The Female Eunuch

This section discusses how the deeply ingrained hatred toward women in Western society manifests in daily practices and how women respond to it. A primary component of Greer’s argument is that both girls and boys are taught to hate women from a young age, and this hatred is a primary controlling factor in the oppression of women. Because girls learn to hate their own sex from such a young age, the hatred is internalized, and many women do not even realize that they hate their own sex: They often believe that they hate men and that hatred toward either sex is mutually exclusive.

Hatred manifests in dangerous ways: Women hate their bodies even when they are healthy and abuse other women through judgment and social relegation; men express their hatred and disgust through sanctioned forms of abuse. The natural culmination of such self-hatred is retaliation (actions aimed to inflict a retributive sense of justice) and rebellion (actions of calculated response that subvert systems of oppression). Because women are unaware of their self-hatred, they often subconsciously retaliate; however, movements of organized rebellion and feminism are developing. This section follows “Love” to illustrate the false dichotomy of love and hate, and Greer’s concepts of love and hate work in tandem rather than in opposition.