Re this interview I was just wondering how this would pan out. Will this attitude mar her historic legacy as a pioneering feminist?
“I’m getting a bit old for all this,” she added. “I’m 76, I don’t want to go down there and be screamed at and have things thrown at me. Bugger it.”
I liked this statement, whatever anyone says about what her attitude should be.
She’s entitled to her opinion, and it doesn’t really matter who agrees or disagrees with it.
Who says you have to accept every yahoo who comes along with another “ism” and wants to be accepted?
Did Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment mar hers?
A lot of movements (and not just leftist ones) have gotten into a really bad “you agree with us 100% or you’re out” mentality that is just exacerbated by the cliques that form on the internet.
I think Greer’s views on transwomen are bad, but that in no way invalidates her opinion or actions on literally anything else. Nobody should have to ascribe to an impossible standard of moral and ideological purity to be respected or be listened to on certain things.
There has to be some challenging of her by trans-friendly feminists, lest she be seen as the authority and thus her views on trans-people normalized as well, that’s healthy dissent within the movement. However, there’s no reason to completely degrade her character or lock out her other views due to a blind spot.
Hell, all things considered she’s not even that bad! She’s willing to use pronouns, willing to support legal transition, and everything else. She just holds a philosophical position that transwomen aren’t women. It’s bigoted, sure, but I’d take that in a second over literally any of the anti-trans sentiment in the comments section of that Independent article.
It’s pretty bad when things have gotten to the point that even a pioneering radical leftie is afraid to appear on stage for fear of being yelled at and pelted with objects because she hasn’t kept up well enough with the PC times.
It’s no wonder Trump is doing so well, this kind of shit has got to stop.
She has written something before about her love for young boys whose sperm flow like tapwater. Somehow I doubt her historic legacy means a hoot to her. Good thing too, seems like society is in dire need of charismatic people who dare take unpopular views, speak their mind, and don’t give a damn about “being on the right side of history.”
It’s unfortunate they have to be this old though. But I guess it’s a result of having unpopular views these days is likely to ruin your career.
Hasnt there always been some friction between feminists and lesbians?
Eh. She is entitled to her own opinion, and a product of her times.
I think it mars her legacy.
She’s entitled to her opinions, she’s not that bad, it’s healthy to have people promote alternate views, she’s got quite a good legacy even with this included, it’s difficult to push somewhat unpopular views when you’re 76, and I think it’s problematic to pelt people who are expressing complicated views.
But, yes, in my humble opinion, this does mar her legacy.
The way you describe it, she’s not even bigoted, she’s just arguing semantics. (But I haven’t read her recently, I admit.)
If one’s life’s work has been opposing people being defined and defining themselves by social expectations based on their gender*, one might be less sympathetic to people changing their gender. One would want people to just be what they wanted to be irrespective of their genotype, or phenotype in some cases.
- Sorry, I am not sure if I mean “gender” or “sex” in this context, I haven’t been keeping up. Another reason to just move past all this, and let people be people. Which isn’t an option now, I admit, but I’ve accepted one shift in the definition of “gender” already.
She’s a pedophile. But because she’s an iconic hero of the left, we give her a pass.
Some feminists want to go down the mainstream path - do the most good for the most women. That tends to be things like reproductive rights, daycare, workplace benefits, rape issues.
Women who are not mainstream tend to have bigger issues, but there are fewer of them. They need a lot more movement for their issues, more time. They also tend to take focus away from the “boring” issues. Gay marriage was, trans rights is, more polarizing, more extreme.
So there is a difference in belief on where the resources should be centered. Betty Friedan thought that lesbians would drive mainstream people away from feminism as a movement. And she wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t necessarily making the ethical choice, just the pragmatic statement.
To some extent you still see that now. Women who would believe in mainstream feminism, but refuse to be identified as feminists because they identify it with the edge cases.
This is the endgame of academic Political Correctness.
It’s the whole game, and on this point they may have misplayed.
This will be a footnote to her legacy. This argument isn’t over, the PC police are at odds with their base on this subject. If Germane Greer is looking for rational discussion on this subject she’ll come out looking better for it.
Nah, this is the same thing we saw with Gore Vidal. An earlier generation of pundits became spoiled when they went on the Dick Cavett Show and were seen by everyone who stayed up past ten. Now, faced with the internet, they have to get ramp up the outrageousness.
Someone once said revolutions eat their own children; it is often forgot that by the same measure revolutions also eat their own parents. But at the same time the only people who can no longer say something wrong are those who no longer say anything. Some people would rather have iconic figures retire and put themselves under glass as living museum pieces, lest they risk saying/doing the wrong thing; but that is unfair to the persons who may justifiably feel they still have something to say.
That said, the answer to that problem of the iconic figure being wrong is to refute and prove otherwise. Not to call for their exclusion from the discourse or seek to badger them into retreat. You got Germaine Greer speaking at the college? Hold a trans-positive feminist forum with celebrity speakers simultaneously across the street, or in the same hall next week.
Except that rejection of and even utter hostility to transwomen is becoming common in the latest generation of feminist radicals. That someone who is, I assume, an historical figure of feminism takes this stance will fuel this fire.
And anyway, that they be recognized as women is the main plight of transwomen. Agreeing to use a feminine pronoun out of “courtesy” doesn’t makeup for refusing to consider them as women. And it’s condescending to boot ( “I’ll play along with your little charade, and laugh only after you left, you silly man”).
She doesn’t say “they are men,” though, right? She’s just keeping “women,” the term, exclusive to ciswomen.
ETA: She uses the phrase “male to female transgender people,” which seems really awkward, and not accurate according to my understanding of the terms–but it’s clearly not equivalent to “men” in any reading.