Once again, one of Australia’s most pre-eminent feminists Germaine Greer has used her station to express views on transgender women – particularly, Caitlyn Jenner – that stand in opposition to more modern feminist views.
In case you missed this particular shitstorm the first time around, Greer was hounded late last year for her comments that Jenner was in fact misogynistic, and that “he/she wanted the limelight that the other, female, members of the family were enjoying and has conquered it, just like that.”
While that perspective resulted in petitions to can her lectures and a thorough dressing-down from the broader community, her comments on tonight’s Q&A demonstrated a softening of some viewpoints, while also… well, pretty steadfastly sticking to the Jenner-hate.
When asked by a young audience member why Greer believed transgender women were not “real women”, she responded “this is so difficult, you know.”
“Having two sexes is essentialist, you might say, but it’s not even that. It’s just wrong.But the interesting thing is this: if you decide because you’re uncomfortable in the masculine system… it doesn’t mean you belong at the other end of the spectrum.”
Of course, that ties right back in with her earlier comments on Jenner’s supposed opportunistic flip-flop between genders, as opposed to her genuine and deep-seated knowledge she was born a woman. From there, it got more explicit:
“The woman of the year may be Caitlyn Jenner, which makes the rest of the female population of the world feel slightly wry.I don’t believe that a man who has lived forty years as a man, who has had children, with a woman……That he then decides that the whole time, he’s been a woman. At that point I’d like to say ‘hang on a minute, you believed you were a woman, but you married another woman. That wasn’t fair, was it?’”
Host Tony Jones summed it up when he said “at the beginning of your answer, I thought you were digging yourself out of this hole.”
“I belong in this hole,” Greer replied. Well…
Watch below, and try to guess what kind of carnage this little chat will cause:
Germaine Greer: Why do you believe there is such a thing as a “real woman”? #QandA https://t.co/fBsHKm5NM5
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) April 11, 2016
Source: Q&A / Twitter.
Photo: Q&A / Twitter.
