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That well know womens lib supporter has turned her guns on Transwomen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34625512
I have been a supporter of her work in the past on Womens Lib and equality etc.
But now I think she's lost the plot. Totally.
She's PNG with me from now on.
Comments
eh, she has her opinion, and says she is
not trying to force it on others, and says she would be respectful. what do you expect, she seems to be a bitter old woman, who appears to be just this side of being a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist). now if she refused to acknowledge trans woman in any form, yep a TERF, but she is in that small minority that says, "ok, you are a "her" but not really, ill just humour you" kind of attitude. still NOT respectful but at least not actively transphobic.
addendum: as shown below, i stand corrected, i did not know really much of her history.
Teresa L.
She also tried to stop her old Oxford college
appointing a transwoman threatening to resign if they did. They did and she resigned her fellowship. This was quite a few years ago so there has been no change in her opinion, which she is entitled to hold. Personally I think she's a coarse antipodean anachronism. Also what about the one in fifty thousand women who are born without a womb, would she reject their right to be accepted as female? She's too black and white and plain ignorant.
One of the comments on the story in the Guardian written by a woman claiming to be a doctor suggested that the few post op women she'd met were no happier as a consequence of their surgery. She obviously hasn't met many of us.
Angharad
totally agree
the few who are NOT "happier" are usually either of two groups. 1) those that have slipped through the system and were not truly transsexuals, or 2) had a botched job, or were overly expecting what would happen after the surgery. some think it will solve all their issues, it doesnt, it alleviates some but we still have our pasts to live with, and depending on the culture where we live, it will still follow us.
even if you get all your id information changed, diplomas, as Angharads biggest story, Bike, shows, articles, etc still will reflect our past lives, and so do things like credit reports, work history, unless you can get them to update their info as well, which is not very likely unless it is a LGBTQ friendly company. currently working on getting things changed, i can attest to thing a lot of people DONT think about changing and could catch them up to a prospective employer at the very least
Teresa L.
More from the Guardian
Greer thinks Caitlyn Jenner wanted the limelight of the Kardashian females, hence the surgery etc. She's more barking than a kennel load of terriers.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/caitlyn-jenner-wanted-li...
Angharad
From what I have seen/heard :
Seems quite a few think that Caitlyn Jenner is more of a publicity hound then Trans.
Which make her a different issue to some.
The joy of TERFs
Please have pity on Germaine Greer.
In the 1900s women were fighting hard to get the vote and not allow their possessions to be automatically owned by their husbands.
In the 1960s women battled to gain equality in the workplace and on pay (a fight that is still ongoing).
In the 1990s (and onwards) the struggle was on reproductive rights and senior representation in the workforce
Today women struggle with sexual violence.
All of these battles are for equality, not discrimination. Success for women is good for everyone. However….
As these battles are being won the more extreme advocates see their power base eroding and so become more exclusionary and strident. They fight to keep their place in the limelight and that means they lose their original direction.
Please have pity on Germaine Greer. She has fought so long and hard that she has become masculine in her demands and attitudes.
"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Frederich Nietzsche
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
Okay
So you are saying she is trying to stay germaine.
Sorry, that does not excuse it one bit. There is not excuse for whacking some group who has never sought to do you harm in the side of the head. Yes, she has done a lot of good but leaders must always be called out for their actions even more than ordinary folks so she must be held to an even higher standard.
Germaine but failing to be germane
Very clever!
:)
… but next time please wait until I don't have a glass of wine in my hand, the dry cleaning bills are getting a bit much.
As for giving her an excuse, I agree with you… I was just being ironic.
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
I try
^_^
So she's still
Fighting to get the vote, like she was in 1910?
Greer Is Barking Up The Wrong Tree
Greer, like many other feminists, is looking at transgender issues from the wrong angle.
She's correct to assert that surgery and hormone therapy will not transform someone who was born male into a fully functioning female. That is currently impossible.
But the transgender debate ought to focus on something else. It should be about the inalienable right of any individual to present themselves on whatever part of the male-female spectrum they wish, and to do so without fear of prejudice or discrimination. Whether Greer or anyone else thinks of them as 'real' women is surely beside the point.
Yes the new generation is very much like that
There are more gender variant youth than ever. However I wonder on the need to formulate all these news pronouns and stuff.
So why all these new pronouns? Are they seeking, by having people use those new pronouns that it indicates that person accepts their gender expression? So what happens when you have a language where all pronouns gender/neutral are pronounced the same? How would they know whether their pronoun choice is being honored? Or does it even matter? This is true of course for transwo/men too.
arguments
Opinions such as that one I state my late fathers statement *opinions are like butt holes, everyone has them and some stink worse than others*
We Don't Want Her
She's one of those Australians that we were more than happy to export, without any "Return To Sender" address supplied. She actually "made her name" in England and spent most of her adult life over there. You're welcome to her.
We also sent you Rolf Harris so you could incarcerate him. Even in his hey-day he was an embarrassment to us.....I mean "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport". All Aussies hid their faces in shame!
Power corrupts
I doubt whether Germaine Greer, in the 1950s and 60s when she developed her values, gave any thought to women born transgender. Since then she has had popularity and material success which is a combination that leads us all to treat our values as absolute rather than subjective; even those values we've never questioned, tested against experience or discussed with those affected by our words and actions.
Germaine once wrote: “Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.” With her public utterances in our face I wonder if she realises how lonely she makes many women feel.
Rhona McCloud
Same old Greer
She has been spouting off about trans people for as long as I can remember, decades at the minimum. I admit she did a lot for the early feminist movement and helped bring lesbians to the forefront, but that is the only group she wishes to see gain public acceptance. Any male is the enemy, and trans women are just men spying on women. She absolutely denies the validity of our existence.
Greer is the mother of the TERF movement. The hate is strong with this one.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
No one can speak for us.
I know some nice GBL folk but am not a friend of the GBLT activists. She's what a Lesbian? What the hell would she know about a trans or intersex woman? Nothing, and I have gotten in trouble over the years for saying that. It is why I say as nastily militantly as I can that no fukin anyone has a right to assume to speak for us and they should undiplomatically be told so. This is a HOT BUTTON issue with me.
Gwen
I could never
understand why T's got joined with the GBL's. What gender I am, has nothing to do what I have sex with.
As I understand it...
...because Ts are a comparatively small group, some felt their cause would receive more recognition if they tagged along with the LGB advocates (and I suppose if someone's preferred choice of partner stays the same through transition, then they also move into or out of the LGB group as well). In reality, it's been a double-edged sword - it has raised awareness of the group, but it's also raised a lot of misconceptions. I think in many cases, trans advocacy still feels 'tacked on' to LGB advocacy, almost like an afterthought.
It doesn't help when advocates of a bunch of other status try to add initials to the acronym - I've seen versions including one or more of (gender)queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allies, pansexual, polyamorous, 2-spirited. Urban Dictionary takes it to the logical extreme and even includes variations with an H (I suppose the term Heterosexual is used instead of Allies to avoid ambiguity with Asexual). Some variations even cheat and include a bunch of acronyms followed by a + or * to indicate any group they haven't expressly identified.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Same set of enemies
My guess as to why T got added to LGB is that, at least at one time, the homophobes didn't distinguish between (M2F) transgender people and homosexuals.[*] As far as they're concerned, we're all equally abominable and for pretty much the same reasons. Since we're all fighting the same group of haters, it made sense to work together.
What has happened in the meantime is that gay (cis) men and lesbian (cis) women have become less socially unacceptable, so some people in those categories are happy to throw the rest of us under the bus to make themselves seem more "normal."
[*] Also BDSM and poly folk and pretty much anyone who doesn't look and act like a member of the Cleaver family.
Her flavor of feminism is dying out
Germaine Greer, like a certain number of prominent feminists from the 1970's, represents a particular strain of second-wave feminism which fortunately seems to be dying out. Among the newer wave of feminists, particularly the sort of feminists who are on social media, blogs, etc., intersectionality is big. Cf.: feministing.com, everydayfeminism.com . They see feminism as inseparable from other areas of human rights (buzzword: intersectionality), such as racial justice, disability rights, and -- most relevant for us -- trans acceptance. One example is the fact that the pressure on the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival from its own consituency to drop its trans-exclusionary policy got to the point this year that the organizer was faced with the choice of either dropping the policy or shutting down the festival. (She chose to go down with her ship; that is, to shut down the festival after this year.)
tl;dr -- trans-exclusionary feminists still exist, but they're going extinct. And I think they know that.
Track this woman down
Germaine Greer has never represented us and doesn't know anything about T and I people. Please track her down and confront her. I did and it was not that hard.
Gwen
Germaine Greer - An eloquent riposte
OK… So we've done what she wanted and talked about her.
24 hours later Zoe Williams has responded with a thoughtful and interesting response which you may like to read.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/25/germain...
One of the threads that I picked out and fully agree with is our need to avoid an authoritarian response to those who dislike/disagree/abhor anyone who transitions.
Several years ago Nancy Cole, my co-writer, described "The tyranny of enforced tolerance". No-platforming is exactly that and it's impact is potentially profound and dangerous. If overt debate is stifled rather than welcomed and challenged then, like a sore, it will operate under cover and erupt with far more poison and venom from directions we are unlikely to anticipate.
Of course you are all welcome to disagree with me, as long as you don't say anything. :)
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
No platform??
I read the attached article. I didn't find it interesting. I don't find Germaine Greer's opinions on trans people interesting, and can't be bothered to either argue with her or to make some attempt to "silence" her (not that I could in any case.)
Okay, some venue disinvited her (and then changed their minds.) So what? She's Germaine Greer: she's going to always find some place to give her speeches and to publicize her ideas -- and people to listen to them. The day she actually can't find a place to lecture to people who want to hear her, or has to fear being thrown in jail for saying what she thinks, or can't find a publisher for her writings or an ISP to host a website for her, that's when I'll worry about "silencing" or "stifling debate" or "no-platforming" her (whatever that is.)
I'm more worried about the people who make laws keeping us from using public bathrooms and changing rooms, and who threaten us when we try to do so. I'm more worried about the people who won't hire trans people or fire them, who harrass them, who won't give them medical care, who won't rent or sell housing to them. Virtually none of these people have even heard of Germaine Greer, but they're the ones whose views we need to change (or at least their behavior.)