One can only wonder at the thrill, the satisfaction, the sheer unadulterated power she must have felt to see her words used to such explosive and positive effect. Whatever it did for her, though, I owe her. As do all women who have enjoyed the choice, independence and personal power brought by feminism over the past 30 years or so. Sure, at times she had a touch of the ratbag but, like all revolutionaries, changing accepted norms (and more particularly for her, Norms) was a huge job - and headlines helped. And it's because of all that good and lasting work that I'd like to continue to value her views, but ... by God, she's been making it hardlately!



Just last week Dr Greer wished to bring to our attention the fact that she finds young boys' bodies extremely attractive and women shouldn't be ashamed to say so. Greer told one interviewer during a publicity push for her new book about art that "I'd like to reclaim for women the right to appreciate the short-lived beauty of boys, real boys ... Everywhere I turn I find new pictures of outrageously lovely boys and I keep downloading them, scanning them and printing them".

To another interviewer: "Like all women of taste, I am a pederast." And yet one more: "Everyone thinks the only people who like looking at pictures of boys - and I mean boys, not men - are gay men, but that's not true. I, for one, love looking at them. I'll be called a pedophile after this." Didn't that last statement sound almost hopeful? It was as if she only felt truly alive when in the middle of storming controversy, and that this one might really get the world's press going into overdrive. And once upon a time maybe it would have, but I wonder if the law of diminishing returns has finally struck and Germaine Says Another Outrageous Thing is not quite the headline it used to be. For, if you recall, in just the past few years we've had one of the greatest and most revered thinkers of her age saying: That it wasn't right for Cherie Blair to be pregnant at the age of 47, and that Tony Blair should "leave her alone and ... stay off her". Let's leave aside the fact that Ms Blair's pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage was none of Germaine's damn business. If the good doctor did insist on making comment, couldn't she instead have rejoiced at the fact that such an insanely busy two-career couple as the Blairs still value and enjoy a vibrant sex life after more than two decades of marriage? Surely, too, it is the antithesis of feminism to suggest that Cherie Blair is an inconsequential piece of fluff incapable of making her own sensible decisions without a man guiding her! (All right, I know. But I won't mention the Peter Foster episode if you won't ...)

That if Germaine was herself the British prime minister, she would ensure that all men weresterilised. That far from being good, the advent of widespread tests for cervical and breast cancer had created "an epidemic of terror" and were unnecessary. (Medical authorities found this a surprising summation, to say the least.)

And finally, and most frighteningly of all: That there is a place in the world for ritual genital mutilation. "One man's beautification is another man's mutilation," Dr Greer wrote, using strangely sexist terms to begin with. "If an Ohio punk has the right to have her genitalia operated on, why has not the Somali woman the same right?" Probably because the latter rarely has any say in the matter, DrGreer.

Need I go on? There is more, much more. But it is all of a similarvein. If you didn't know better, you'd think that this was all just a desperate, unquenchable desire to relive the thrill of 1971. At any cost. Pick a prevailing wisdom and work out a way to puncture it to maximum effect. The more sacrosanct the target, the better.

Typical revolutionary behaviour? Maybe. But none of it adds anything. Indeed, the majority of it is downright dangerous. Then again if, by the age of 30, you've changed the world in the same extraordinarily heady way she did, just what would you do for an encore? I don't know, and of course will never have the problem. But please, Dr Greer, it has to be time to bring your formidable intellect to bear on more substantial causes. Lisa Wilkinson is editor-at-large of The Women's Weekly. Wilkinson will replace Miranda Devine while she is on holidays.