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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Germaine Greer Fan Club

157 replies

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 12:16

Is anyone else annoyed with Germaine Greers banishment to the naughty corner? She's a living icon and she's just not appreciated properly. It's a real shame the way she is no-platformed and vilified - just because she says women don't have penis'.

I wanted to share some Germaine Greer links that I love. I'm a massive fan and I'm pretty sure a lot of you guys are as well. If you could share your own links, messages, thoughts that would be awesome.

The Female Eunuch
seminariolecturasfeministas.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/germaine-greer-the-female-eunuch.pdf

The War if the Sexes. 1993 Panel show with Caitlin Moran, Janet Street Porter & Suzanne Moore. This explains the backlash...

+Germaine Greer on Newsnight re transwomen*
www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=403&v=7B8Q6D4a6TM

Has the #MeToo movement gone too far? With Sophie Walker & Melanie Phillips

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Writersblock2 · 09/05/2018 19:39

Apologies if this has been posted but this one, wow. Her brain!!
m.youtube.com/watch?sns=fb&v=sVzYi4bRNwQ

gendercritter · 09/05/2018 19:45

I got to hear her talk live once. I was in awe.

She was the first person who made me sit up and take note about the trans debate too. I thought she was being horrendously offensive at first and then I stepped back and went, hang on....

One of the many reasons I love her is she bought up a load of Australian bush a few years ago and got to work replanting native species etc. (There's an article about that here She's done so much good. Her intellect is just vast. I haven't watched the debate but am furious if she was treated badly. I don't agree with her on everything but she still makes me think.

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 19:52

Nobody is paying attention to her decade long Iraq protest. Note she always wears black in all public appearances. That's in solidarity with the women and children traumatised by US & UK bombing. She's so much more than a 'feminist'

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RealityHasALiberalBias · 09/05/2018 19:56

Love her so much. She’s far, far cleverer than almost anyone.

I love the not-so-subtle anecdotes about her in Clive James’s memoirs, where he gives her the pseudonym Romaine Rand.

FermatsTheorem · 09/05/2018 20:06

Warning - major digression ahead, but there to explain why Channel 4 have form for totally misrepresenting people who've gone forward to be interviewed in good faith. They're not so much a broadcaster, more a shower of shite.

Melamin: I can't imagine anyone putting David Attenborough in this sort of position in a debate on Global Warming............ Not that this was a debate anyway - scripted set-up.

Actually, Channel 4 did exactly this, not to Attenborough, but to American climate scientist Carl Wunsch (who is a hugely brilliant scientist). Wunsch thought he was being interviewed by a reputable programme. He was careful to explain some of the science in detail - that in previous warming periods, the warming has preceded the rise in CO2 (warmer oceans mean dissolved CO2 is released into the atmosphere), but now we're seeing anthropogenic CO2 warm the oceans, which in turn leads to warmer oceans releasing CO2, giving rise to more warming in a runaway positive feedback loop.

The producer of the programme, Tony Durkin, then selectively edited it so that only the bit I've italicised appeared in the finished programme, making it look like Wunsch believed ocean warming due to random climate fluctuations was causing the rise in CO2 we're seeing at the moment.

In other words, the edit made Wunsch out to hold a position precisely opposite to the one he actually held.

It took ages for Wunsch to force an apology from Channel 4.

FermatsTheorem · 09/05/2018 20:08

Back on topic, I totally love Germaine Greer. The Female Eunuch was the first feminist book I read (as a teen). Which reminds me, I must re-read Sex and Destiny because I think as a stupid twenty something lib fem I totally misunderstood it, and I think I would get much more out of it now I've grown up (and had a child and collided head on with how society treats women in virtue of their biology and child-bearing capacity).

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 20:50

@FermatsTheorem lovely digression. If you haven't already got a copy I posted a link to the PDF of Female Eunuch at the top - if anyone is watching and has never read it - check it out. I thought it would be really difficult to read but it's not at all - it's a proper page turner! I was shocked how relevant it still is

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rememberthetime · 09/05/2018 20:58

Thank you for that video above. I just spent an hour watching it. I also forwarded it to my partner with whom I have lively feminist debates.

If anything, this whole debacle has turned people on to Greer in a renewed way.

NotTerfNorCis · 09/05/2018 21:03

I've never bought a book by Germaine Greer before.

I'm going to buy one now, to show support.

TERFragetteCity · 09/05/2018 21:11

I might reread The Female Eunuch as well. I'll dig out my old copy.

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 21:14

www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_EUxErCYiD4SZXRfaZnIg
BRILLIANT commentary re last night's show from someone who was there

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ChickenMe · 09/05/2018 21:57

I like her
Straight talking. Never read any of her books but am going to buy one now.

RealityHasALiberalBias · 09/05/2018 22:11

I’m drunk and feeling hysterical (literally in my womb), so I’m going to type out this beautiful prose from Clive James’s “May Week Was In June”, that I done referenced above. This is when they both return to Cambridge for post-graduate study:

“Another shock was the hitherto unannounced presence of Romaine Rand, who had already taken another room on the same floor as mine. Indeed it was the room next to mine. It was the big front room facing on to the street. In something less than a week, Romaine, who in another time and place might have run the sort of salon that Goethe and the boys would have swarmed around like blowflies, had already transformed her room into a dream from the Arabian nights. Drawing on her incongruous but irrepressible skills as a housewife, she had tatted lengths of batik, draped bolts of brocade, swathed silk, swagged satin, niched, ruffed, hemmed and hawed. There were oriental carpets and occidental screens, ornamental plants and incidental music. The effect was stunning. Aristotle Onassis had married Jackie Kennedy in vain hopes of getting his yacht to look like that. Romaine, however, once she had got her life of luxury up and running, did not luxuriate. She had a typewriter the size of a printing press. Instantly she was at it, ten hours a day. Through the lath-and-plaster wall I could hear her as if she had a contract, with penalty clauses, for testing it to destruction. As well as finalising her thesis, apparently, she was working on a book. She definitely would not be available for Footlights, so I could forget it. ‘Only a few of them are funny’, she announced, ‘and none of them can fuck.’”

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 22:17

Instantly she was at it Interesting use of words...
Drawing on her incongruous but irrepressible skills as a housewife Bellend.
transformed her room into a dream from the Arabian nights...There were oriental carpets and occidental screens, ornamental plants and incidental music. Conflation of women and the exotic East. See Edward Said...

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RealityHasALiberalBias · 09/05/2018 22:18

Yes of course it’s sexist, he’s a man and it was the sixties. But her summation of the footlights gets me every time.

PositivelyPERF · 09/05/2018 22:20

My jaw was on the floor watching GG in that video. I kept saying “THAT’S SO OBVIOUS! It makes sense now that she has said xyz! Why didn’t I realise!”

FFS why did I listen to all the misogynistic men and women that used to slate her when I was younger? 😩 😳 I’m going to buy her books and pass them on to my nieces when I’m finished. Actually FUCK THAT! I’m buying them their own copies. I don’t want them growing up and realising how much misogynistic crap they’ve put up with, because they have to be nice.

2rebecca · 09/05/2018 22:42

You can still get tickets to see her at Camberley Surrey on 23 May. Sadly I'm in Scotland

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 22:45

I really want to start a viral YouTube Challenge style video - drink your own period blood. I bet your nieces would love that @PositivelyPerf

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2rebecca · 09/05/2018 22:57

Yuk. Didn't eat my placenta either and I like black pudding.

DowntheTown · 09/05/2018 23:09

She's no longer doing that Camberley talk. Pulled out. ☹️

EchoGivesNarcissusTheFinger · 09/05/2018 23:22

A couple of friends and I initiated a Women's Dinner at our very male dominated college in the early 1990s. It was our response to Bullingdon and the other male only clubs that dominated the social calendar. We came up against a lot of opposition, many of the male lecturers resident at college tried to block it, but we pulled it off. In our inaugural year Jenni Murray was our guest of honour and the following year it was the wonderful Germaine Greer. I sat next to her at the dinner (one of the perks of being a founder). What I remember was that she seemed genuinely interested in the inane stuttering of a 20 year old - it wasn't just politeness, she was actually listening - and she was really kind.

DJLippy · 09/05/2018 23:26

@EchoGivesNarcissusTheFinger Yes this is the impression I get about her. I think she is a genuinely engaged person who just wants to have a chat. I am so glad that you shared this, it's what I imagined she'd be like...

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Writersblock2 · 10/05/2018 00:51

Love this thread so much, and the stories about her. Now I’m going to re-read her books. :)

HelenaDove · 10/05/2018 01:41

I havent read any of her books but im bloody going to. It was disgusting how she was treated last night.

She genuinely cares about women and has lived through and seen so many changes in social history.

Where was the respect Sad

Waddlelikeapenguin · 10/05/2018 02:08

Love GG as someone said earlier on the thread (sorry I cant remember who Flowers) my gateway feminist Grin

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