SOURCE: “Feminism Ad Absurdum,” in Commentary, Vol. 78, No. 2, August, 1984, pp. 71-2.

In the following review, Iannone offers unfavorable assessment of Sex and Destiny.

Anyone reading this book might find it hard to believe that its author also wrote one of contemporary feminism's pioneering texts. The Female Eunuch (1970) was a racy, radical, best-selling manifesto that posited sexual freedom as the key to women's liberation. Germaine Greer, with her disheveled Anna Magnani-style sexiness and sharp dry Cambridge wit, became a talk-show and counterculture celebrity, shocking her then perhaps eager-to-be-shocked audiences with outrageous ideas, such as the obsolescence of marriage and the dispensability of underwear.

Times of course have changed, but even changing times cannot fully account for what appear to be the violent reversals of her newest book. To be sure, Miss Greer has not lost her power to shock. Where The Female Eunuch deplored every inhibition placed on women...