"I do think that women could make politics irrelevant. By a kind of spontaneous cooperative action, the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people's ideas of state structure and vital social structure that seems to them like total anarchy. And what it really is, is very subtle forms of inter-relation which do not follow sort of hierachical patterns which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity. And I think it's women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation."

- Germaine Greer, circa 1970, as snipped by Sinead O' Connor for the opening track of her 1994 recording, Universal Mother (currently enjoying heavy rotation in my CD player, see below left) -

I had not heard of Germain Greer before I began researching the quote above. I am not surprised to learn, considering the source of my introduction to Ms. Greer was Sinead O' Connor, that she (Germaine Greer) is a controversial figure.

Controversy tends toward quotability, it seems. Germaine Greer again, from Said What this time:

• "Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them. "
• "Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother."
• "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 subhumanly ugly mate?"
• "The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough. "

So, where's the controversy?