Germaine Greer had a point when she said it was not on for Westerners to criticise poorer nations, and their practises. However, I am talking about women of Middle Eastern descent and Oz citizens who are having this operation without consultation with them. I believe I am right in questioning what happens to Oz women.

You make the point that circumcision of small boys and there being no outcry about it. Here you are wrong. There was an outcry about it but it happened just before the AIDS epidemic swept the world. Subsequent research revealed that male circumcision was a deterrent to this disease. the outcry died down.

Like you I have always been a great admirer of Greer’s work.

You again dodge any real dissection and refutation of the assertions Nowra makes about Greer in lieu of a few cheap shots. It’s almost as though you are trying to bait me (and others) into making the sort of misogynist statements that would validate your your framing of the whole discussion as women haters attacking female writers because of their sex. It’s a handy way for you to avoid any real engagement, sledge other posters in ways you would probably decry as sexist if you were the subject of them yourself, and try to take the moral high ground.
Putting on gender war blinkers must make taking positions on issues easy, but really, it’s intellectually lazy.

If you would like some starting points to refute have a look at Sammy’s post- there are a few good ones listed there.

“(ScottyP) his insults which are far longer and detailed against women”

What are they? You’re verballing him. He might be a ratbag, but we need to see the rat and the bag. It’s called evidence. Something missing in Hellrazer’s piece and virtually all the comments.

“You then give me a reading list of what I “should” be reading…”

The “reading list” consisted solely of the article you excoriate but haven’t read.

Verballing again.

So Crikey, with all the money you made from this piece of linkbait, how about you actually commission someone to write an actual critique of The Female Eunuch 40 years on? For Nowra certainly hasn’t.

I picked this topic up while linking to ‘comments’; one of them interested me, and here I is!

Nowra has critiqued Greer’s book-40 year anniversary. Helen Razer is not happy about what he wrote.

(I have TFE, I got it when it came out. It did not change my life).

I don’t know who Nowra is. I have heard the name that’s all. I care little about what he or anyone else writes, if I simply am not interested in reading same.

I don’t know who Helen Razer is. She is entitled to her view, AND how she puts it.

So is Nowra.

I DO know of GG. I do not particularly like her, she is arrogant and elitist, and has written little about women who really DO need a little ‘liberation’.

Bob Ellis came up. What an arrogant prat! He has done very well out of his friendship with the SA Premier after making a documentary about same-which nobody I know has ever seen, let alone purchased. Ellis then took a lucrative ‘consultancy’ role with the SA Government..

I care little that JLH put sparklers on her bits,-if she wants to do that, that’s her business. (I once saw a pic of a fellow with various bits of ironmongery hanging off his salami. That’s also his business).

FORCED mutilation of female genitalia is foul. That is different and is rightly strongly condemned.
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Of all these posts I can most closely relate to the one put up by SAMMY 10/3-10.56am.

I’m inclined to agree with him.

The irony of feminism is that it has been spruiked by women who least need it, to women who were simply unable….unable!! to achieve it. With one exception the Pankhurst’s did much the same thing.
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I’m NOT being patronising, but I’m buggered if I’m going to get worked up about the opinions of Nowra/Greer/Ellis.

I have no interest in any of them, and thus I won’t waste my energy giving a Wombat’s scrotum for what they say.

‘night.

Cath is right - the Female Eunuch was about everyday realities for women not some mythical space. That is why it had such an impact on women’s lives in Australia in contrast to the sophistry of Nowra.

Venise - of course female castration is on the topic - it just takes the neatening of female genitalia to the extreme. It is the same thing, to think that female genitalia needs to be medically fixed to appeal to a man.

Actually it is more relevant than I care to think. I hear stories from Middle Eastern sources in Oz that this barbaric practice happens right here in Oz.

Although I admit, in penitence, that I did wander off-post a little.

Rather than insulting the earnest ScottyP, shouldn’t you (a) read Doyle and expose his foulness (b) dissect Nappystak’s editorial credentials (c) analyse Robert Personne’s fitness for office?

As usual, expozay, dissection and analysis are absent from both article and comments. It’s all so…Bolty. Intellectual pantomime.

I would love to read a decent comeback to Nowra’s piece- if it came from a woman, great. Good writing and good arguments aren’t the sole domain of one sex are they?
Your allusion to woman trouble is rather lame (and I can happily inform you, innacurate), and considering your insistence in framing this whole discussion as a Men vs Woman thing probably reflects more disfunction in your relations with the opposite sex than in mine.
In a display of irony that Razer could learn from you’ve no doubt had to wipe a tiny bit of your own angry sputum off your keyboard after writing your post.
Of course you haven’t really bothered to engage with any of Nowra’s article either- it’s so much easier and more theraputic to rage against the misogyny and sling around a few angry posts isn’t it? Where is the considered engagement? Razer hasn’t provided it, and after your post and several others it still has yet to make an appearance.

According to Wikipedia Nowra was born Mark Doyle who started a degree at La Trobe University.

Germaine Greer is a Melbourne University graduate and went onto complete degrees at Sydney and Cambridge [PhD], she is Emeritus Professor of English at Warwick University

This act of barbarism and charming procedure, happens at the hands of a female ‘elder’ and is frequently performed with a piece of blunt stone. Ah the joys of religion!

I’ll bet that if this operation became fashionable a whole lot of young women in Oz would have it done! After all, what else is left after one’s fanny resembles a twelve year old girl?

SBH is right.

FRANK CAMPBELL: I don’t want to depress you, but going on his mother’s performance, I’d say Rupert Murdoch is good for quite a few more years.

It’s up there for me with the Brazilian (I mean, who *doesn’t* want to look like a 12 year old girl?), and labial cosmetic surgery (for that honeymoon-fresh vajayjay).

We were born with certain characteristics and aging is one of these things. We are supposed to have pubic hair, peeps, as much of an evolutionary throwback as it may be, and when you have a baby, well, let’s just say everything kind of gets rearranged down there. It doesn’t mean that I want my girly bits to go back to how it was - it’s a reminder of one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I should add that being 12 years old was pretty comprehensively sh*thouse and I’m in NO hurry to go back there either.

If *you* feel the need to make with the perky on your pinkbits, knock yourself out. Just don’t pretend like it’s the “normal” thing to do, or that you have good self-esteem while you’re doing it.

Why don’t we all break with tradition and read it? Then do a Giggles Byrne Tuesday book club thing…I’ll put a big flower on me ear, a Hardy perennial…