Further vocalising her transphobic views in a statement read out by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire during her television interview with the trans actor Rebecca Root, Greer claimed; “just because you lop off your penis…it doesn’t make you a woman”. What I am saying is that it doesn’t make them a woman. You can see the interview here.
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Greer now says she’s so fed up with the hullaballoo around this episode that she’s minded to steer clear of such public discourses altogether – which would indeed be a sad day for public intellectual life.
A leading author of books for young adults, who has revealed that he is about to transition into a woman, has urged people not to “demonise” Germaine Greer after she claimed it was not possible to change gender.
Payton continued: “Only recently, Greer said that she doesn’t believe transphobia even exists and I find it incredibly shocking that the University of Cardiff would allow her to host a lecture even though it is ranked highest on the Stonewall Gay Degree table for the second year running”.
The controversy started when Greer was being interviewed by BBC2’s “Newsnight” and asked her opinion on Glamour magazine’s decision to name Jenner “Woman of the Year”. We should be as free to doubt the womanhood of Caitlyn Jenner as we are to doubt the divinity of Jesus.
Cardiff University ruled that the lecture should go ahead, in the interests of free speech, but said: “We in no way condone discriminatory comments of any kind”.
“It’s what she does as a woman, to overcome struggles of womanhood, to advance womanhood, to inspire womanhood, that deserves an award”, Meyers writes, noting that Jenner “hasn’t even made a sandwich yet”. After all, when too many people are speaking at the same time its very hard to hear anything at all. Views as hateful as Greer’s have no place in a civilised society. As Greer put it, “I didn’t know there was such a thing”. Many legislatures, including Ireland, now allow transgender people to obtain an altered birth certificate which officially acknowledges the revised transgender identity. “The people they’re punching out at are people lower down the scale”. I’ve been accused of inciting violence against transgender people. TERFs turn transness into a stigma, something to be hidden and hated, cutting into any hope of social acceptance for trans women.
“A university is not a “safe space”.
Being the radical feminist that she is, Greer also saw misogynistic overtones in Jenner’s fight for transgender rights.
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Despite the pressure, Cardiff University is backing its guest speaker. It might not feel nice at all to have her on campus, but at the moment, it looks as if the only alternative is handing her a megaphone to dilute the worst, most offensive things she wants to say.
