A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.
Germaine GreerRead
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
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the misconception that sexuality hinders women's personal development in feminist movements.
Germaine Greer argues that it is a common but misguided belief that embracing one's sexuality negatively impacts a woman's ambition and educational pursuits. Instead, she asserts that it is the expectation for women to adopt a submissive sexual role that diminishes their drive and capability to succeed in and out of the academic world.
Themes
SexualityFeminismEmpowermentEducationFeminine
In practice
Example use cases
In a women's studies class discussing the complexities of feminism.
More from Germaine Greer
All quotes →The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Germaine GreerRead
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.
Germaine GreerRead
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.
Germaine GreerRead
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.
Germaine GreerRead
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Germaine GreerRead
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