Germaine Greer tells Louis Theroux ‘smart women should marry truck drivers’ because couples in career competition don’t work – and reveals flirty friendship with George Best
Germaine Greer has suggested that intelligent women could be happier if they married ‘truck drivers’.
The feminist and author, 85, told the Louis Theroux Podcast: The idea that couples have to ‘compete with each other’ in their careers is ‘a bad idea’.
Explaining her comments, she told podcaster Theroux: “Women always think we need that status with our husbands.
‘He doesn’t think he needs that status with us. So there has been an imbalance from the start.’
Speak of Castlemaine in Australia, she referred to the relationship between married poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, saying that history remembers Hughes as a “great poet” while Plath is remembered as a “female poet or a martyr.”
On Louis Theroux’s podcast, academic and feminist Germaine Greer said women think they need their husbands to have ‘status’ – but men don’t feel the same, so ‘there’s an imbalance from the very beginning’
During the episode, which lasted an hour and 15 minutes, Theroux also pressed Greer about her flirtation with the late footballer George Best.
Although she denied having an affair with the Manchester United legend, she admitted she got ‘completely entangled’ with the late star.
She said: ‘I was at him. He was also a damn good football player. But I mean, what happened there is I ignored George.”
The pair met at The Brown Bull pub in Manchester, she reveals, saying: ‘One night I was there sucking suds and he said to me, you don’t like me, do you?’
Speaking about the “No Platform” or cancel culture that has evolved, she told Theroux that no one has a “God-given right to speak.”
The academic also referred to a flirtatious friendship with George Best; saying that while she didn’t “immediately jump on him or vice versa,” she did like him
She replied, “George, for God’s sake, there isn’t a woman in this room you don’t like. What do you think I am? A monster? Abnormal.’
Despite the flirting, she said, “I didn’t immediately jump on him or vice versa.”
During the episode, Greer also said students were right to protest her views on transgender issues, saying no one has a “God-given right to speak.”
The intellectual reflected on her controversial appearance at Cardiff University in 2015, in which she made transphobic comments.
Almost ten years ago, she told those present during the guest lecture: ‘I don’t believe that a woman is a man without recognition. You can hit me in the head with a baseball bat. It still won’t change my mind.’
Students from the educational institution protested before Greer’s performance and outside the venue on the day.
Referring to the protests against her over anti-trans comments she made in 2015 by Cardiff University students, Greer said she respected their right to “shout her down.”
In the podcast episode, Theroux suggested that “the left may be more censorious and” less tolerant of dissent and more opposed to freedom of expression.”
Greer, who rose to fame after writing The Female Eunuch in 1970, responded by saying of the protesting students: “I’m on their side. If they want me to keep my mouth shut, fine. Go for it.
‘I expect students to rebel, I expect them to object and I expect that as a teacher I have to play in my corner. I don’t worry about people shouting at me, shouting away!’
