Dear Bob James,
3rd September, 1984.
Sorry I haven't replied before but I was hoping that some cloud would lift and I would remember the occasion you refer to in your letter.
No luck, I'm afraid. A houseboat in the harbour could be the houseboat that Margaret Elliot and Judy Smith shared at Double Bay. Otherwise, it could have had something to do with Tomaszewsky, who had some sort of a boathouse. Apart from those two I I'd swear I'd never been on a houseboat "in the harbour." '' have no recollection whatever of a cabaret performed by John Olday-and Robin Ramsay.
I should ask Sacha to ask Margaret, who is now Margaret Fink, if Ramsay and Olday ever put on a show in her houseboat. It's quite possible. It's equally possible that I didn't go.
There was no opposition to the Push patriarchy. Baker's favourite amusement was setting the women against each other, mainly by working on their insecurity with push men who gave no guarantees. The women would object to authoritarianism and dead-shittery in general terms, but none of them seriously challenged the de facto rule of Baker, Smilde, Waters and Molnar. None of the set texts of Sydney libertarianism was by a woman. The doctrine of vaginal orgasm was never so much as questioned: penis envy was a fact. The penalty for doubting it was to be sentenced to read the entire collected works' of the prophet Freud. :'
There's more to it than that of course. But those are the answers to your specific questions. yours,
Germaine Greer.
