Why do people dislike Germaine Greer?

[morescrummythanyummy]

I have a friend who is TWAW and "be kind". I am GC. We are both aware of the other's views from a couple of discussions and have sort of tacitly mutually decided to stay away from further debates on this topic. She reads her kids Harry Potter, so she isn't rabidly activist, but works for a charity that has been stonewalled and exists in a bit of an echo chamber in her day to day life (she would probably say the same about me in looking on mumsnet!). . However, my friend has voiced a quite profound dislike for GG a couple of times in passing on related/political topics, in a way that suggests that this is what "right thinking"'people should think. I don't want to press her on it, because I don't really want to enter into a debate or open a can of worms. She is a lovely person and I really value her friendship. Is GG despised by some because she is outspoken in being GC/terfy or for other reasons? Just quite helpful to know!!

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

Germaine Greer is a mouthy woman who won't defer to men or to any political dogma. She won't pretend lies are true. She stands up for herself. What a disgrace! She should be shunned by all handmaids.

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

Germaine Greer's 1995 comments about Suzanne Moore's appearance were misogynistic

Oh the "fuck-me shoes" remark? Pity Suzanne Moore wasn't quick enough to stick her feet on the table and tell Greer they were fuck-you shoes.

Brilliant!👏And I admire them both.

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

I've said before it was a great pity Mary Whitehouse was the person speaking out against porn.

Whitehouse wasn't "the person" she was just the non-feminist person. Andrea Dworkin's feminist book on porn came out in 1981. And Dworkin really pulled no punches and was widely hated for it.

[AlisonDonut]

@puffyisgood

as others have said, the stupid comments about rape and the ridiculous paedo photo book just about cover it.

she's of course by no means all bad, it's sadly (unoriginal observation ahoy) far from uncommon that true brilliance (which she undoubtedly has or had in spades) comes hand in hand with bouts of extreme unpleasantness, see Morrissey etc.

I always understood the paedo book to be a reflection of the gazillions of females who are looked at and photographed in the same way, and the fact that you are still talking about it years later does kind of prove her point.

[MaudeYoung]

Those who dislike Germane Greer have never read a word she wrote or, if they have read, they have failed to understand in full the context in which she writes.

This is also true for other prominent feminists.

[Terfeywithallthetrimmings]

Your "friend" is a collaborator who goes along with making men feel good about themselves at the expense of women's rights, dignity and safety. Germaine Greer is a resistance fighter who has principles she will stand by in spite of the personal unpopularity that is the result. Your friend feels uncomfortable because GG shows her up for what she is..

[GenderAtheist]

Excellent post @Terfeywithallthetrimmings

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

Those who dislike Germane Greer have never read a word she wrote or, if they have read, they have failed to understand in full the context in which she writes.

Really? ???

[DontLikeCrumpets]

@Terfeywithallthetrimmings writes

"Your "friend" is a collaborator who goes along with making men feel good about themselves at the expense of women's rights, dignity and safety. Germaine Greer is a resistance fighter who has principles she will stand by in spite of the personal unpopularity that is the result. Your friend feels uncomfortable because GG shows her up for what she is..

Truly brilliant!

[chilling19]

'Reading the Female Eunuch in 1971 was like opening a door for my younger self, and she was GC and firmly centring women in that debate very early on.
I am so glad she is around to say it, piss us off, make us think, make us laugh, whatever. Long may she continue.'

Yes me too. Hear hear.

[5zeds]

My mother (who is about the same age) found her infuriating and my childhood was full of fairly biting comments whenever she popped up. I’m pretty sure she understood her and the culture of the time.

[MangyInseam]

@Fitterbyfifty

I think this is very true. I admire Greer very much but I don't think she is a particularly nice person. Does it matter? Not really but women are really expected to be nice (and beautiful) more than anything else which explains why some don't like her. Abrasive men are tolerated, women not so much, especially when they are no longer young.

I wonder about this. I am not sure that it's a male female thing. The person I knew most like her in terms of abrasive no-nonsense brilliance was a man, and while some people thought he was the cat's meow, and he accomplished a lot, many people hated him, or found him hurtful. He was probably the only real person I ever knew who if the police asked after he had been murdered, did he have enemies, I'd have said yes.

Maybe we do expect women to be somewhat softer than men but very abrasive people like that don't get a free pass just because they are men.

[MangyInseam]

@MaudeYoung

Those who dislike Germane Greer have never read a word she wrote or, if they have read, they have failed to understand in full the context in which she writes.

This is also true for other prominent feminists.

You know lots of them totally disagree with each other, right?

And, it is possible for feminists to just be jerks, totally apart from their political opinions.

[MangyInseam]

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

I think the point was that it's not uniquely traumatic, akin to any incidence of violation, it's because the world is weird about female sexuality generally that it's regarded worse than say biting someone's ear off.

Yes that is her point but it's wishful thinking. And you've only got to consider male rape and men's and society's reaction to that to realise how poorly grounded her argument is.

GG is a rape victim and hates the framing of rape as a kind of death / murder. She thinks this makes recovery harder if anything and gives the rapist more power.

She has come to terms in her own way. But she is hardly the only victim of rape and other women don't have to feel the same way she does. If everyone framed it her way there'd be no rape crisis groups just a lot of people telling women to stop to fussing.

I think she was really thinking more along the lines that women do not experience rape outside of a social context, even as individuals our experience of assault and rape is mediated through what we've learned about it.

I had a male friend who was raped - but weirdly to me, he totally didn't realize it, dismissed it even when I suggested it to him. He saw it as a rude sexual encounter. One of the things that really struck me was that he was pretty much completely unaffacted by the kind of sense of sexual violation that is common even when an assault isn't particularly violent. He was protected by the way it was framed in his mind.

That's not some total answer to reducing the trauma of rape obviously, but it's worth thinking about the possibility that the social mesage that rape is somthing inevitably damaging to your sense of personhood in itself increases the experience of violation when it happens.

Which is not different really than the way other kinds of social messaging about fragility can affect people in other contexts.

[Blueberrywitch]

@MangyInseam that’s a really thoughtful way of putting it and has given me a lot to ponder.

[Pawtriarchal]

It’s very interesting the way we’ll trawl through a person’s complete history to find something to invalidate the rest of their prolific work with. ‘GG said this thing about rape therefore….’

I think we all benefit from women who are not scared to say what they think. To name the emperor with no clothes. In fact women that do have this, what seems like a, superpower will by definition say things I disagree with. The only way to never say anything offensive or cancellable is to say nothing.

I was a bit surprised in the clip above that she says she’ll use chosen pronouns, basically to be kind. I wouldn’t have expected that from her and I could be disappointed, but you know what? She wouldn’t give a shit that that would disappoint me. So therein, again, lies what I love about her. And what we all benefit from about women like her. Even those above who are naive enough to think feminism doesn’t matter to them. If that’s truly the case, it can only be due to the benefits you’re reaping of those that have gone before you. But don’t blink for too long, as you might miss those blithely assumed rights when they’re gone.

[unici5]

I don't know. I was in the audience at a panel discussion she was on several years back and she told a story about going away with a group of old friends and hearing one of them being very clearly raped by her husband (screaming and crying) in the night after they all went to bed. Her takeaway was that her friend seemed ok in the morning, so how bad could it have been?

It doesn't directly undo a long career, but it certainly left me disgusted.

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

I had a male friend who was raped - but weirdly to me, he totally didn't realize it, dismissed it even when I suggested it to him. He saw it as a rude sexual encounter.

Why is that weird? Very many women feel that way too, at least at first. And yes it's protective in the short term. But the longer term effects can be insidious.

He was protected by the way it was framed in his mind.

Men have protective ways to frame rape that women don't usually have, like identifying themselves with the aggressor "I could easily do that too". This is a kind of "rudeness" that women don't get to do.

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

Though I agree it is healthier to frame it as "his fault, he was rude" not "my fault, I invited it". Which is how women tend to frame rape.

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

It’s very interesting the way we’ll trawl through a person’s complete history to find something to invalidate the rest of their prolific work with. ‘GG said this thing about rape therefore….’

Many of us don't do this and we don't need to do this. We were following GG before being GC was a thing, have no need to idolise her or demonise her and are possessed with enough critical faculties to have made our own minds up about some or all she has said. You know - like it used to be.

[MangyInseam]

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

I had a male friend who was raped - but weirdly to me, he totally didn't realize it, dismissed it even when I suggested it to him. He saw it as a rude sexual encounter.

Why is that weird? Very many women feel that way too, at least at first. And yes it's protective in the short term. But the longer term effects can be insidious.

He was protected by the way it was framed in his mind.

Men have protective ways to frame rape that women don't usually have, like identifying themselves with the aggressor "I could easily do that too". This is a kind of "rudeness" that women don't get to do.

None of this really is a response to what I said, you've just picked out random sentences.

[MangyInseam]

The rapist, btw, was a woman, which is the way the law is written where I live.

[SamphirethePogoingStickerist]

@RufustheFloralmissingreindeer

Yes I don’t think that helped in the popularity stakes

although im absolutely positive that she doesnt give a shit

i agree with some of what she says and disagree vehemently with other things but thats the same with most people and their opinions

That seems to have been one of the moments that gave SM warriors the edge. Same as her speech at Hay a few years ago - I was there, the way she said things changed their meanings entirely from the bluntly written word.

But the rape thing, she is right - if you start from the real world, how things actually are, in a country where rape may as well have been legalised.

The penis is a thin skinned appendage = thin skinned = easy to shame

So, rather than insisting on taking the penis and its owner to court, where names are kept secret and little is ever printed, = little shame leaks out into the wider world and tales can be spun for friends and family; why don't we scorch an R into the penis owners forehead? Let him talk his way out of that.

The threat of that, the visible shame of that, might be more effective at reducing rape than the remote possibility of a court case, let alone the even more remote chance of a conviction.

Why? Because the penis is a thin skinned appendage = easy to shame.

But so many people refused to see what she meant and she was vilified for one half of the suggestion - let's not prosecute rapists - with no real thought given to the real life effects of the other part - shame the fuckers for life!

She was trying, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to shame the CPS, courts, police etc. But it was easier to ridicule her, to vilify her than to listen and think...

That and she is a rude, crude, loud woman who doesn't fit into patriarchy's woman shaped box, not even the one they keep for clever women!

[SamphirethePogoingStickerist]

@unici5

I don't know. I was in the audience at a panel discussion she was on several years back and she told a story about going away with a group of old friends and hearing one of them being very clearly raped by her husband (screaming and crying) in the night after they all went to bed. Her takeaway was that her friend seemed ok in the morning, so how bad could it have been?

It doesn't directly undo a long career, but it certainly left me disgusted.

Wasn't her point then that rape is not the horrendoulsy violent obvious thing that is depcited on television but is often the 'mundane' act between two people who know, even love each other because of poor communication, lack of knowledge, fear of breaking uo a family?

I was with her for part of it, that as a society we do absolutely bugger all to persuade men that no means no, is not just 'playing difficult to get' etc and even les to persuade women that they can take real life action, from a kick in the bollocks to packing up and leaving immediately, breaking up a family to do so. .

Our usual discourse around rape is of helpless women and all powerful me; that women bear the shame of a 'broken' family and that should not be.

But then she sort of tainted it by blaming women for not acting, for expecting help. That was one of the many times I had to agree to disagree, or suspect that I had misunderstood, not seen a connection - or that she was simply pushing buttons harder that day than others.

She does seem to have lost patience with today's women - all the #MeToo movement did for her was entrench the poor helpless little woman trope. And she blames them, becuase blaming the men is fucking obvious!

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

None of this really is a response to what I said, you've just picked out random sentences.

I usually highlight the points I'm arguing with, so you can see if I have misunderstood. As I misunderstood that your friend was raped by a woman. And when I said "male rape" I meant rape of men and with a penis. Society isn't too positive about that either. Often considers it worse than a man raping a woman in fact.

The rapist, btw, was a woman, which is the way the law is written where I live.

Ah that's my confusion. It's not that way here. As far as I know the law where I live wouldn't consider that rape at all. So we may be at cross purposes.