Male Chauvinism and Radical Feminism:
Aristotle and Germain
Greer
Apparently, there is nothing uniting Aristotle, the
great Greek philosopher born in 384 b.C., and
Germain Greer, the outstanding feminist militant of
recent years. There are more than 2300 years
dividing them, in all senses. They have radically
opposed mentalities and ideas about women and men.
Their visions are irreconcilable.
And yet there is a common point, at the level of
their writings: the disdain, the contempt of both
towards the other gender. The arguments of Aristotle
against woman are very similar to the sweets of
Germain Greer about men. In this particular case the
extremes meet themselves, and none remains behind
the other.
See what Germain Greer (and Marilyn French) says
about men:
Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily
struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it
to the caresses of a subhuman ugly mate?
Women have very little idea how much men hate them.
Germain Greer, Australian feminist, The Female
Eunuch
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their
relations with men, in their relations with women,
all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They
rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their
codes.
Marilyn French, American feminist and writer, The
Women’s Room
And see what Aristotle wrote about women:
Women are defective by nature (…). A woman is as it were
an infertile male.
Aristotle, 384-322 b.C., Greek philosopher,
Generation of Animals
It is the best for all tame animals to be ruled by human
beings. For this is how they are kept alive. In the same
way, the relationship between the male and the female is
by nature such that the male is higher, the female
lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.
The courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman
in obeying.
Aristotle, 384-322 b.C., Greek Philosopher, Politics
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Quotations
Present and recent feminism. Top feminists writers and
militants.
Simone de Beauvoir
It is not in giving life but in risking life that
man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority
has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings
forth but to that which kills.
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than
housework, with its endless repetition: the clean
becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over,
day after day ...the years no longer rise up toward
heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical
Simone de Beauvoir, 1908-1986, French writer, The
second sex
Jane Fonda
A man has every season, while a woman has only the
right to spring.
Jane Fonda, American actress in Daily Mail
13/9/1989
Shana Alexander
When two people marry they become in the eyes of the
law one person, and that one person is the husband.
Shana Alexander, American journalist, State-by-State
Guide to Women's Legal Rights
Florence Kennedy
If man would be pregnant, abortion would be a
sacrament.
Florence Kennedy, American feminist, Ms. Review,
March 1973
Louisa May Alcott
Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the
lords of creation don't take the advice till they have
persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended
to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they
give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it
fails, they generously give her the whole.
Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888, American
writer, in Little Women
Charlotte Whitton
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men
to be thought half as good.
Charlotte Whitton, 1896-1975, Canadian writer, in
Canada Month, June 1963
Marilyn French
I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who
does the dishes’ she said. So do I. But at the end,
there are always the damned dishes.
Marilyn French, American writer, The Women’s Room
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