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Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility
sex and destiny
480 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 1984
18 people are currently reading
551 people want to read
About the author
Germaine Greer
84 books673 followersGermaine Greer is an Australian born writer, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), and most recently Shakespeare's Wife (2007).
Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), and most recently Shakespeare's Wife (2007).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 2, 2023
This stuff is my fire accelerant. Known Greer may be today for her comments on trans people, this absorbing reflection on the politics of fertility stimulates a wide cross-linked discussion on the homo economicus, ideology as a material fabric of sanctions and rewards, Western tunnel vision, the contradictory demands of Third-World development, gerontocracies and civilizational dead ends. Unexpected overlap with Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Lev Gumilev and our own Dominique Willaert. If some of it is outdated (especially on the dangers of certain technologies of anticonception), the general thrusts and Greer's bold political extrapolations, too grounded to degrade with the term 'speculation', will have me mulling over them for months.
My grandmother, who passed away in June, was born to a family of 13. She herself gave birth to 12, of whom 10 survived, and found room to adopt one more. Widowed at 60, never in wage labour, she devoted her life to cultivating the vast family network, her church community and the tightly-knit local civil society. Through her kin, she belonged to a Catholic educated upwardly-mobile petty bourgeoisie. Money and modernity opened doors not to a career but to a generously-tended family that composed a microverse of its own, its value self-evident to those inside and an anachronistic oddity to those who were not. On the side of my in-laws, we find a single mother who struggled her way from a Turkey in the confusing throes of post-CHP euro-integration, professional society still scarred from its own political upheavals, to a stable and steady Belgium, quickly shuttering inroads to foreigners. Where Belgium has dipped below replacement birth rate in the early 70s, Turkey still counted over 2,5 children per woman by 2000.
These numbers are but an index to a complex social contract, decided on by no one but participated in by all, perpendicular to economic laws at the same time as being the precondition to them. In Belgium, children shut parents and mothers in particular out of the avenues promising most power and options, especially for women. Greer notes correctly that many events spicing up Western life (traveling, culture, partying) demand mothers take measures before they can participate in them. The Large Family must develop its own resources; the state can offer tax breaks, but not the community conducive to rearing it, let alone positive reinforcement unquantifiable in economic terms. Turkey, as with many countries not fully integrated in the universal wage labour (today 35% of women work for wages, the brunt of total female labour time being devoted to household and family work), has many of these structures remaining alive, especially in rural Anatolia. Where migrants to the West settle in clusters of their own, these patterns of reinforcement can for a few generations survive and high fertility rates are sustained. But sooner or later the corrosive demands of market society, with all its cumulative penalties for motherhood, cheapen these incentives and mothers are 'integrated' in the 1,5 child household average we experience as the norm. My mother-in-law, who found little of value in the culturally restrictive environments tended by these expat communities, was forced to work twice as hard in the regular labour market, competing against prejudice and the power of employers over poorly-networked newcomers. Her daughter remained without siblings.
In this way, both of our families took a unusual trajectory and ended up with family structures askance from their peers. I never devoted much analytical thought to them, before Greer made me aware of the vast interaction of conditions, economic and social in a broader sense, making these possible or necessary.
Conservative parties gratefully make use of these dynamics, on which politics still only have a tangential grasp, as Greer forcefully demonstrates. But their proposals (Polish or Hungarian-style motherhood subsidies, outlawing of abortion as in the US, a superficial 'respect for mothers' as proposed by the Flemish extreme right) are the symptoms of social fever, not its cure. None of these policies have gone towards repairing the social fabric torn up by two centuries of high-speed capitalist development; all they can offer is a cosplay version of an idealized past, the bearers of which they don't care to understand themselves. Greer sees this illness as terminal: the West is a senile civilization, with no language or tools left to regrow the social sphere. Where the state or market tread, families die. I'm not so sure, but what is certain — as she herself argues — is that this fabric was the result of a blind selection procedure, developed accidentally over ages. If society stabilizes long enough, the odds are it will develop this cocoon again in due time, by no thanks to official policies.
My grandmother, who passed away in June, was born to a family of 13. She herself gave birth to 12, of whom 10 survived, and found room to adopt one more. Widowed at 60, never in wage labour, she devoted her life to cultivating the vast family network, her church community and the tightly-knit local civil society. Through her kin, she belonged to a Catholic educated upwardly-mobile petty bourgeoisie. Money and modernity opened doors not to a career but to a generously-tended family that composed a microverse of its own, its value self-evident to those inside and an anachronistic oddity to those who were not. On the side of my in-laws, we find a single mother who struggled her way from a Turkey in the confusing throes of post-CHP euro-integration, professional society still scarred from its own political upheavals, to a stable and steady Belgium, quickly shuttering inroads to foreigners. Where Belgium has dipped below replacement birth rate in the early 70s, Turkey still counted over 2,5 children per woman by 2000.
These numbers are but an index to a complex social contract, decided on by no one but participated in by all, perpendicular to economic laws at the same time as being the precondition to them. In Belgium, children shut parents and mothers in particular out of the avenues promising most power and options, especially for women. Greer notes correctly that many events spicing up Western life (traveling, culture, partying) demand mothers take measures before they can participate in them. The Large Family must develop its own resources; the state can offer tax breaks, but not the community conducive to rearing it, let alone positive reinforcement unquantifiable in economic terms. Turkey, as with many countries not fully integrated in the universal wage labour (today 35% of women work for wages, the brunt of total female labour time being devoted to household and family work), has many of these structures remaining alive, especially in rural Anatolia. Where migrants to the West settle in clusters of their own, these patterns of reinforcement can for a few generations survive and high fertility rates are sustained. But sooner or later the corrosive demands of market society, with all its cumulative penalties for motherhood, cheapen these incentives and mothers are 'integrated' in the 1,5 child household average we experience as the norm. My mother-in-law, who found little of value in the culturally restrictive environments tended by these expat communities, was forced to work twice as hard in the regular labour market, competing against prejudice and the power of employers over poorly-networked newcomers. Her daughter remained without siblings.
In this way, both of our families took a unusual trajectory and ended up with family structures askance from their peers. I never devoted much analytical thought to them, before Greer made me aware of the vast interaction of conditions, economic and social in a broader sense, making these possible or necessary.
Conservative parties gratefully make use of these dynamics, on which politics still only have a tangential grasp, as Greer forcefully demonstrates. But their proposals (Polish or Hungarian-style motherhood subsidies, outlawing of abortion as in the US, a superficial 'respect for mothers' as proposed by the Flemish extreme right) are the symptoms of social fever, not its cure. None of these policies have gone towards repairing the social fabric torn up by two centuries of high-speed capitalist development; all they can offer is a cosplay version of an idealized past, the bearers of which they don't care to understand themselves. Greer sees this illness as terminal: the West is a senile civilization, with no language or tools left to regrow the social sphere. Where the state or market tread, families die. I'm not so sure, but what is certain — as she herself argues — is that this fabric was the result of a blind selection procedure, developed accidentally over ages. If society stabilizes long enough, the odds are it will develop this cocoon again in due time, by no thanks to official policies.
January 31, 2016
I picked this up from the library with good intentions to read it an educate myself about feminism and sexual politics and all that gubbins. Because I was only seventeen I didn't read all of this (and almost certainly didn't understand all of it), but what I did read was very interesting indeed. Some of what Greer says seems overly controversial (asking for argument) but a lot of it made a lot of sense - from comment on Western attitudes to children, to the shackles that fertility puts on male and female behaviour (I recall, perhaps incorrectly, a description of men as " deafened by their own spermatogenesis"), and the impact of 20th century contraceptive advances. It made me feel informed and stimulated when I first read it, perhaps I'd be more cynical were I to read it again at twice that age.
March 5, 2012
Re-read this after reading in August 2011. Excellent intelligent insight into childbirth & motherhood and the comparisons across cultures. As stated in the introduction it is not bossy in that it is not telling you to think a certain way, there are no generalized opinions or bias points of view, it's just intelligent, mature and informative as it should be - highlighted many interesting lines..
September 30, 2010
A powerful, enraging book. A wake up book to the political/economic realities of sex.
December 5, 2014
I don’t usually consider myself a feminist (other than believing that women should have equal rights), but this books is very persuasive –mostly since it is so well-written. Some of the points she brings up are depressing –more so, because they are true.
July 27, 2023
GOATED read that has been rotting on my shelf (the floor of my apartment) for 3 years. Eugenics, fertility, sterilization, abortion, contraception – the destruction of female autonomy by the “intellectual” white man prevails! This was such a challenging read, but one of the most rewarding. Each chapter was a revelation, and despite me needing a dictionary on hand throughout the book, my interest never lulled. The stance Greer takes throughout the book is a subtle one; she offers suggestion and opinion, but it isn’t entrenched in the pity for her sex that she could easily latch on to. She is logical and scrupulous, but never whiny. She wasn't redundant and offered truly in-depth research and perspective on every topic she covered. I felt there couldn't have been a stone left unturned. I'm reading Melinda Gates' "Moment of Lift" alongside this, and let me tell you, Germaine Greer makes Gates look like an amateur and a fool. (The books consider a lot of the same global issues, and one is far more convincing and compelling than the other).
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
From the chapter "The Fate of the Family":
"The received idea of the ultraleft is that Soviet moves to weaken the family by the institution of state nurseries, the facilitation of divorce, the ideology of free love and the legalization of birth control and abortion, were modified because the family was found to be the necessary training ground for the submissive citizen, and so it is, but not quite in the way that revolutionary Marxist orthodoxy sees it. What state capitalism realized was that the nuclear family is the most malleable social unit; houses were built for it, social services catered to it, and its descendants were drawn off into training institutions and its parents into state care. State capitalism and monopoly capitalism necessitate the same patterns of consumption, mobility, and aspiration," (261).
From the chapter "Changing Concepts of Sexuality":
"The ways in which sexual exposure leads to personality destruction and fears of worthlessness are intimately bound up with systems of prestige and privilege. In some ways modern woman has a harder row to hoe than the woman who knows that her integrity is safeguarded as long as she throws her veil around her whenever she goes out of the house, for the modern woman must be sexually active, must be prepared to take the initiative, and yet is only too open to cold-blood exploitation and public humiliation, which cannot be righted by her brothers' chastisement of the offender(s)," (236).
"In promulgating those values as scientific facts, we are actually promoting the methods of manipulation and control which maintain our own pseudo-democracies, and we are doing it principally at the level of the executive class who are the representatives of Western monoculture in traditional societies. The onslaught on cultural identity resting in traditional values which have no institutional expression is deadly, even in countries like India, which have made a concerted attempt to preserve ways of life which are deemed contemptible and incomprehensible by the ruling class of the world. The sex reformers, who exhibit no respect for traditional values and address themselves to sexuality without interest in or comprehension of the whole personality, are the bawds of capitalism," (251).
From the chapter "Abortion and Infanticide":
"The struggle for control of the uncontrollable . . . is itself a legacy of the thousands of years of history in which human society has been ruled and has been publicly constituted by the sex that does not menstruate. It is clearly wrong for the pregnant woman's wish to override the "experts'" own convictions of the correct course to follow, whether from a professional or a personal point of view. To use a practitioner's skill, intelligence, and industry against his will is to reduce him to the status of a machine. The struggle for free abortion is undertaken precisely because we see that to reduce any person to that status is wrong, whether it be as a baby-producing machine or a baby-killing machine," (214).
"When well-meaning missionaries moved heavenly and earthly authorities to stamp out the evil of infanticide, they succeeded both in unbalancing the population and in condemning female children to slow death rather than immediate annihilation by a merciful opiate. The lesson is clear-if you will not feed them, do not condemn them to life-but it was never taken," (216). (This one makes me think of Beloved by Toni Morrison)
"Women presenting for abortion. . . are shielded from grief, which would be appropriate, and from guilt, which is not. The only guilt to be borne is that which relates to the clumsiness and the tardiness of the measures taken to free the woman from pregnancy: she is doing the only possible thing, but those who should help are making the business more painful, more traumatic, more dangerous and more costly than it need be. The real guilt is theirs, for the only acceptable medical care is the best possible, and the medical profession does not deliver it and never can until it is wholly committed to immediate abortion on demand," (223).
And from the final chapter, "The Myth of Overpopulation":
"The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people's reproductive behavior, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not," (474).
"The only possible coherent motivation in offering family planning services around the world is a desire to help people, families, individuals, to do what they want, not what we think the ought to want. If we allow the recipients to define their needs, we would save all the millions of dollars we squander on defining needs," (475).
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
From the chapter "The Fate of the Family":
"The received idea of the ultraleft is that Soviet moves to weaken the family by the institution of state nurseries, the facilitation of divorce, the ideology of free love and the legalization of birth control and abortion, were modified because the family was found to be the necessary training ground for the submissive citizen, and so it is, but not quite in the way that revolutionary Marxist orthodoxy sees it. What state capitalism realized was that the nuclear family is the most malleable social unit; houses were built for it, social services catered to it, and its descendants were drawn off into training institutions and its parents into state care. State capitalism and monopoly capitalism necessitate the same patterns of consumption, mobility, and aspiration," (261).
From the chapter "Changing Concepts of Sexuality":
"The ways in which sexual exposure leads to personality destruction and fears of worthlessness are intimately bound up with systems of prestige and privilege. In some ways modern woman has a harder row to hoe than the woman who knows that her integrity is safeguarded as long as she throws her veil around her whenever she goes out of the house, for the modern woman must be sexually active, must be prepared to take the initiative, and yet is only too open to cold-blood exploitation and public humiliation, which cannot be righted by her brothers' chastisement of the offender(s)," (236).
"In promulgating those values as scientific facts, we are actually promoting the methods of manipulation and control which maintain our own pseudo-democracies, and we are doing it principally at the level of the executive class who are the representatives of Western monoculture in traditional societies. The onslaught on cultural identity resting in traditional values which have no institutional expression is deadly, even in countries like India, which have made a concerted attempt to preserve ways of life which are deemed contemptible and incomprehensible by the ruling class of the world. The sex reformers, who exhibit no respect for traditional values and address themselves to sexuality without interest in or comprehension of the whole personality, are the bawds of capitalism," (251).
From the chapter "Abortion and Infanticide":
"The struggle for control of the uncontrollable . . . is itself a legacy of the thousands of years of history in which human society has been ruled and has been publicly constituted by the sex that does not menstruate. It is clearly wrong for the pregnant woman's wish to override the "experts'" own convictions of the correct course to follow, whether from a professional or a personal point of view. To use a practitioner's skill, intelligence, and industry against his will is to reduce him to the status of a machine. The struggle for free abortion is undertaken precisely because we see that to reduce any person to that status is wrong, whether it be as a baby-producing machine or a baby-killing machine," (214).
"When well-meaning missionaries moved heavenly and earthly authorities to stamp out the evil of infanticide, they succeeded both in unbalancing the population and in condemning female children to slow death rather than immediate annihilation by a merciful opiate. The lesson is clear-if you will not feed them, do not condemn them to life-but it was never taken," (216). (This one makes me think of Beloved by Toni Morrison)
"Women presenting for abortion. . . are shielded from grief, which would be appropriate, and from guilt, which is not. The only guilt to be borne is that which relates to the clumsiness and the tardiness of the measures taken to free the woman from pregnancy: she is doing the only possible thing, but those who should help are making the business more painful, more traumatic, more dangerous and more costly than it need be. The real guilt is theirs, for the only acceptable medical care is the best possible, and the medical profession does not deliver it and never can until it is wholly committed to immediate abortion on demand," (223).
And from the final chapter, "The Myth of Overpopulation":
"The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people's reproductive behavior, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not," (474).
"The only possible coherent motivation in offering family planning services around the world is a desire to help people, families, individuals, to do what they want, not what we think the ought to want. If we allow the recipients to define their needs, we would save all the millions of dollars we squander on defining needs," (475).
August 10, 2017
A well researched look at attitudes towards childbirth, motherhood and fertility across many cultures. Raises an awful lot of questions about how socially constructed these attitudes and mores are.
A really thought provoking and insightful book, if it is controversial at times it only highlights how unsettled some of our conventional wisdom on this topic really is.
One of Greer's more incisive and to the point books, quite easy to read.
A really thought provoking and insightful book, if it is controversial at times it only highlights how unsettled some of our conventional wisdom on this topic really is.
One of Greer's more incisive and to the point books, quite easy to read.
November 22, 2017
Second wave feminism was to a huge extent based on the idea “women are better than men, because they have babies; and babies are important “
Most of the real life feminists I talk to nowadays deny that sort of biological stuff matters.
Most of the real life feminists I talk to nowadays deny that sort of biological stuff matters.
November 27, 2019
Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility shows how children have become a commodity in the Northern hemisphere.
February 25, 2024
A book quite advanced for the time it came out (80's). It covered a lot of topics and was very informative!
October 8, 2023
Germaine Greer is and has been many things, feminist, social critic, and for me a timeless oracle.
She has always been ahead of her time and much smarter than most. I have read a few of Greer's books, and I picked this up really due to all the talk, mostly by dangerous men and woman from the WEF, and of course one of history's biggest villains who unfortunately still lives among us; Bill Gates, all talking of the need for population control. In the opening Greer states: that in the industrialized West, we have created a society that does not like children. Moreover, our children do not like us. Our fear of exploding populations is seen as a phobia, held by our own rich, greedy, infertile, Caucasoid sub-group, that our standard of living is threatened by the economic demands of the over-fertile poor at home and abroad. She regards the low birthrate in the West, and the sorry place of mothers, children and old people in the developed world, as the end-point of economic and political forces that we may recognize but do not know how to remedy.
As usual with Greer no one escapes their lumps. Well worth reading!
She has always been ahead of her time and much smarter than most. I have read a few of Greer's books, and I picked this up really due to all the talk, mostly by dangerous men and woman from the WEF, and of course one of history's biggest villains who unfortunately still lives among us; Bill Gates, all talking of the need for population control. In the opening Greer states: that in the industrialized West, we have created a society that does not like children. Moreover, our children do not like us. Our fear of exploding populations is seen as a phobia, held by our own rich, greedy, infertile, Caucasoid sub-group, that our standard of living is threatened by the economic demands of the over-fertile poor at home and abroad. She regards the low birthrate in the West, and the sorry place of mothers, children and old people in the developed world, as the end-point of economic and political forces that we may recognize but do not know how to remedy.
As usual with Greer no one escapes their lumps. Well worth reading!
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March 17, 2019I have the original and the german edition: Heimliche Kastration
July 15, 2024
Almost a diatribe
July 28, 2009
This book made a huge impression on me. One of these days I'll go back and re-read it.
April 5, 2017
A thought-provoking book. Greer is critical of condescending, ham-handed Western interventions in family planning in developing countries. She's a powerful polemicist.
April 26, 2019
I have the big hard copy....Is it any different than the little soft covers?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews