Germaine Greer @ NAC

So, I'm a woman. I'm a lucky woman who is free to be herself - to be independent and enjoy a career, choose to have as many children as I want (or none), to marry (or not), to have sex with people of either and all genders whether or not I intend to have a relationship with them, and to wear anything that takes my fancy. I can travel, educate myself to whatever level I want and earn and keep my own money. Sometimes I forget to sit back and appreciate all the breaks I have been given in my life.

Germaine Greer, Feminist, Author, Rainforest Supporter, Academic and Woman, is here at Norwich Arts Centre to speak to us about The Disappearing Woman. The venue is jam-packed with a million trillion women, and a very few men. There are some young, mostly-in-their-40's, some older - a real cross-section. Greer has always been a controversial and outspoken figure - very recently she's been in the news allegedly claiming that Caitlyn Jenner cannot be a woman. There were there some rumours that a LGBT protest was in the offing for tonight's event, but nothing of the sort occurs. 

Germaine takes to the stage after having been introduced by a woman from Norwich City Council, who speaks with some personal passion about the inspiration that Germaine has given her over the years. Perched on a stool, dressed in black, she cuts quite a presence, and the audience are pretty damned excited to see her. She speaks for an hour and quarter about a whole range of topics; Indian female babies being left to die, the recent change in the one child birth policy in China, the lack of maternity wards and midwives in the UK, the high rate of stillbirths in this country, abortion rights, contraception being prescribed for under 15's and the treatment of old women in care homes. She offers facts and statistics, explained throroughly and with anger, passion and outrage. She speaks clearly, with a dry humour and a great sense of timing, and gets us all thinking deeply about some things that I guess are generally sadly swept under the carpet, not only by men but equally by women. When it come to the interval, I love that out in the garden and in the bar there are animated conversations happening between people that may well not have happened otherwise, talking about their grandmothers, their daughters, their mothers, their own lives. There are people saying they don't agree with everything Germaine was saying and this is the point of such an evening as this - to get us thinking and talking about these important world issues, and then maybe starting to do something to change and improve things. 

A Q & A session follows the interval, and is an integral part to the evening, with questions ranging from a young woman asking if Germaine is cynical or still has hope for the future to a rather tense moment when she's asked about being transphobic. There are a few times when people get angry, and interrupt the discussions with obviously strong emotions - Germaine handles these moments with grace and patience. She shows herself to be not only an informed, well practiced and personable speaker, but also a good listener. There are a couple of points which are particularly hard to swallow - she describes sex as a 'bloodsport', and anticipates that within the next century women will be redundant as they start to grow embryos in petri dishes instead of inside us. Not everything she says makes sense, she does rile people up, sometimes she seems to go a little too far, but that's what we would expect from a persona such as Germaine Greer.