Be Fruitful and Multiply

Why do Westerners have children when they really don't want them? Whether they are affirming their roles, or satisfying the in-laws, they continue to reproduce, only to separate their offspring from all the stimulating and rewarding aspects of their lives. Parents can't have fun when children are around, so they put them to bed early and leave them with babysitters, taking them out only to show them off to admiring guests. This is the Western world according to Germaine Greer. The answer to the original question, as explained in her provocative book. Sex and Destiny, is surprisingly simple: Westerners continue to breed children they do not really want because infertility remains a curse and a shame, and because they simply want to prove their own fecundity.

They compound this irony with the ultimate hypocrisy: they declare that the world is overpopulated and encourage--or force--Third World countries to undertake birth control and sterility programs ignoring their desire for land, and in some cases, economic dependence on large families.

This is the basic premise of Sex and Destiny, a broad and impassioned new world-view by the Australian feminist best known for The Female Eunuch--her contribution to feminist ideology. But some feminists may be upset by this book, as it is not exactly NOW party-line. On the other hand, there will be few who remain unmoved by this ambitious and often emotional look at such topics as gynecological methods, contraception, and the myth of the population explosion.

The initial chapters deal with Western attitudes towards childrearing and with Western gynecologists and their sometimes abhorrent maltreatment of women-which add up to pretty dismal picture for those with maternal (or paternal) instincts. Throughout the book. Greer cites numerous anthropological, sociological, and psychological studies: her claims, if somewhat outrageous, are almost always based on well-documented research. But in a section on the importance of fertility, Greer's biases begin to manifest themselves in her less-than-objective tone. Her well-supported argument occasionally loses ground in spurts of emotionalism and-over-statement.

She spends too much space describing the humiliating postures women must assume under the hands--and instruments--of insensitive male gynecologists. Most of what she says is impossible to prove, but many readers may bristle at her militant tone. One highlight of this chapter is her psychoanalysis of the fertility doctors motivations for helping sterile women.

The surgeon's motivation for devoting time and concentrated energy to defeating sterility is not simply desire for same and money the satisfaction in cashing a barren woman to bear is much more profound than can be supplied by either. It is the most seductive extension of his regard for his own power to father, and not in the least contemptible for that.

This examination of motivations is hardly a condemnation of efforts to counter sterility; Greer is simply illustrating how basic the ability to conceive is to humans' psychic well-being.

In the chapter on birth control, Greer maintains that, far from having modernized contraception to make it clean, safe, and unobtrusive, women remain dependent on outmoded, unpleasant and sometimes harmful devices. The side effects of the pill and the IUD are well-known, but Greer presses on to find fault with that most revered and safe contraceptive, the diaphragm. It's so messy, she says--and cumbersome, and inconvient. Few disagreements from the general public there. But at this point, for this embattled author, only a graphic description will suffice:

The spermicide is usually cold and dense, with a slithery consistency; it is meant to coat the cervix, but succeeds in coating everything else as well with chilly sludge. If intercourse continues so long that this sludge is dissipated, it is a sign that a fresh injection is required, so that night of love becomes a kind of spermicidal bath. Orogenital contact is definitely counter indicated, especially as the spermicides are about as toxic as if sperm were mice... Why the diaphragm and all that sails within it should be so gross is unimaginable: if toothpaste tasted as disgusting as spermicide, the teeth of the nation would have fallen out years ago.

However accurate a scenario like this may be, the tone merely detracts from an otherwise sensible and perceptive view of the problems of contraceptives. An author and thinker like Greer does not need to grab our attention with passages like this one. At times, one wishes she were more cold and clinical, because the facts and analyses can generally stand on their own.

FORTUNATELY, the entire book does not suffer from this juxtaposition of coherent ideas with whining language. There is, through much of the work, the kind of impassioned and exhortative writing that necessarily accompanies calls for social change. Without it, the book would be unbearably dry. Where Greer shows enough restraint to provoke without battering the reader, she shines. This is not say that most, or even many, readers will agree with her forceful arguments. But they are not easily ignored, and much of Sex and Destiny deserves further attention.

It is only in the last three or four chapters that Greer gets into the real meat of her argument--when she takes on the subjects of eugenics, of world populations control and of forced sterility--that her strongest biases emerge. Those who were angered by some of her more provocative claims in earlier passages will not swallow her sweeping claims about the differences between East and West, the crimes of governments, and the absurdity of the overpopulation concept. Despite their militant premises, her conclusions can be challenged but not altogether dismissed.

Greer winds up her arguments--in a chapter tellingly titled "The Myth of Overpopulation"--with some pretty potent conclusions. We in the West, she charges, assume that there is overpopulation in the world because most people cannot achieve our standard of living. The Malthusian argument that population will eventually outstrip resources is valid, but Greer claims that this has not yet occurred. With an uncharacteristic humbleness. She writes

Without denying the obvious truth that it human numbers grew to the point that they outstrip the earth's capacity for found produce son, song, people will state. I am simply pointing out that we have not yet got to that point and some people are starving already.

The rather simplistic argument is meant to complement Greer's central claim; that all unwanted children are a tragedy, but that we in the West have far more than they in the East. Therefore, who are we to tell them they must curb their birthrate? We are more responsible for overpopulating the planet than they are--they at least want their children.

THE CENTRAL thesis that we must stop pushing birth control and permanent fertility on Third World populations is a problematic one. Greer has provided ample documented evidence that all too often governments force people to undergo operations against their will, and that even in the United States some women are compelled to undergo sterilization against their wishes or when they do not comprehend the consequences. Although there is a strong case for restraint in effecting mass sterilization, the claim that all peoples east of Europe want all or most of the children they bear is absurd. And to claim that Western governments are intruding when they try to make contraception available is equally wrongheaded. Greer suggests that we focuses less on how many people are born each minute than on the origins of poverty and how to stop it. The problem with this argument is that the two must go hand in hand.

More than content, however. Greer's language and tone detract from Sex and Destiny. Germaine Greer is an intelligence and powerful writer who can not seem to stay detached enough to avoid occasional over emotionalizing and a holier than thou tone. All told, however, these lapses do not dominate the work: Sex and Destiny remains a powerful treatise, certain to provoke a number of equally impassioned responses.