Germaine Greer

This is not the first time JS has been no-platformed.
I can only see that it's because she has the word "feminist" as part of her stage description.

Yes, the new brand of "feminism" is all about the men - being a prostitute is a legitimate choice and just another labour transaction, and being a woman is a feeling and nothing to do with biology.

Ubik, if this is the way civilised society is going hen I think I might ban myself!

I was reading a sensible column by Nick Cohen in the guardian today and I am that this happened.

Last week, students at Goldsmiths College in London banned a performance by the fantastic feminist comedian Kate Smurthwaite in an act of neurotic prudery that bordered on the insane. Her show was on freedom of speech – yes, yes, I know. She told me that Goldsmiths did not close it because of what she had planned to say, but because she had once said that the police should arrest men who go with prostitutes and that she was against patriarchal clerics forcing women to wear the burqa. In the demonology of campus politics, these were not legitimate opinions that could be contested in robust debate. They marked her as a “whoreophobe” and “Islamophobe”, who must be silenced.

I agree with both opinions - am I an islamophobe, transphobe and whore phobic? Should I be banned from civilised society?

I'm quite taken aback

Slugs, that's why I think it's important to talk about this, and I think the no platforming of GG for saying "TW aren't women" has been met with bemusement by many because it's self evidently true.

There are a small subset of transactivists who are trying to make biology meaningless when it's about women (but when it's about their medical needs its totally transphobic of you to say anything). Unfortunately they seem disproportionately influential and we need to shine a bright light on this.

The logical extension of anyone who feels like a woman being no different to biological women is we have men in our gym changing rooms and showers, men in our refuges, men taking women's scholarships, men competing against women in women's sports and men in our rape crisis centres. This is not some hysterical ad hominem argument - there are examples of all of them which have happened.

If you've read accounts of FGM, I don't think you could ever compare it to surgery chosen by the individual, performed in a sterile hospital setting and under anaesthetic.

I can't work out whether Stavvers is just a professional troll or is so deluded she's mentally ill. Either way, she is best ignored for everyone's sanity.

And also if a woman chose FGM because it was expected, that doesn't really make it okay.

I'm enjoying imagining Stavvers sitting staring at her phone wondering why Cardiff haven't called her instead.

Thanks, slugs, but mothers collude in the practice of FGM, albeit from a position of disempowerment. I am not sure anyone chooses to have it done?

I think yes, in our neoliberal context, transgender surgery is wrapped up in the language of choice. My question is really when it starts to shape children's views and parents agree/condone/recommend puberty suppressants, how different is it?

Maybe I misunderstand, but I struggle with the concept that individual medical intervention and not wider social change is the answer

And I guess as posted up thread, I struggle particularly that the person held up by advocacy groups fulfils a particularly gendered idea of what female means; which is actually what feminists fought against. Bodies are not commodities.

Ignoring Stabbers is wonderful for your blood pressure.

Oh for fucks sake, I've just seen a tweet from Stavvers calling Greer "the Richard Dawkins of feminism". Exactly what the fuck has Stavvers done for feminism apart from sit and home and tweet bullshit?

Buffy, I don't want to out myself here but I had a fascinating discussion with students about gender and this came up - these were educated women who recognised their own experience was not representative globally or even nationally; and has been fought for. And many of the sentiments expressed on this thread were expressed carefully by them. They were enormously uncomfortable with the embedding of a particular type of visual femininity which serves to cement, rather than challenge patriarchy.

This is an issue which academics need to grapple with, and Greer is right about the fear of being silenced. But young women who would self-identify as feminists feel disquieted by the co-opting and reframing of their experience too - it is not just a generational thing.

Unrelated, I am trying to get my head around the fact that one technique of silencing feminists in the developed world is to ask them what they are doing about FGM and dismiss concerns about equality as old-fashioned, and self-indulgent first world concerns; but then also silence feminists who argue that genital mutilation and medical intervention are not the way to deal with feelings of incorrect placement on the 'gender binary', a more obvious construct than biological sex!

I know the silencing comes from different directions, but on one hand, you have mutilation to maintain patriarchal expectations; on the other, you have mutliation as an act of - what? Maintaining patriarchal expectations? What happens when people decide that a 'feminine' boy is really a girl and therefore HAS to undergo gender realignment? Oh wait...that could already be happening. Somebody explain to me the difference. In simple terms because I fail to see it.

I am so glad to read some of this.

I guess the point is that sometimes no platforming is justified when you have people promoting ideologies which are harmful to the general population, which wish harm to our society and that you have evidence that this harm is occurring.

Quite. And GG (if asked about trans stuff) is doing the opposite. Mostly she's just talking about women and their liberation.

I've looked up the definition of TERF. Yeah, that's me

I hope this link works. If not then I urge you to search for Town Bloody Hall. Germaine Greer's speech is at about 12 minutes in, but it's worth watching all of it. It was filmed in the 60s.

Bloody hell limited. Frederic Raphael turns out to be even more of a duck than I had previously thought (and that's saying something).

Left wing men are just more adept at hiding their misogyny

No they're not, they just think they are.

I've been at the prosecco slugs It's what we champagne socialists have done in austerity

Limited just read your link, that is absolutely shocking.