Germaine Greer

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From the Guardian, a chance to listen to Greer digging herself into a hole.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/12/germaine-greer-...

Comments

Greer

It was an interesting program to watch. I personally can't stand the woman as she has become so full of contradictions. I wish she'd fall in a hole stay there.

Jo

Thank you,Angharad,

The best part of the program was that the two politicians ,from either side of politics ,really tore into her and were well supported by the audience .I still don't know how some of the Twitters got through ,being more than somewhat derogatory to "Germs".

ALISON

She Just Doesn't Get It

joannebarbarella's picture

You do not just "decide" that you should have been a woman. It's something that's been with you forever and you may have been fighting it for forty years or more and trying to conform to society's expectations.

Someone should ask her

erin's picture

"When did you decide to be a woman?"

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Uh Huh

Pigs come in all sizes and shapes.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Greer

shiraz's picture

I met her in 1989 or there-abouts when she stopped at my checkpoint and unfortunately dropped the pass she was handing to me. I sat in my booth and insisted she got out of her car to retrieve it. Guess who had a smile and who didn't when she finally drove on?

Shiraz

- - - -

Paperback cover Boat That Frocked.png

this "person"

Teresa L.'s picture

just does NOT get it. now she says she is NOT trans exclusionary? just that trans are NOT real women, but not excluded? really, lol.

yes she does not get it. we KNOW, her claim "they dont know what sex is" at that age i am assuming she means, it is when we LEARN the differences, that is when we KNOW, just as you knew you were really an old trout, even as a kid probably. we know what is RIGHT for us, YOU DONT. no one else can know anothers soul, mind, etc heck most people dont know their own most of the time, or understand it might be a better way to describe it.

this brings me back to an interview with Chloë Sevigny about doing a second season of the BBC show, Hit & Miss. she said absolutely NOT, she would not do it. it seems having the prosthetic (I know a lot of people felt it should have been a trans person, but there are issues here similar to what she experienced that might have been problematic) penis on for the few scenes filmed with it, she experienced what sounds like Gender Dysphoria, it was REALLY upsetting for her. i only wish it got more news coverage to show it is NOT a faked thing, but a real issue. or if we took some guys in charge, gave them something to not remember short term, gave them a similar situation and see how THEY copped waking up with the anatomy of a female?

Teresa L.

Anyone that buys a UK

jacquimac's picture

Anyone that buys a UK newspaper needs they're backsides examined, normally I would I would said head but in the case of the tabloids backside would be better.
There isn't a newspaper in the UK that's worth reading anymore a usual headline is normally some celebrity has been up to no good or one the crappy soaps has new disaster coming.
There doesn't seem to be anything happening on the rest of planet

You appear to have a poor impression of the UK press

Angharad's picture

While most tabloids aren't even useful for wiping your bum, don't write them all off, the i is good, and of the broadsheets, the Guardian regularly includes articles about transgender news and people, including this piece about Germaine Greer. The Independent is good though now only available online, the Times and Telegraph tend to be politically biased towards the right, and I haven't seen the FT for years.

Any of them are capable of carrying a decent story as much as they are of a poor one. You have to use your own judgement as to how much you believe of any article in the press, TV or radio - all of them to an extent have their own agendas. I will however, accept that in some ways standards have slipped through the loss of sub editors, both syntactically and veracity, which may be down to poor training of journalists or pressures of time. The use of spellcheckers isn't always evident and typos abound, but then I feel the standards of education are slipping generally, people appear to have no attention spans and even fewer functioning brain cells. So perhaps we get the press we deserve.

Angharad

Well, I suppose I should drop my trousers then :)

We subscribe to both the Guardian and the Observer (effectively the Sunday Guardian) paper editions and I'm bereft if I don't have them when I eat breakfast. There's very little about 'celebrities' except occasionally in the appropriate sections - though I enjoy Marina Hyde's coruscating comments in the Friday G2 (she doesn't take prisoners). We've been taking it daily for more years than I care to remember and it's a good read. There been very extensive serious coverage of the Panama leaks over several pages for the last week or so for instance

I suspect the spelling has improved recently. It's nickname isn't the Grauniad for nothing. As Ang says the red tops are indeed rubbish but the Telegraph, Times, Independent and FT are equally serious reads even if I rarely agree with their politics.

Germane Greer has become a bitter, disagreeable and opinionated old woman, sadly. She hasn't aged well at all.

Robi

Liberationist

Greer is best described as a "liberation feminist" as opposed to an "equality feminist." She began her writing from the premise that the male-dominated world forces (or coerces) women to act in a submissive manner to fulfill men's view of women as submissive. Her position has been that women should get out from under that, spread their wings and be something different, greater, better. Her focus has been on the socio-political dynamic all along, with the premise that women are oppressed.

To a very large extent, she put her finger on the measure of our society. She was a valuable, even revolutionary voice in her day, and made everyone re-examine the relationship between the sexes and society's expectations of each.

She's older now, and a little more brittle in her views. It's easy to understand, after a life of saying that women are actually better than men, and certainly than men's expectations of them, for her to get all defensive about "men who want to become women." She evidently sees it as usurpation or something.

Nobody's perfect. Greer has been an important voice for women. But she knows nothing whatsoever about gender dysphoria, so pay no never-mind to her on that subject. After this flap, she may try to learn something, or she may not, but we should respect her for the good things she's done, if definitely not for this.

Her own insecurity

If I looked like her I'd be sniping at others to salve my own insecurity.

Gwen

Greer ...

... was quite the glamour girl in her youth. I doubt if she gives a toss what she looks like now or how people see her appearance. It happens that some stay good looking as they age and others don't. Greer sees herself as an academic and that's what she is. Whether you agree with her views or not is a different matter. I usually don't.

Robi

Greer's perspective -

is coloured or orientated towards the socio-political aspects of womanhood and in that area od social science her work is and still proves to be valuable.
However when it comes to gender identity she seems to have completely confused it somehow with sexuality when almost every transgendered person will tell you that, for the majority of transgendered people, (possibly all trans-people,) the two concepts are completely divorced. Firstly she starts of by seeming to accept that there are various graduated conditions of gender but then she still attaches 'real female' and 'real male' to opposite ends of some sort of sexuality/gender spectrum. Thus she still ends up by tying herself in knots by perpetuating the binary, linear gender myth. Personally I liken the gender condition more to a circle with many different segments comprising the whole. Perhaps an even more accurate portrayal might be likened to a sphere with longitudanal segments like and orange dividing up the gender groupings then parrallels of sexuality cutting accross each segment. I dunno but that's how I (as a mariner) seem best able to imagine it in my head. And when all said and done, it's nearly all between the ears and not between the legs.

As to this spurious argument about 'knowing for certain' what one's gender is well hello! I count my self as having being 'gender fluid' or 'gender switching for many years before I could decide that I would be happy as one manifestation for the remainder of my life.

Throughout my many middle years of fluidity and uncertainty I was able to accomodate my anatomical incongruancies by dint of accepting I was some how different but not certain how or why. Greater certainty only came with maturity and reduction of libido.

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