Relationships

Controversial feminist Germaine Greer talks HRT, relationships and sex at 60

Jun 23, 2018

The feminist's latest shocking comment related to sex. Source: Getty.

She is known for being outspoken and saying exactly what she thinks – no matter the topic – so it should come as no surprise that feminist Germaine Greer revealed way more than people were bargaining for during filming for a new documentary.

The controversial 79-year-old revealed she started taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in a bid to improve her sex life, after she began a relationship with a new partner at the age of 60.

Germaine made the frank, and slightly crude, comments to filmmaker Clare Beavan, who was filming a BBC documentary based on the Australian star apparently titled Germaine B****y Greer.

Beaven revealed exactly what happened when she took a camera crew to Greer’s mansion, in Essex, UK, in an exclusive column for the Sunday Telegraph in the UK which goes on sale this weekend. According to the Australian Financial Review, Beaven said: “With my every idea quashed, I told the cameraman to just keep rolling, while I threw in the odd question. In the barn, Germaine was still working on the rewrite of her menopause book.”

Beaven then commented “I presume you didn’t do HRT” to which Greer replied: “I did, but I did it my way and I wouldn’t want to tell anyone. I would not advise it.”

With the cameras still rolling, Greer then confessed that the reason she had begun HRT was because she had gotten into a relationship. She said: “Unexpectedly, at age 60, I got involved in a relationship.”

But when Beaven asked “why would HRT help?” she got more than she bargained for, and bagged her first sequence for the documentary, when the author replied:
“Because the vagina atrophies, it stops secreting. HRT doesn’t necessarily help, but it can make you more penetrable.”

While Germaine’s comments may shock some, her reasoning is not totally unfounded as a recent study found that HRT can actually boost a woman’s libido. Experts from Yale University revealed that hormone replacement therapy can improve sex after the menopause.

Germaine made headlines recently after she said that rape is “not a violent crime”, instead describing it as “lazy, bad sex”. Speaking at the Hay Festival, she sparked outrage by saying: “We are told that it is a sexually violent crime, an expert like Quentin Tarantino will tell us that when you use the word rape you’re talking about violence, a throwing them down… it is one of the most violent crimes in the world. Bull**t Tarantino.

“Most rape is just lazy, just careless, just insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal right, he is raping her. It will never end up in a court of law.

“Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime – and some rapes are – think about it as non-consensual, that is, bad sex. Sex where there is no communication, no tenderness, no mention of love.”