Daily Inspiration Quote by Germaine Greer

Calling testosterone a "rare poison" is classic Greer: a provocation designed to reroute the conversation from individual bad men to the chemistry-and-culture system that rewards them. The line works because it compresses two arguments into one nasty metaphor. Testosterone isn’t framed as a neutral hormone that sometimes correlates with aggression; it’s cast as a toxin, something that intoxicates, impairs judgment, and spreads harm beyond the user. “Rare” sharpens the blade. It implies dosage, vulnerability, and contingency: not every person with testosterone becomes dangerous, but under certain social conditions the substance turns catalytic, amplifying entitlement into violence or dominance into policy.

The subtext is less endocrinology than political anthropology. Greer is targeting how masculinity gets treated as destiny and then excused as nature. By labeling the hormone itself as poison, she flips the usual script: women aren’t “hysterical” because of their biology; men, or at least male power, is the destabilizing chemical. It’s an intentionally unfair symmetry, meant to expose how often biology is invoked to rationalize a hierarchy.

Context matters because Greer’s feminism emerged from an era when “sexual liberation” coexisted with routine coercion, and when male genius and male cruelty were granted similar immunity: boys will be boys, artists will be monsters, leaders will be predatory. The line courts backlash because it’s reductive, bordering on essentialist. That risk is part of the strategy. Greer isn’t offering a lab report; she’s staging a cultural indictment in seven words.