Given Germaine Greer’s history of making offensive gaffes on the ABC’s Q&A program along with her oft-cited controversial views on transwomen, her response to a question on the latter during last night’s program was, unfortunately, unsurprising.
Questioner Steph D’Souza called on the iconic feminist to defend her view that “transgender women are not real women”, asking:
“Why do you believe there is such a thing as a ‘real woman’? Isn’t that the kind of essentialism that we have been trying to escape?”
For a moment it seemed as though Greer had turned a corner. She agreed that her initial view of men and women as defined by their chromosomes was overly simplistic, but went on to say this:
“If you decide, because you’re uncomfortable in the masculine system — which turns boys into men, often at great cost to themselves — if you’re unhappy with that, it doesn’t mean that you belong at the other end of the spectrum.”
Watch the full discussion here:
Host Tony Jones called on her to clarify the point, asking: What if you know you’ve been born the wrong sex?
“You can’t know”, she declared. “You don’t know what the other sex is like.”
In the 90s Greer tried to block the promotion of a transgender colleague in her department at Cambridge. In 2009 she labelled transwomen “ghastly parodies”. Just last year she publicly objected to Glamour Magazine giving Caitlyn Jenner their “Woman of the Year” award and continues to deliberately misgender her.
Top Comments
Firstly; she never attacked or slammed trans people this issue still gets blown way out the water. Her personal opinion is her own AND it is not offensive or discriminating.
I agree; i am a feminist and i have trans friends and i support any pro-noun, choice, identity or treatment you wish to have as your life, i will support it. I always support choice.
I still do not and will not ever say trans-women are women.
I mentioned my opinion once and got attacked so i now just choose to leave it up to people who need to speak on it.
But my point is for women; womanhood is biological, sociological and cradle to the grave and you are from birth treated a certain way. Someone coming from masculine privilege will not have a concept of that, (they will learn over time... elements and i empathize with how they will often be hard lessons and wish that we had a world that was more open to feminine expression with all of it's faces, so i do not normalize or accept their suffering in transition, or as trans-women, i simply have to point out... it is different and it is NOT a suffering competition, it is just different)
And i believe trans women do suffer, it is a steep undertaking with the hope of liberation. I also need to point out that that is suffering to me that is 'normalized' for women as part of life we can hopefully work to change (often not) and 'specialised' with transwomen and it is so similar but the emotional journey for the transwoman is hard and heightened because women do it from day one. And it is not normal or acceptable.
I want trans people to be supported.
I also want the space for women to challenge these ideas to be a different one to transwomen; because our journeys ARE different and are lived differences too.
Thank you Germain you still educate, inspire and push people to hold their own views and broaden their world. And thank you for never trying to be liked; as a 21st century women, this is what makes you a key still to the future in my eyes.
Germaine Greer has always challenges the status quo and always will. And by the way if she did not pave the way, we would all be told to leave work when we got married and would get paid half of what men get for the same work (oh sorry, the last part still often happens). I don't always agree with her but good on her.