Germaine Greer

[IamTheWhoreofBabylon]

i never post here but I'm watching Germaine Greer on newsnight
Crazy, the woman is not allowed to discuss feminist issues without being forced to discuss transgender issues
Disclaimer- I really like GG
Am I reading this correctly? Why does she have to fight for a different groups issues

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.

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

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

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.

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.

*KS

Is this a new Nick Cohen article or from a while back? I hadn't heard Smurthwaite had been no-platformed again.

Haven't read the full thread. Did watch the interview. Good for Germain Greer.

I don't know if it's new

'Transmisogyny' ... Jesus christ.

When, when did this start? How has it happened that trans issues are getting to define what feminism is, what it should be sticking up for, what it can say and how it can say it?

To borrow an anti-feminist phrase and paraphrase it ... it's this sort of behaviour that does the trans movement no favours.

I feel we are fast approaching peak trans, the reaction to Germaine Greer has been met with more push back.

I read this article in the Independent about Greer which left me exasperated.

Dawson, who lives in Brighton, still refers to himself as male, but said he felt “being born as a boy was a birth defect ... All I want to be is a woman – I just want to be one of the girls .”

Dawson feels that feminism has moved on and silly old GG has got left behind ... yeah, Germaine, get with the programme: feminism is about men now, you dinosaur!

Listen, we can only hope that they don't live to regret destroying woman to woman solidarity and activism.

Oh, it's far from being destroyed! I think it's happening outside universities these days though. IME the feminist activism among older feminists is often less male-identified than that among younger - women often find their feminist mojo returning after having children.

Ugh the ageism is so blatant, it makes me so angry!
And the whole thing reeks of: Hey young ladies, don't listen to those old hags - make sure you don't learn anything useful from older women's experience of fighting for your rights!

Yes, while patting themselves on the back for their intersectionality.

Yes. Seems like a lot of people have forgotten that if their "intersectional feminists", they should perhaps also try to listen to older women...

I think if you go back to the horse's mouth and read Kimberle Crenshaw's original paper (google 'Mapping the margins') it is all beautifully clear. The concept has been much misused and blurred since then but I don't think anything has improved on Crenshaw herself. If you aren't understanding stuff that's been said around it despite getting the original concept it's just possible that might be because some of the stuff by other people doesn't make sense...

Oh this makes me very angry! I'm getting fed up of the word transphobia being bandied around everywhere. In much of the world being a woman is still very much the stuff of nightmares. Breastironing, FGM, being murdered and rapped because you want the loo, being denied your education because you start your periods, being unable to access menstration products because it's seen as shameful to have periods, sex trafficking, being married off to someone three times your age and then left with a child before you're barely finished developing yourself. Not having your pain taken seriously in a hospital in the first world because you're just a woman. Being made to feel guilty about any and all choices that you make. Getting paid 19% less than your male counterpart. Not being proportionality represented within your government. Being the targets of governmental cuts, because let's face it, it's the women that often give up their careers when their children are disabled and their elderly relatives need care. Being denied access to legal aid when their husband walks out and leaves them with nothing. Being that one in six women who are subject to domestic violence when pregnant.

Yeah who need feminism, being a woman is great isn't it!

I read Anna Yeatman on this back in the day. Here's her essay, "Interlockig Oppressions," from the mid 90s iirc

Yeatman, Anna (1995) `Interlocking Oppressions', in Barbara Caine and Rosemary Pringle (eds) Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, pp. 42-56.

Another thing I've noticed seems quite common nowadays is for white feminists to accuse other white feminists of 'white feminism'.