Let me say this — rape is banal: Germaine Greer

She is 80 and every bit as contentious as ever. The celebrated feminist, intellectual, polemicist lays it on the line

March 08, 2019 05:26 pm | Updated 05:26 pm IST

We’re afraid of ambiguous states. A woman issuing blood is at a boundary: Germaine Greer

We’re afraid of ambiguous states. A woman issuing blood is at a boundary: Germaine Greer

I was taken aback when she agreed. Everyone had said she was ‘difficult’. But Germaine Greer unfussily said yes to an interview. And there I was, walking a bit nervously towards her hotel room. It was a golden afternoon in Thiruvananthapuram, made more limpid by the Scotch Greer made me order through what she called the “impossible” intercom.

Then we sat down to what in an old-fashioned world would be a ‘coze’. And that’s how Greer spoke, easily, laughingly, as if she’d known me a lifetime, launching into a long story about her recent fall (she had a walking stick), her distrust of doctors, her long links with India — “India, you break my heart!” — and how she lost her sense of smell (and taste) when she got whooping cough. On that note, we dismissed the cookies and set up the recorder. “Okay, let’s go!”

Greer has written about being a liberation feminist and not an equality feminist, so I began with women fighting for entry to Sabarimala. “I will ask why,” she said instantly. “If it were a golf club, it would be fine. They could say we only allow women with red hair in. Why can’t we women start a club where the men are begging to be let in?” Greer disagreed with the court’s ruling. “I think the decision by the court, a secular authority, to ask a religious establishment to abide by their decision is profoundly wrong. India depends on a concept of freedom of religion.”

Didn’t it make her angry that women were considered “impure” for a few days each month? “It’s nonsense!” she said. “Not even typical of Hinduism.” She described a tankha she’d seen (in an industrialist friend’s home) that had Kali dancing on Shiva — “the tankha was painted with menstrual blood,” she pointed out.

Greer was more interested in “women’s power and the fear of that” — the male fear of invasions of bodily integrity; of menstruation (emergence of eggs or life) and pregnancy (carrying life inside). “We’re afraid of ambiguous states,” she said. “A woman issuing blood is at a boundary.”

Get rid of menstruation

Here, Greer became brisk. “We produce 13 eggs a year but we don’t even have one baby. How does that make sense? Surely someone can say: you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to keep producing seeds that won’t be planted, especially as there’s a health dividend.” She spoke of excess oestrogen and breast cancer, blood loss and anaemia. “I say, let’s stop menstruation. Let’s get rid of all this blood. We can’t afford it.”

We moved to contraception, the Emergency, and India’s demographic transition. Greer said, “You will now ask, what about sex selection?” When I nodded, she continued, “I think if it’s your body, your pregnancy, it’s your decision.” If the woman says she needs a son because her in-laws will torment her, “I will not judge her.”

Was she saying sex selection shouldn’t be penalised? “I don’t agree with prosecuting women. I need to hear her story. I need to treat her with respect. I need to help her.” Kerala had achieved demographic equity and Haryana might take longer, said Greer, but “it has to happen the right way. I trust women.”

For Greer, courts are not necessarily the best tool for social reform. She sees society, religion, men and women changing organically from within. One way to effect that would be education, but wasn’t women’s education itself a source of social conflict? “It’s one of the causes of extreme violence. Men tell themselves that women have taken their jobs. Take Nirbhaya. She was educated, travelling at night, and those goondas, those idiots, wanted to punish her.”

That brought us to rape and the views that have made her so unpopular lately. “What makes me angry,” Greer said, “is that everyone talks of the rape of Nirbhaya. That’s not the most important thing. She was murdered. That’s what you have to remember. She lay on the road, gutted.”

How then does one deal with rape? Greer said, “I’ve been raped, I know what rape is. And let me say this: rape is banal. The penis wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that he was hitting me and forcing me to say ‘f* me’. I was 19. I’m thinking, he can stand in court and say I said that. But I wasn’t consenting — he was bashing my head in! Now, I can’t even remember. I try to remember. Where was the steering wheel? Of course, the steering wheel wasn’t punching me, which is probably why I can’t remember it.”

P for predator

So we don’t criminalise rape? “No!” Greer exclaimed. “The history of rape as criminal offence is tied to the status of minority groups. Most people jailed for rape are members of minorities.” Greer, of course, has an offbeat solution, one she’s often spoken of. “What about a tattoo? P for predator; R for rapist...”

Rape trials, for Greer, stumble because the accusation has to be proof; instead why not believe the woman and reduce punishment? She indignantly recounted the case of Ashraf Miah in the U.K., jailed for 13 years for attempted rape: “Of course, he frightened her! But she could’ve been frightened by a spider! You don’t imprison a spider!”

Her trademark outrageous one-liners can be misleading outside context. #MeToo? “It’s a fashion.” Take back the night? “We’ve never had the night.” Sexual freedom? “Sex is a blood sport, you get hurt.” But a pattern emerges. Was she saying some of our expectations are unrealistic?

“As a man walking at night, your chances of being kicked into the gutter and everything taken from you are very high. We imagine the world is safe for other people when it actually isn’t. If I go walking in my rainforest in Queensland, I have to tell someone where I am going. I could fall down, be bitten by a snake. I can’t just wander off. I might like to think that’s freedom but I’m afraid it’s stupidity.”

Greer once said, “There’s no point in growing old unless you can be a witch.” At 80 now, was she a witch? “I wish I was a witch!” she exclaimed, with real wistfulness. “In my rainforest in Australia, there are many, many pythons. Because I live with them, I can walk amongst them, sit with them, and they’re not frightened away. That’s like being a witch. I love it.”

We talked of pythons, of ageing, of limping, surviving. We watched an eagle circling over the treetops against a sun blazing downwards. Is that how she will go? In a blaze? “No!” she said. “No fuss! I hope I fall into a waste disposal unit.” I laughed at her odd wish, and she continued. “I am not afraid of death. I’ve had an amazing life and I’ve been very lucky. And that will have to do.”

vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in

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