Greer’s rethink on menopause
The Change — Women, Ageing and the Menopause By Germaine Greer, Bloomsbury, $26.99
It was 1991 when renowned Australian feminist Germaine Greer first published The Change. Now it’s a quarter century later, a different cohort of women have reached menopause and Greer has done a rethink.
Back in 91, no one talked about menopause. Women quietly dealt with hot flushes, took replacement hormones and withstood raw jokes about their unavoidable ageing process that men seemed to avoid.
They did talk among themselves about their different experience of menopause though, and the huge variations in women’s experiences and how to deal with it became apparent.
But now, as it was then, women tend to take this inevitable passage alone.
There is misinformation and pointless methods touted on the internet to deal with the often embarrassing and unbearable side effects.
Greer deals with the many myths and deals practically with the emotional and physical changes.
Times have changed — a bit. Greer argues against women disappearing as they age, and promotes the idea that menopause is the time when women can enjoy a freedom from biology.
She rightly calls it the climacteric, or critical period. She is scathing of the medical profession and their pathetic attempts to “treat” women, and discusses the many and varied “natural” methods to deal with the indignities.
This should be on every mature woman’s bedside table, as a quick reference that she’s not losing her mind and still has an abundant life ahead.