who they are.
And whether other people get it
right is not the issue, really.
It's there will be
gossip, and there will
be silliness and all of that.
But more important is
the voices of the people
who have spoken to me.
And I wish I could tell you that
I've answered every letter I
was ever sent and treated
it with due respect,
but it wouldn't be true.
Some of the letters are
too difficult to answer,
and I would give myself a
hard time for weeks thinking,
how do I deal with this?
And then it would be
too late to answer it,
and I would let it go.
And that is not as
bad as it might be.
It is very unusual in a
collection of this kind
to have the two sides
of the correspondence.
This is important in itself,
but we haven't always got it.
But what, for me,
was important was
what people were saying to me,
which was more important to me
than what I would
be saying to them.
I would answer as
well as I could,
but I didn't feel I had
any divine authority when
I answered.
And if you look at it,
it's cost a fortune.
Be quite clear about that.
I had to build a building
to keep the archive in.
The hundreds filing
cabinets were
arranged in an
office where there
was temperature control,
and humidity control,
and all of that.
All of this costs
money, and very often I
didn't have the money.
In the very early years, I
didn't really keep everything.
All kinds of things
kind of accumulated
and didn't get thrown away,
and they got lugged from one
lodging to another.
And then it was only
gradually and after the visit
to Australia in
'71 that I thought,
I've really got to
do this properly.
This is more important than
anything else I'm doing,
because if you
want to understand
how attitudes changed, then
this is one way to find out.
And it's not easy--
it's difficult.
But it's not even simply
that either, because you also
discover how some aspects of
people's reactions to things
don't change, how there is
a kind of kernel of decency,
I would say, and concern,
and people struggling
to express themselves.
And it is, to me--
for me, I'm glib.
It's easy for me.
I was trained in glibness.
But a lot of the letters that
you'll see in the archive,
people are not glib at all.
They're struggling
to put it into words.
And to me, it touches my heart
that they're entrusting me
with this evidence of their
feelings, and their confusion,
and their despair, very often.
I suppose I think that the
archive is, in a way, sacred,
that it's a sacred trust.
And so my job was
to find people who
would take care of it, who would
treat it with the gentleness
that it deserves.
I've been very touched by
these speeches this evening--
a bit too much about me,
not enough about the cat.
[LAUGHTER]
Christopher was an
extraordinary cat.
Christopher was a human.
He was just disguised as a cat.
And everybody but me hated him,
because I spoiled him so badly
that he would run-- if
they didn't pick him up--
he travelled on my shoulder
nearly all the time.
But if I wasn't there, and he
wanted to be on a shoulder,
he would just run
up somebody, which
tended to remove large
quantities of skin.
[LAUGHTER]
So you came within an ace
of being flung in the pond
or strangled, but
he was a great cat.
There was one-- when I
had visitors in the house,
he hated it.
He hated people being
around, and so he
would go into the kitchen
and get in a cupboard.
And he would sit in the
cupboard, staring at the wall.
[LAUGHTER]
And I would say,
Christopher, come to bed--
staring at the wall.
And I'd go up to bed,
and he wouldn't come.
And then eventually I'd
think, I can't bear it.
I couldn't sleep.
He slept here for 15 years.
So I'd go down and get
him out of the cupboard.
And he would purr loudly
all the way up the stairs,
because he'd won.
[LAUGHTER]
In the end, he became
very thin and very ill,
like a little Bombay beggar
in his big red fox coat.
He was a great cat, but none of
my cats were less than great,
I think I have to say, except
that I then discovered dogs.
And I always thought I wasn't
grown up enough to have a dog.
But when I started to
wear glasses, I thought,
I've got the glasses, so
now I can have the dog.
And so I got two
standard poodles, who
are the best dogs in the world.
They are so funny, and
they do jokes all the time.
And if you applaud,
they do them again.
[LAUGHTER]
They are so good at
knowing about how
you are interacting with them.
But I'm too old now
for a dog, and I
miss my last dog,
Michael, every day.
And Michael will be--
I haven't-- there is not a
lot of gush about animals
in the archive.
There's rather more--
I feel really
sorry in some ways,
because one of the problems
the archivists have
is that I never took
personal photographs.
So there are no
photographs of me,
and my family, and
holidays, and da, da, da da.
I wasn't interested in that.
I never-- the whole thing of
lining up for the photograph,
I absolutely hate it.
And I hate seeing
children who are already
used to it, age three, and
are standing there going--
[LAUGHTER]
I just think, what have we done?
We've turned all these
people into ridiculous masks
of themselves.
So there's no-- what
there are photographs
of are invertebrates, many.
Now, what you're going to do
with them, I have no idea.
There are also
incredible numbers
of pictures of trees,
flowers, bits of vegetation.
I know what they all are.
Now, what the archivists
haven't realized
is I'm here now, because
we're going to go through them
and label them.
They haven't even
figured that one out.
And there are thousands of them.
And what is more, they're
not even very good.
[LAUGHTER]
But we can't just have drawers
full of pictures of leaves,
and nobody knowing
what they are.
We'll see how far we
get with this notion.
We could, surreptitiously,
just shovel them
into an incinerator somewhere.
But you never know,
because we might lose
quite a few of those plants.
In the current state that we're
in, with heat traveling down
the country at an
extraordinary rate,
we may discover
that a great many
of these subtropical
plants go out of existence.
And so there is some
sort of a record
that they did exist in
Cave Creek, which is where
my rain-forest project is.
I don't want to--
I'm supposed to
talk for 40 minutes,
but I think it's a bit too long.
When did I start?
Half an hour ago, I think--
I want to just
thank you, really,
for responding to the
presence of the archive,
for being interested,
and for-- and especially
for the generosity
of the assistance
we've had, because it's
not cheap, all of this.
It wasn't cheap for me to
create, as we wrongly say,
the archive.
I didn't create it.
I just kept it.
That was expensive.
Cost-- I didn't ever
bother to taut it up.
I have no idea.
But it also costs a lot now
to sort it out, and make
it usable, make it
searchable, and make
it available to people.
But you will be able to use it.
You will be able
to-- for example,
supposing you've got a
story to tell about 1987.
You can search the archive
for the correspondence of 1987
and find out who else is
thinking of the same things.
Why are these
questions being asked?
And the other question-- why are
they asking me, because I don't
necessarily have any answers.
It could be an
extraordinary resource
for people looking for the
history of their own time,
really, and the development
of our ways of thinking
about the big issues
in our civilization.
That's the job I wanted to do.
I want to revive something
which was very important
for Cambridge University.
Cambridge University
invented something
called social history, where,
instead of doing David Starkey
stuff about royal gossip,
you actually asked yourself,
how many people were starving?
What were people eating?
How did people
end up in the war?
What did the Civil War mean
for people living in Wales,
for example?
And anybody who's read my book
on Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's
wife, will see that it's infused
with this spirit of finding out
what was actually going
on for ordinary people.
Now, Cambridge History no
longer does that to that extent.
And there's been a kind of
wandering away towards what
I call fake history--
things like Wolf Hall.
Why make it up?
Just find out what happened.
And people didn't talk
that ridiculous language
you made up there.
There's plenty of
evidence, and we need
to know how to deal with it.
So what is really important
for me about the archive
is that it's this big lump of
hard evidence about the years
when I have been on earth.
I don't know everything
there is to know about them,
and I'm sure there
are plenty of people
who would, if they
cast me in the drama,
would deal with me as a
celebrity, or a self-promoter,
or a self-publicist,
or something.
They have every
right to do that.
I will say nothing about it.
I will not justify myself, and
I won't censor what they do.
If you knew how many books
I'm in, it's ridiculous.
I can't understand it.
One woman even wrote to me
a few years ago and said,
I have put you in my new book.
I've never met you,
but you're in my new--
so god knows what's in
her bloody new book.
I never read it, but
it's got my name.
This is craziness.
If you were to put together all
the books that have me in them,
you'd pretty soon realize that
I can't be any of those people,
because they're all
completely different.
It's like reading
reviews of your work.
Those of you who write
know that every time you
have a book reviewed,
every reviewer
has a different opinion.
And if you tried to
follow them, you'd go mad.
So the only thing
you can do is keep
on plugging, doing
what it is that you do,
and just hanging on to your
own rag of self-belief.
So I'm here to
thank you, really,
for coming this evening.
I'm so touched that you're here.
And I want you to feel that
you can use the archive,
that you can use it for whatever
journey of discovery you're on,
and that you don't have to
have letters after your name.
You don't have to be some
grand academic panjandrum.
You just have to be
somebody who is earnest
in your search for truth and
who will be hard on yourself
and try hard not to
indulge in self-deception.
You will possibly-- if you
use the archive at any length,
you will be puzzled
by my absence from it.
At least that's, in a
way, what I hope for.
And there are other things
where I'm all to present.
And there is, for
example, a meditation
on the Ethiopian famine, which
was a tremendous watershed
in my life, which was actually
recorded when I was lying
on the mortuary slab
because there was nowhere
for me to sleep in
the famine shelter.
And the only place to sleep
was the mortuary slab.
Most people never made
it to the mortuary slab,
because they died so fast, they
went straight into the ground.
But I had a luxurious evening
on the cold mortuary slab,
trying to understand why it was
that we can't deal with famine,
why it always comes
as a surprise,
and we never know what to do.
It's pretty easy
to know what to do.
People need to eat-- put some
food in your aircraft carrier,
and sail it to the
country in question.
But we've never done that.
We've never been serious.
And those of you who
are interested in things
like famine relief
or in reclamation
of devastated landscapes
in Australia and elsewhere,
there is something for you
all in this collection.
But it doesn't
necessarily come from me.
It comes from all the community
of us, working together
to deal with these questions.
So once again, thank you
so much for being here.
I hope that the
archive turns out
to be an asset for
Melbourne University,
for people who want to study
at Melbourne University,
and for Australia itself, and
that it shows a new way, maybe,
of approaching recording
one's own time,
and taking it on board,
and making it available,
creating continuities where
it's difficult to see them.
So thank you again.
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, whichever one.
I want that one.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK.
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]
So we've got some
time for questions.
There's about 15 minutes.
So there's people
with roving mics.
Please wait for the
microphone to come to you,
and keep your questions short.
Make them questions
is a good one.
Yes, this woman in
the front with the--
just while the
microphone's coming,
I would like to say that we have
found the response to the Steve
Irwin column.
It's about 1,000
pieces of hate mail.
And I have to just add that
I was cataloging that the day
that Hillary Clinton was
losing the American election,
and, well, that was
how it was turning.
And I was actually
quite devastated
by the level of misogyny
in those responses.
And that's all, yeah.
OK, so let's hear the question.
Germaine, I wanted to ask you
what you think about the LGBTI
and inclusion and diversity
policies that are sweeping
through schools and
universities at the moment,
where young people who are
different are finally feeling,
perhaps, like women did
in the '60s and '70s--
that they're being accepted,
and whether you observe and have
relationships with
young people going
through those sorts
of social change.
Well, you probably know this
has been a problem for me
in some ways, partly
because of the way
I wrote about the man-made
woman in The Whole Woman,
where I was arguing that
the man-made woman is
taking precedence over the
woman-made person, really.
And I just wasn't buying it.
I don't buy the
notion of gender that
is being used, because The
Female Eunuch is all about how
women get taught gender.
You get born with sex,
which is tough to deal with.
Then you learn gender,
which partly involves
a denial of what your sex is.
For example, you don't
menstruate blood.
You menstruate blue water, and
it doesn't smell of anything.
Well, I've got
news for you guys,
and so on, so that what's
happening to biological women--
cis women, as we are
now to be called--
is not being dealt with.
Misogyny is rampant,
and it shows
in every level of
social legislation,
whether we go from
childbirth to care homes.
And it's just getting
worse, and worse, and worse.
There's no money.
There's no dignity.
There's no respect.
And at the same
time, we are being
asked to be understanding
about a group of people
who believe that they're
born in the wrong body.
Now, most of us
felt, as we headed
for menstruation
and adolescence,
that we were in the wrong body.
Who asked it to start
leaking, and smelling,
and all this stuff?
And I don't know
about in Australia,
but in England, if
you watch daytime TV,
it's full of ads about
how to stop women leaking.
It's full of incontinence
or continence pants,
discreet sanitary
napkins that means
you can be a terrific sports
person any day of the month.
And what is this about?
It just goes on and on.
There's nothing yet.
Well, there's L'Oreal
as well, of course.
In between giving babies
baby milk and killing them,
L'Oreal is telling Helen
Mirren that she's worth it.
I feel like giving her
a diet of baby milk,
yes, baby milk for the next
10 years, but never mind.
So the thing is, I'm not
joining that particular--
I don't even talk
about it, because I
can't, because it just
starts screaming and yelling.
And I've had things
thrown at me.
I've been physically attacked.
But the pretense
is always that it's
me that's offending
everybody, and I'm not.
I'm not even discussing
it, but I won't buy it.
I will not buy it.
If 51% of the population
being told by a small minority
that they are not real women,
because the small minority
are real women--
the academic position now is
that women are to be called--
born women are to
be called cis women.
And if you read later gender
studies emanations from
academe, they are utterly
frustrating and maddening,
and they don't-- and at the same
time as all this is happening,
the actual delivery of social
services to women just gets
worse, and worse, and worse.
So my position on this is
that I'm not going there.
If four-year-old children
are telling their parents
that they're in need
of gender reassignment,
something has gone
completely, crazily wrong.
And I really--
I do think that the
medical establishment needs
to think about the ethics
of destroying healthy tissue
and inculcating a lifetime
of medical treatment
in people who started off
physically perfectly healthy.
That would be
unethical at any stage
in the history of
Western medicine,
but somehow now it's being
accepted under this banner.
And my position on
this is a man who's
lived to be 50, has been
married and had four kids,
and driven a truck
the whole time, who
thinks he was a girl all
the time is simply mistaken,
and that's it.
I'm not going there.
It's not my issue, and I can't
defend it, and I don't want to.
They're very good at
doing it themselves.
OK, so that's--
I think we've had a--
so I would like
another question.
I think we've had a full
answer to that question.
Artie, would you like
to ask a question?
I should see that
Artie represents
the Victorian Lesbian Feminist
Liberation Archives, which
are also housed at the
University of Melbourne
archives repository.
It's probably one of the
world's largest grassroots
representations of all
sorts of women's liberation
and radical movements.
Artie?
Thanks, I would like
to know if there's
anything that you
regret putting in,
or that you wish you had put in.
Or what's your favorite
thing that you put in,
or your least favorite
thing that you put in?
[LAUGHTER]
I can't answer that question.
Well, I'm not good at
regretting things, you know.
If I get punished for doing
something, then I'll cop it.
But I probably won't
repent doing it.
And if I've drawn fire--
I don't even regret doing
it about Steve Irwin.
1,000 hate letters is--
I could decide to be scared,
but I think my scared bone got
left out when I--
I just can't be
scared about that.
I could be mown down by
a drunk driver tomorrow.
I could kill myself as a drunk
driver tomorrow, probably.
[LAUGHTER]
I just-- I think I've
been insensitive about
as often as most people are.
And if I were to think
about it, really--
for example, when I used to
talk about domestic violence,
I had no idea that my mother
was abusing my father.
I didn't know.
And now, when I know
that she kicked him
downstairs, and beat
him with the broomstick,
and shut him out of his
house, and starved him--
but my mother was
high-level Asperger's.
I should forgive her.
In fact, I haven't forgiven her.
I can't do it, and not
because she beat up on me,
but because she beat up on him.
But she was frustrated.
She was demented, probably.
She was a handful, my mother.
And I was only little when
my father wasn't there,
in the war, and
there was nothing
to protect me from her
wild paroxysms of rage,
which I think were not even
caused by her condition.
She was a housewife.
She wasn't working.
My father took care of her.
She had a very easy
life, except that she
was a woman of great energy
who had nothing to do,
and which drove her crazy.
And she beat up on everybody
else because of that.
I wish I had understood
better, and I'm
going to talk about
domestic violence
with the vice
chancellor tomorrow.
And I'm going to have
to say, we've made--
in those days, it seemed
very much a gender issue.
But I don't think it is a gender
issue, because it involves
elders, it involves
children, and it also
involves psychological cruelty.
In the middle classes, you're
less likely to get belted
than you are to have your
whole self-confidence eroded
by your partner's sarcasm
and his contempt for you
that he doesn't
scruple to hide, even
when you're among strangers.
So my understanding
about domestic violence
has had to undergo some changes.
But it doesn't make me
regret what I wrote before.
What I wrote before was
what I could write before,
and I couldn't write
this other stuff then.
And that's-- we make our way.
One of the things that
interests me about women
is that our lives, I think,
would be so much easier
if we were all gay.
Our problem is that we
are so heterosexual,
and we're actually more
heterosexual than men are.
And that means that we're
at the mercy of men,
and we just don't know.
We're even at the
mercy of our own sons,
whom we can't help adoring.
And our relationship with
our daughters is different,
and these are the
problems that we
have got to deal with if
we're going to ever arrive
at an even playing
field where we
can treat each other decently.
It's tough, and I don't
think I have all the answers.
All I've ever done is try
to consider the question.
OK, is there another question
on a really serious topic,
because we're covering--
yes, the woman in--
[LAUGHTER]
No, I don't mind
questions on silly topics.
Oh, yeah, that's good.
Yes, congratulations
and thank you.
And I'd like to hear you
say something about religion
and being human,
divinity and being human,
and gods and being human.
And why exactly is that?
Oh, thank you-- because I'd like
to know what Germaine Greer--
where she places these
facets of humanity.
Now then, you've asked the
question in an interesting way.
Let me say this, and
this is probably going
to be tomorrow's headline.
[LAUGHTER]
There's a few things to choose
from, I think, Germaine.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Well, it goes like this.
If God exists, I am against him.
I do not want to go to heaven.
I do not want to live with God.
I have lived with people
who thought they were God,
and I definitely don't
want to be anywhere
near the real McCoy.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Yes, the person down the
front with their hand raised--
this is going to be
the last question.
I'm sorry.
He has the most beautiful name.
His name is Langsam.
He's Mr. Slowly.
Thank you, St. Germaine.
In the 47 years since you
wrote The Female Eunuch,
there's been a
massively increased rate
of women's participation
in all facets
of Western developed world.
I heard you mentioning Theresa
May in less-than-generous terms
earlier.
And my partner is
absolutely certain,
as is my older sister,
that Hillary Clinton lost
the election, not because
she was a bad candidate,
but because she was a woman.
So my question is
a serious question.
And it gives you the opportunity
to look back over the last 47
years and tell us what you think
has really changed for women
and what hasn't changed
for women in that period.
Look, it's a huge question.
But let me simplify
it, in a way.
What everybody has accepted is
the idea of equality feminism--
that women should earn
the money that men earn.
They are hypnotized
by this question.
And as far as I'm
concerned, equality
is a profoundly
conservative aim.
It will change nothing.
We now live in a
world where war is
made against civilian
populations, where it's
women and children who are the
principal casualties in places
like Syria, whether they're
being driven ahead of the storm
or whether they're in
collapsing buildings,
or bombed schools, or
all the rest of it.
War is now completely
made of the rich,
with their extraordinary killing
machines, destroying the poor,
who have no comeback.
And if women-- women
want to be in the army.
Women want to be in government.
Women want to be in
the corporate world.
They won't get to the top
unless they're already
organization people.
Mrs. Thatcher was the most
warlike prime minister
the English have ever
had, and she is guilty
and will remain guilty
of a massive war
crime, which she got away with.
And war crimes are being
committed every day by us,
but we don't end up in court.
Other people end up in court,
whom we can beat the crap out
of.
Women are drawing level with men
in this profoundly destructive
world that we live in.
And as far as I'm concerned,
it's the wrong way.
We are getting nowhere.
And to say we're going to have
a female prime minister, apart
from the fact that you should
be aware that Theresa May got
this job because whoever
has it will never
rule the country again.
It's a traditional
poisoned chalice.
But Mrs. Thatcher had a
poisoned chalice as well.
They got her to do
their dirty work.
And when she'd done
it, they slung her out
like a piece of trash.
She left Downing
Street in tears.
She must be the
only prime minister
who was ever reduced to that.
As far as I'm concerned right
now, we're getting nowhere.
If we're going to
change things, I
think we're going to have
to start creating a women's
polity that is strong, that has
its own ways of operating, that
makes contact with civilians
in places like Syria,
that actually begins to show
a network that challenges
the right of destructive nations
to bomb the crap out of people
they don't agree with.
Everything has to change.
But we knew that
at the beginning.
If what happens when women join
the army is that they discover
that the army is no place
for a sane human being,
then they've learned something,
and we can move on from there.
But right now things are
looking distinctly grim.
OK, so that's not that upbeat,
but I think we can end.
[LAUGHTER]
But I think perhaps
it's possible to agree
that Germaine is not able
to say anything dull.
You've answered everything
with such a lot of energy.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Well, good evening, and happy
International Women's Day.
My name is Philip Kent, and
I'm the university librarian
and executive director of
collections here at Melbourne.
At the end of 2012,
our vice chancellor
invited me to
investigate the offer
of the archive of
Professor Greer,
on behalf of the university.
It's been an
exciting four years,
and we're all very proud of
the work of an enormous team
to have made this
milestone tonight.
On behalf of all
of us, I would like
to think Germaine and
our archivists who
spoke to us tonight for their
insightful contributions
to our proceedings, and
also to help us celebrate
International Women's Day.
And we have some
flowers to give to you.
[APPLAUSE]
We also have flowers
for our archivists,
who spoke so well tonight.
[APPLAUSE]
You really made us
proud, thank you.
I'd particularly
like to acknowledge
the work of Dr. Rachel
Buchanan, the Greer curator,
for orchestrating
this major project
and for contributing to much
of the intellectual planning
for tonight.
I also acknowledge the
considerable leadership
of Dr. Katrina Dean,
university archivist,
during the past
four years, and also
thank Sue Fairbanks, our
acting university archivist,
and to all of her
staff in the archives
for their contributions.
Throughout the project, senior
support from Teresa Chitty,
our then director of
research and collections,
was indispensable.
We welcome Teresa back tonight
from her new role as university
librarian at Adelaide.
Thank you, Professor Julie
Willis, a long-term friend
and supporter of the library,
for welcoming us tonight
on behalf of the senior
leadership of the university.
And I'd also like to
acknowledge, in her absence,
the support of Professor
Margaret Sheil, our provost,
who is, unfortunately, overseas
but sends her apologies
tonight.
I will be eternally
grateful to our donors who
helped us acquire the
Germaine Greer archive,
and to help us process it.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you to them and
their proxies and friends
who are here tonight.
Also, in terms of
advice and support,
we thank Steven [INAUDIBLE] and
his predecessor, Ian Renard,
chair, and their supportive
members of the Archives
Advisory Board for their
contributions over this period.
Considerable logistics
were necessary to organize
the event for 500 people and
a wait list of 400 tonight.
Thanks to the professional team
of Angela Flood and colleagues
from eternal--
external-- eternal relations.
[LAUGHTER]
I think they think that
every time I approach them
with another great idea.
But thank you to Angela
and her colleagues
from external
relations, as well as
our old friends in
learning environments,
for recording the event tonight.
In the foyer are multiple
copies of a publication produced
by the library to mark the 40th
anniversary of International
Women's Day 10 years ago--
sorry, 2 years ago.
Written by Dr. Juliet
Flesch, it salutes
40 women who made a contribution
to the life of this university.
You are welcome to take a
free copy from the foyer.
Thank you for coming
tonight, and we look forward
to welcoming you to
other events hosted
by the university library
and archives in the future.
Thank you very much, good night.
[APPLAUSE]
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
