Germaine Greer you suck!

[eumelia]

When I began my feminist education I pretty much went chronological and began reading about Suffrage, Harriet Taylor Mill, John Stewart Mill, Seneca Falls, The Declaration of Sentiments etc.
Then came the Second Wave, you know "The Second Sex", "The Feminine Mystique", "The Redstockings Manifesto"... "The Female Eunuch".

I really liked Germaine Greer.
Her deconstruction of gender was cutting edge at the time. She managed to lay out the Materialist aspect of femininity, womanhood, etc.
Though after reading Monique Wittig she seemed a bit dated.

Any way, I really like her and I've kept her in a nostalgic corner of my heart. However, like many radical feminists who seem to be stuck in the Second Wave, which gave us many tools into seeking liberation, but were very marginalising for identities that didn't mesh with the very dichotomy that feminism sought to deconstruct.

Greer has made Transphobic remarks in the past which I had the privilege to ignore, because I wanted to keep liking her.
This though.
I can't ignore, because it's just too hateful, too anathema for me to reconcile that a feminist of her stature would be so intolerant towards women who lived different lives from her.

In her article in the Guardian Caster Semenya sex row: What makes a woman?, she writes:

Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn't polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female.

Screw You, Germaine!

I feel like I should deconstruct this article line by line, but frankly that's boring and I'd have to read it again.

Not only is Ms. Greer reaffirming the disgusting stereotype of "female parody" that are trans women, that is, that trans women cannot look female, as though there is some standard that women must abide to. She also negates the trans identity as a delusion, continuing the idea that trans people are mentally ill because they "believe" that are the opposite gender.

Who the fuck are you Greer, the "Sex" Police?

Because she's writing about Semenya, she also briefly writes about the exams Semenya must undergo in order to establish her femaleness:

And then Caster Semenya appeared. Big, blokish and bloody fast, could she really be a girl? No simple chromosomal test will decide. Establishing her sex will require the services of an endocrinologist, a gynaecologist, an expert on gender and a psychologist. For those of us who have never been allowed to doubt that we were female, the process seems bizarre. We don't know if we think like women or not. We just think. Is there a reputable psychologist out there who would dare to distinguish a female thought process from a male one?

Emphasis mine
Germaine are you kidding? Are you high? Wow, hypocrisy just isn't as subtle as it used to be.
I cannot imagine the humiliation that Semenya is forced to under go in order to prove she is who she says she is.
She's being punished for being too good.
The line between male and female is culturally based.
If a Woman is made, then so is a Man.
That doesn't make these identities any less real, a woman who was male assigned at birth is no less a woman than one female assigned at birth.
Just different.
The feeling of being forced into a gender that doesn't suit you is painful and no, you cannot doubt which gender you are, that can bring about a hell of a lot of trouble and strife into your life.
Surely, Germaine, you can relate to that.
No?
Oh well.

I suppose I'll just have to make fun at the fact that when you write a conclusion that includes a sentence like this one:

People who don't ovulate or menstruate will probably always physically outperform people who do. But then, doesn't all competitive sport canonise and glamorise the exploitation of genetic advantage? Who said life was fair?

I suppose Ms. Greer isn't aware that most women athletes once they reach a certain level of fitness, weight and musculature do not menstruate any longer.
And yes, many athletes both female and male have an "unfair genetic advantage", that's part of what makes an athlete rather good.
Would you ban Michael Phelps from swimming because he has extra big feet?

In short, Germaine Greer you suck! Get over yourself and start living in the now, rather than in the 1970's.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Greer has been like this for ever. Disgusting level of hatred in her towards trans people.

I've even quite often seen the enemies on the far right use things that Greer has said to attack trans and gay groups.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

As I wrote, I used my liking of her to ignore most of it and have actually been less than enamoured with her for a while... but this, really. It's just so gross.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And it's not even that I think Greer is particularly a feminist either. I think she's just got a massive ego and believes Everything She Says Is Right SO THERE! And because she happens to be a woman, it seems like she's speaking in support of women. But actually all she's doing is speaking in support of herself and what she personally thinks.

Is she not one of the ones who also think all straight sex is rape?

[tinyrevolution.livejournal.com]

lol @ "nowadays"! If she thinks this hasn't always been true she's deluding herself.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I think she's been deluding herself for quite a while.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The line between male and female is culturally based.

I don't understand what you mean by this, but if you mean that the distinction between males and females does not have deep biological roots I'd have to question your adequacy.

One of the commentators on the Guardian website said it well: one could write a good, reasoned, respectful editorial on both sides of the unfolding debate. The problem is that Germaine didn't aim for that.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Biology exists whether we like it or not. The ideas surrounding biology are human based. Human biology often been used as a tool of oppression, as a way of categorising who is "Human" and who is "Sub-Human".
Society has imposed standards on the human body which cannot be deemed "natural", one of these standards is the sharp line separating female and male, which we know to be far more ambiguous than not, seeing as there are statistics that show that one child in 1000 is born with ambiguous genitalia and many more than that with something other than xx or xy chromosomes.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Yes, and physics has been used to build atomic bombs and kill many people. But we don't question the reality of physical laws, nor the usefulness of physical research. (well, we do, every now and then, but this is usually done by people who are informed of the particulars)

I understand you mean that the idea of a sharp and always existing clear dichotomy doesn't correspond to biological reality. This is, of course, true; it's just that biology is the good guy who brings this knowledge to light and carves it in stone, not the bad guy who distorts or hides it.

This particular case is a good example of how the sharp dichotomy idea fails. It has been failing forever, of course. East German female athletes had been injecting male hormones, for instance, and taking many medals as a result. Every now and then, I read, a girl would become a boy from too many male hormones.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about Greer, for me, is that because she's a famous Australian, all the Australian papers ask her opinion on feminist-related issues. So when people over here think of a feminist, they immediately think of Greer, and she's been a mean-spirited ratbag for at least 20 years now.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yep, I can totally see that.
She is my first Australian Feminist association as well. I need to read other ones in order to get her out of my mind I think.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I feel torn with Greer. What does make me very uncomfortable is how it's become very popular in my country to bag her, and the bagging is under a thin veil of misogyny. Whilst I don't agree with everything she says, I will not tolerate Australian celebrities making jokes about hairy legged lesbians and holding up Greer as the example.

It really upsets me.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I think you can dislike her without the misogynistic baggage.
Her deconstructive theories will always be important tools and "The Female Eunuch" along with Andrea Dworkin and Katherin McKinon's theories are an important step (imo) in grasping feminist thought, because they manage to break it down to the core of the type of oppression that women experience.
Unfortunately they're dated in their approaches because women are not a cohesive group of "Those Who are Oppressed", they do not take into account intersectionality, or the fact that Patriarchy affects men as well, or that women of different backgrounds would feel the oppression differently etc.

Here Greer was showing her bigotry and I don't think people should be allowed to coast by on their privilege, especially when they're abusing it like she is when it comes to trans people.

Sorry for the spiel.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I think you can dislike her without the misogynistic baggage.

This I agree with. But so much of the negative media attention of her in Australia has been loaded with misogyny that I've developed a bit of a reflexive twitch when I hear criticism of her. I don't want to defend her, but some of the things that her critics say makes me so angry. That is why I said I'm torn, I don't agree with a lot of the recent things she has said, but I intensely dislike most of the criticism I see against her. It's almost as if the media believes they have a pass on really horrible misogynistic slurs because Greer says a lot of crazy things.

Most of the things I disagree with her about, is her stance on indigenous issues in Australia, she is so patronising. I haven't heard much of anything else she said, because I do tune her out a lot.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I remember during the US Election Campaigns, there was so much misogyny going on because of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin I was going bonkers.

I had so many discussions online with people who were saying the most disgusting things about Palin and I called them on the BS and they were surprised that I took offence at a cartoon of Palin who was drawn on her hands and knees being impaled by an oil rig, which... ugh!
"How can you object to that? She's a Republican out to screw the people"
Yeah, because that has what to do with the fact that misogyny is WRONG?

[constintina.livejournal.com]

For those of us who have never been allowed to doubt that we were female, the process seems bizarre.

Wait, what? What does "never been allowed" mean? Is there some kind of transgender/transexual privilege (of "doubt"ing?) that I'm unaware of?

Seriously though. WTF. To the whole thing.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

That's the part that really got me to snap, I mean, how does she thing gender is maintained!

[constintina.livejournal.com]

She must not think about it, she just basks in her cis privilege and snaps at anyone who threatens her blissful ignorance of the same.

[quicksilvermad.livejournal.com]

Oh dear lord...

*head desk*

I haven't been checking my flist for a while now (could you add me to that "newsletter" thing you send out? I'm jenniferlholton@gmail.com) and this... This is just...

Here's something that pisses me off about Greer: Gender is not just hormones. Gender is a mental setting as well—there are women out there who were born with a male mindset. There are men out there born with a female mindset. Which sucks, because there are people like Greer who deem these people as subhuman for the way their brains are wired. Not just subhuman, but "disgusting." My dad still denies that he's prejudice (I called him out on it one afternoon) because he simply knows people who act worse than him. It's still wrong for fuck's sake. It's wrong to look at a man who prefers to wear women's clothes or a trans gender individual and go: "that person is sick." To them it is perfectly normal. So who said you could judge them? That's something I hate. Things like that and how PDA between a man and a woman is overlooked or just "aww'd" at, but PDA by two women or two men is considered a violation on the public eye/public indecency. What the fuck?

And this?
People who don't ovulate or menstruate will probably always physically outperform people who do.
Where does it say that? Where the hell is it written scientifically that a period makes you a slower/worse athlete? Personally, if I'm playing a hardcore sport like lacrosse (this was before all those rules got added to the girl's league) and I get all hyped up, I play 100 times better than normal—especially when I'm PMSing. Why? Because I'm fucking pissed off and by playing a sport that includes violent checking/body contact/whipping a hard rubber ball between someone's legs I'm using that anger and energy for something other than beating the shit out of pillows or wallowing in agony in the tub.

Damn. *keysmash*

Can you tell I'm PMSing right now? How come I always come across these kind of entries when The Bastard is in for its monthly visit?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Haha, I love your comments!

And I'm glad you feel you can call your dad out on stuff, that wasn't so not too long ago.

:)

[quicksilvermad.livejournal.com]

He still doesn't get it. And neither of us budge on our viewpoints, so arguments end up with him huffing in irritation on his Lay-Z-Boy with that "I'm a gonna ignore everythang else that comes outta yer mouth" face and me storming out of the house to just "drive somewhere." Inevitably I end up at a bar.

RAWR!

[bitter-moss.livejournal.com]

Oh Germaine =/ (i feel much the same way about her as you.) And like the other Aussies said, i get so annoyed she's our go-to for feminists statements, and generally says something inflammatory & our of touch, that keeps feminism aligned with anger & loopiness in the public's mind =/.

The originl article as the Guardian have binned it

[germainesconscience]

Germaine regurgitated:

"What makes a woman? Are women made? Feminist orthodoxy says yes; feminist fundamentalists hold that biology is a cultural creation. You can see what they mean; biology has traditionally studied the male animal and extrapolated the female as a disembodied set of reproductive organs.

Even though we know that a Y chromosome is only an X that has lost a leg, we still think in terms of male = perfect, female = imperfect. In plainer terms what the academic feminists could be taken to be saying is that (a) you're a woman if you think you are and (b) you're a woman if other people think you are. Unfortunately (b) cannot be made to follow from (a).

Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn't polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female.

Unless we're talking sport. In sport sex discrimination that is illegal everywhere else is the rule. In the bad old days a single test for the Sex-determining Region Y gene was all that was required to establish the sex of anyone passing as female. In the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games, SRY testing was compulsory for all female competitors.

After more than 6,000 tests no instance of a male athlete knowingly misrepresenting his gender had been identified. Instead the tests picked up developmental sexual disorders in a number of women who didn't know they had them. The intersexual women could not be distinguished in appearance or performance from other XX female athletes. All the mass testing accomplished was the embarrassment of a small number of athletes and in one case at least her unfair exclusion from competition, and so it was abandoned.

And then Caster Semenya appeared. Big, blokish and bloody fast, could she really be a girl? No simple chromosomal test will decide. Establishing her sex will require the services of an endocrinologist, a gynaecologist, an expert on gender and a psychologist. For those of us who have never been allowed to doubt that we were female, the process seems bizarre. We don't know if we think like women or not. We just think. Is there a reputable psychologist out there who would dare to distinguish a female thought process from a male one?

Supposing that the verdict of the sex police is that Semenya is mentally female and physically male, what would it mean for other women athletes if she was allowed to compete with such an unfair biological advantage? People who don't ovulate or menstruate will probably always physically outperform people who do. But then, doesn't all competitive sport canonise and glamorise the exploitation of genetic advantage? Who said life was fair?"