Addressing claims that she had been hurtful towards transgender women, Greer added: “People are being hurtful to me all the time. Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.”...The link goes to The Guardian, where the article is illustrated by a photo of Greer, in fully wrinkled old-lady form, next to a photo of Caitlyn Jenner that's been photoshopped beyond recognition to the point of looking like a 30-year-old.
Asked about the petition [to stop her from speaking at Cardiff University, she said]: “I don’t really know what I think of it. It strikes me as a bit of a put-up job really because I am not even going to talk about the issue that they are on about."
More here: "I don’t expect people to agree with me. On the other hand, I don’t expect them to throw things at me.... I just don’t think that surgery turns a man into a woman. A perfectly permissable view. I mean, an un-man is not necessarily a woman. We don’t really know what women are and I think that a lot of women are female impersonators, because our notion of who we are is not authentic, and so I am not surprised men are better at impersonating women than women are. Not a surprise, but it’s not something I welcome."
I'm especially interested in the propositions: 1. "We don’t really know what women are," and 2. "a lot of women are female impersonators." And, by the way, once you have this level of skepticism, the opinion about transgender people becomes almost meaningless. Greer doesn't seem ready to concede even that women are women.
AND: Elsewhere in The Guardian today, there's "From Twiggy to Germaine Greer: eight classic images of powerful women/The Design Museum’s new exhibition, Women Fashion Power, about the way influential women wear clothes opens on Wednesday. Here, from Twiggy in a trouser suit to the high-shine shoulderpads of Dynasty, eight women write about the most eye-catching looks in the show." The photo of Greer shows her at the age of about 36. The text is fully celebratory:
Look at her. Just LOOK AT HER. Here is a woman who just couldn’t care less what you think about her, and even though that makes her look even more cool, even more awesome, she doesn’t care about that either. It looks like this was taken in 1975, which means this is five years on from the publication of The Female Eunuch, a publication from which the world has never really recovered. It’s easy to dismiss Germaine Greer now: batty, bullish and tainted by reality TV. But that is to take a very short-term view of the woman. In the 1970s, there were few more fabulous than her: she was brilliant, she was fearless and, god DAMN, the woman had a mouth on her. Look at her here, not caring a jot that the photographer is basically taking a photo of her crotch. Good, she probably thought! Remind the world I’m no female eunuch! “I am a woman, not a castrate,” she famously wrote. She is more than just a woman, as this photo captures. She is the one and only Germaine Greer.Ah, yes, the idea of the female eunuch sheds some light on the idea that some women are not even women. What was it that made some women not fully woman? I read the book back when it came out in 1971. (I bought "The Female Eunuch" and "Sexual Politics" at the same time, and they were the first hardback books I ever bought, shelling out the exorbitant $6.95 for each.) Ah, yes, here's the quote:
Maybe I couldn’t make it. Maybe I don’t have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade. I’m sick of pretending eternal youth. I’m sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I’m sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I’m sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I’m sick of the Powder Room. I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I’m sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate.See? That's what she's still saying: "a lot of women are female impersonators." If men are "better at impersonating women than women are," then they have become women, by the cultural standards that Greer denounced 45 years ago. The false eyelashes have gotten heavier. The "dead mane" is deader than ever with modern day weaves and extensions. Greer wrote of her disgust for all that long ago. How far we've alienated ourselves from the "natural look" that seemed to be the final destination of feminine beauty when second-wave feminism fully bloomed in the 1970s.
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86 comments:
Please, PC commie-clowns, keep going. You're doing important work.
I don't think surgery will turn a man into a woman...
Well, yeah.
Oh my, the Left yet again turns on one of its own. How many millions will have to die this time around before we learn yet again: there are lots of lefties who are absolutely murderous sociopaths. It seems that just because we did not have the blood of those millions spilled on our soil, that it just didn't happen & if it did, it tells us nothing about our precious little Left.
The Social Justice Warriors who are pushing these "hate speech" lines will stop, just like Lenin said, "when you meet steel". Count on it.
There is only male and female. Humans do not transmogrify to become the opposite sex without catastrophic anthrophogenic gender warping (CAGW).
"I just don’t think that surgery turns a man into a woman. A perfectly permissable view"
That's her mistake right there. She doesn't get to decide what's "permissible."
Did she check with the Prog commissars? Didn't think so.
She should take a leaf from the Hillary! playbook and evolve before it's too late.
Shouldn't be too difficult for someone who thinks "our notion of who we are is not authentic." She can get back on the reservation right quick.
The Left hates the First Amendment.
I wonder if that means she doesn't remember when men were men and women were women.
You can't turn a woman into a man because you can't change chromosomes. So, she's right.
people butt hurt by expressions of reality really have little reason to exist.
Blogger Matthew Sablan said...
I wonder if that means she doesn't remember when men were men and women were women.
Or, for those living alone out on the prairies of Idaho, Montana, ND and the like: When men were men and women were sheep.
I've always kind of enjoyed Germaine Greer, not that I've paid all that much attention to her. She seems to be willing to say what she thinks rather than what the progressive cloud thinks she is supposed to think.
She is right, of course. A man who cuts off his dick and makes a simulacrum of a vagina is not a woman. He is still a man. We men like to think we are somewhat more than our genitals.
We've had male to female surgery since the early 50's. In the early 70s we had a MtF stripper who performed in San Juan. She was a reasonably good looking woman except for her size 12 man feet.
I agree with Greer, I'll use the female pronoun out of courtesy when appropriate. If I am talking about Jenner in a dress, I'll probably say "She". If about the Olympian, I'll probably say "he"
John Henry
Never did read "The Female Eunuch"...
"Addressing claims that she had been hurtful towards transgender women, Greer added: “People are being hurtful to me all the time. Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.”..."
Hurtful to these delicate flowers is actually disagreeing with their stated principles. So, therefore, the very act of disagreeing is HATE speech. How are you so entitled as a human being, where your very utterances must be protected from ridicule and/or disagreement? If you have to fall back on that as your default position, you were probably wrong, and can't argue your points very well.
This is true for transgenderism, feminism, racism and gay marriage arguments. Pretty much the entire lexicon of the left is based on this simple premise. and their response to be disagreed with is "Racism, straight up" or "sexism, straight up". or "homophobia, straight up".
Even more infuriating is that while maintaining this position they are also smug in their belief that the other side doesn't have the facts. No, the other side doesn't share your opinions. There's a difference.
Some of you who are saying "she's right" are, in my view, missing her point. She's also saying that a lot of women are not women, but transvestites. Her view of womanhood is highly aspirational and requires much more than chromosomes... if you go back to "The Female Eunuch."
If I dress up like Chewbacca for Halloween, I don't actually become a wookie. If I get surgery to give myself elf ears, I don't actually become an elf.
I always enjoy reading of the Left's struggles with the First Amendment. Enjoyable so long as they don't assume power, then it will get nasty.
The text is fully celebratory
The text reads like it was written by a ten-year-old girl.
"
More here: "I don’t expect people to agree with me. On the other hand, I don’t expect them to throw things at me.... I just don’t think that surgery turns a man into a woman. A perfectly permissable view. I mean, an un-man is not necessarily a woman. We don’t really know what women are and I think that a lot of women are female impersonators, because our notion of who we are is not authentic, and so I am not surprised men are better at impersonating women than women are. Not a surprise, but it’s not something I welcome."
She too is confusing sex with gender as a social construct. we actulally DO know what a woman is. A woman has two xx chromosomes. or xx and some variant. And 99% of women also have female sex organs. If they don't they had a problem in development.
Those saying we can give transgendered people sex changes use those sex characterists as a template in what is required to change a man into a woman. The transgendered male would get a "Vagina". Because women have vaginas. Or big breasts "because women have breasts.
Who is an authentic women culturally? Well to a lot of lefties, a mom who acts like a mom and assumes "traditional" roles, is in fact a traitor to her sex. And would be inauthentically feminist.
an un-man may or may not be a woman, but I frankly don't know what an un-man is so I couldn't really say.
Maybe she's referring to the Un-Men a collection of synthetic men in the DC comic universe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un-Men
the Un-Men are "synthetic men" created by the evil sorcerer/scientist Anton Arcane in his mountain castle in the Balkans.
Which is actually not much different than how the black muslims think the mad scientist Yakub created the "White devils" on the island of Patmos.
And then of course there was Dr. Moreau, who created a bunch of half man half animal hybrids on the aptly named Island of Dr. Moreau.
What is it with crazy scientists and their ability to create monsters on islands?
Is Greer referring to these un-men?
Transvestites? I think she is saying a lot of women -- biological females-- are impersonating women --social concept.
There's a difference between biological sex and gender roles. While the latter may be a choice, but constrained by natural imperatives, the former is immutable in humans. The problem seems to arise from a confusion between the biological and ideological.
I'm especially interested in the propositions: 1. "We don’t really know what women are," and 2. "a lot of women are female impersonators." And, by the way, once you have this level of skepticism, the opinion about transgender people becomes almost meaningless.
It's only "meaningless" to people who've already gone off the deep-end in denying reality. Or are simply in over their heads intellectually.
However nutty Greer has been or can be, the woman had an intellect. If you think fucked-up old perverts like Bruce Jenner, and the outbreak of tranny-palooza in the general culture, are manifesting some fascinating and thought-provoking aspect of what Greer was getting at when she talked about "female impersonators" and "aspirational" femininity, maybe you didn't really understand The Female Eunuch.
" the Left yet again turns on one of its own."
I am enjoying Schadenfreude served cold, as all revenge is best served.
Christine Jorgensen died of prostate cancer. No mention of that in the Wiki piece.
This is the "the screwball age" according to Peggy Noonan. It will not end well. As Young Hegelian says above:
The Social Justice Warriors who are pushing these "hate speech" lines will stop, just like Lenin said, "when you meet steel". Count on it.
"I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either."
She seems to be saying that she was introduced to a game, and has been playing it for a while, and she has gotten sick of it and isn't going to play it any more. Which is a feeling a lot of us had back then. We didn't feel much like doing what the World apparently had slated for us to do. I can remember finally getting a job, something I had felt was essentially impossible on the face of it. I was pretty happy about that for some time. And then I started thinking, "Jesus, how long am expected to keep doing this shit?"
But that leaves the question of what to do instead. Go to plays by yourself? Have opinions about them, and declaim them in the privacy of your flat, where there's no man around to be less-than-impressed by them? Yeah, that sounds like fun. Do that. Then you will be an authentic woman, which for some reason must inevitably be deeply fulfilling. Mustn't it?
Or maybe be a lesbian. Then you will be an authentic woman, which for some reason must inevitably be deeply fulfilling. Mustn't it?
Hmmmm.... What is an authentic woman, anyway? Is there something that only women can do, that men can't, that makes them *authentically* women?
Nah, the way to be authentically female is to do the things men do. Get a job, make self-important pronouncements about forgettable entertainments, sleep with women. Then you will be an authentic woman, which for some reason must inevitably be deeply fulfilling.
I was researching Erica Jong for my 'zipless fuck' comment in a previous thread where I came upon another spat between the young Feminists and the old.
A discussion at the Decatur Book Festival in Georgia was meant to celebrate feminism, but ended up illustrating its generational, cultural and racial divides.
Crabs in a bucket.
I am Laslo.
"'2. "a lot of women are female impersonators."
And some aren't even good at THAT.
I am Laslo.
I do so enjoy reading about the First World problems of people.
My rule of thumb: if you espousing the views of French Revoltionaries you are most likely wrong.
Some of you who are saying "she's right" are, in my view, missing her point. She's also saying that a lot of women are not women, but transvestites. Her view of womanhood is highly aspirational and requires much more than chromosomes... if you go back to "The Female Eunuch."
And in my view, you're missing her point. Unless you believe that her views cannot possibly have evolved in 45 years.
Althouse has been wallowing in sexual hatred and vendetta her entire life, all the while attempting to disguise same as "interesting" intellectual debate.
For a brilliant intellectual, Althouse is fucking stupid beyond imagination. She can't find anything better to do than this wallowing in sexual hatred and vendetta.
That's why you ended up with a pathetic rat like Larry, prof.
Can't you find something better to do with your life? So, the art career didn't work out. This is the best you can do?
Jupiter: "I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either."
[...]
But that leaves the question of what to do instead. Go to plays by yourself? Have opinions about them, and declaim them in the privacy of your flat, where there's no man around to be less-than-impressed by them? Yeah, that sounds like fun. Do that. Then you will be an authentic woman, which for some reason must inevitably be deeply fulfilling. Mustn't it?
It's hardly an either/or Jupiter. Guess I was fortunate to have discovered a crazy-ass third alternative: I never pretended that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements were the objects of my undivided attention. (Socially. Having to tolerate the fatuous and self-important professionally is hardly a cross that has to be borne by women only.) I just dated men who weren't fatuous, self-important, and uninterested in conversation. (Win-win: hey, I don't see why men who prefer the company of women who sit silently, hanging on their every word, shouldn't get what they want. There are plenty of women who are perfectly happy playing that role.)
Go to plays, movies, concerts by myself? Sure, why not? Did that all the time, still do, if nobody else is interested in going. Somehow this didn't preclude other evenings spent in similar venues with male companionship.
Get dragged along to things that bored me snotless because some man asked me to? Never did that, either. "No, I'm not interested in those things, but thank you for asking me" worked a treat. Oddly, this did not lead to spinsterhood, though it often resulted in a later invitation to an activity of mutual interest.
Opinions? I got plenty of 'em. Unload them on men who couldn't care less what I think? Heavens, no. That's just rude and insensitive, boring people like that. (Declaim them to the walls when I'm alone? Doesn't everybody do that now and again?) Found a few men over the years who seemed to like my company and my talk, though. Married one of 'em. Stranger things have happened.
Ann, please. Germaine Greer was a nutcase then and remains a nutcase today. She just has more wrinkles. Denying that a female is a “woman” if she uses mascara, false eyelashes and a wig is just nuts. Is a man not really a man if he works out at the gym to get six pack abs even as he works in an office and sits all day? Don’t men wear the latest hairstyles (currently bald on top and a three day growth on the face is in fashion). Remember when JFK refused to wear a hat to his inauguration and suddenly fedoras were not to be seen on men’s heads. Maybe you were too busy tie dying your underwear to notice.
Women do what they do to attract men and to upstage other women. Men do the same thing and for pretty much the same reasons. There is more than a hint of Orwell’s “1984” and the Ministry of Truth to Greer’s insistence on the meaning of womanhood. Her complaints are the complaints of a neurotic. If she doesn’t want to wear make-up, or pretend to be interested in uninteresting men, for God’s sake STOP! That’s what most people who are not self-obsessed do.
She says that she’s “pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either.” So why did she do that? To get laid by a rich guy and trick him into believing she’s interested in him so that she can live the life of “the women who lunch?” I believe she married one and cheated on him which is not surprising given her attitude. She was a desperate social climber. She’s a neurotic fake, not a truth teller whose books shaped a generation of impressionable women who are just as vacuous as she is.
She hasn’t changed much except as she got older she cared less about keeping up with the latest styles of the revolution she helped start. A female Trotsky.
I saw the picture of Germaine as a formidable young woman. She was quite striking. I saw the picture of her now. The change is dramatic. You don't have to go for a sex change operation to undergo a radical transformation. Life will flux you up.
My favorite recent Greer quote:
I didn't know there was such a thing [as transphobia]. Arachnaphobia, yes. Transphobia, no.
"This level of skepticism"
Better, this level of confusion. It's perfectly clear that a person who starts out as a man is different from a person who starts out as a woman. Surgery can make the one mimic the other, more or less, but different they still are.. That's one reason why we have different words to talk about such things. If you want to talk about whether the differences matter for a particular purpose, all fine and good. But to pretend that there are no differences is to deny the obvious. Never a good place to start.
She should be stoned, burned at the stake and then her existence erased from Academia. That is what is needed to be the example of what we do to hurtful women. But catch-22 is that only a heroic trannie-woman can say it or they have to have the same thing done to it.
For some reason I confused Germaine Greer with Greer Garson -- I was amazed that Greer was still alive. Then I realized my mistake.
Angelyne,
My point is simply that "feminism" defined (and still largely defines) itself in terms of what it is against. And since what it is against is the "unfair" treatment of women -- by the Patriarchy -- it seems to have wedged itself into a crack where traditionally male activities must be regarded as fulfilling and pleasurable and "privileged", while traditionally female activities must be regarded, not as chosen by women, but as imposed upon them.
The problem, which is a serious one, is that there are really only two possible sources of "authentic" female identity; biology and culture. By rejecting the biological basis of identity, and regarding cultural "femininity" as constructed and constricting, academic feminists leave themselves with no legitimate basis for the identity they nonetheless insist upon claiming as their own (and being very proud of!). By their own logic, the only difference between men and women is that "society" insists upon treating women differently because of certain completely irrelevant physical factors. Thus it must be that what men do is what women would do, if only society would let them.
For some women, like Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem, feminism may actually have enabled them to do what they really wanted to do, which was to be a pointy-headed academic loudmouth, and get paid handsomely for it. But an awful lot of women seem to be discovering that they would actually rather stay home and enjoy their children than spend the day working at a job whose only rewards are economic.
Althouse wrote: I'm especially interested in the propositions: 1. 'We don’t really know what women are,'
This reminded me of "old" Rose in James Cameron's "Titanic:" A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets.
So Greer is right and has resonance.
Michael K: "Christine Jorgensen died of prostate cancer."
You have a citation for that? I couldn't turn up any in an (admittedly short) Google search.
I don't really see how what she is saying is controversial at all in any context. The transgender claim is that they are already what they are, and that surgery or hormones or whatever just make them LOOK more like what they already are.
In other words, the PC take on this is that a biological male who decides he is a woman is a woman and always has been a woman. This is true whether there is any degree of biological modification or not.
Do I believe that the belief that you were born a woman in man's body is objectively true? No. But there are individuals who are genuinely intersexual, and there do seem to be individuals who mentally fit more into the opposite biological norm. I don't believe it is true because I don't believe there is a hard and fast divide.
I don't believe anything about what transexuals say about themselves - there have been multiple cases when they've decided to live as a man and then gone and gotten knocked up (pregnant, still had uterus). There was a German biological woman who gave birth and wanted to be named as the father on the birth certificate!
I don't think that surgery changes anything essential about a transexual person. They say they don't either.
What I find odd about people who want to "change" genders is that they are not able to accept their natural state even if they are not stereotypically male or female. I don't understand why they bother. Why not be whatever they are, and tell everyone else who is critical to go eff off??
I think Germaine Greer stood for the freedom to be the type of person you really were, rather than some societal stereotype of what you should be, and therefore I would be truly surprised if she had another view. When I look at Greer, I see a person who has accepted her own state (including getting older), and doesn't understand why the best path for another person isn't to do the same. One only has so much time and energy in one's own life, and her position (and mine), is that one shouldn't waste it trying to be what some inauthentic version of oneself.
Bruce Jenner turning into Caitlyn Jenner disturbs me not because he is trying to physically morph into a she, but because the resulting "she" seems to be a stereotyped version of a woman, rather than whoever Caitlyn Jenner truly is or would be. I feel sorry for Caitlyn, as a woman, because anyone in their 60s who isn't enjoying the freedom to be older, saggy, and unglamorous is probably going to be pretty damned unhappy in their 70s. It's just another "Death in Venice" to me.
"Michael K: "Christine Jorgensen died of prostate cancer."
You have a citation for that? I couldn't turn up any in an (admittedly short) Google search."
I haven't looked. I was there. He died in my hospital.
Well, I could try being an old woman but Greer wouldn't think I was one anyway so that's not a very helpful suggestion of hers.
Ken B wrote:
Transvestites? I think she is saying a lot of women -- biological females-- are impersonating women --social concept.
Well biological women certainly are not impersonating women. They are women. So then she must mean that they are CULTURALLY impersonating women. Which implies there is a right and wrong way to act like a woman. Why does Greer thinks she embodies that right way, and those who don't don't?
Implicit in all of this is the feminists desire to reject cultural norms for women based on biology. The transgendered community accepted the argument that women are women because they conform to social constructs. They are therefore at an impasse.
I did look just now and found this.
The San Clemente General Hospital issued a statement saying Miss Jorgensen's death followed a long bout with bladder and lung cancer.
No doubt for the sensitivities of fans or something but it was prostate. Lung metastasizes.
Bruce Jenner turning into Caitlyn Jenner disturbs me not because he is trying to physically morph into a she, but because the resulting "she" seems to be a stereotyped version of a woman, rather than whoever Caitlyn Jenner truly is or would be.
Maybe he just gets off on himself. Literally.
"What do women want?" was once a question for writers who had to come up with 500 words by Friday's publication date. Is "We don’t really know what women are," supposed to be profound, or incredibly stupid? I vote for the latter.
openidname said...
You have a citation for that? I couldn't turn up any in an (admittedly short) Google search.
We've been through this before in the comments. A Jenner defender threatened to turn in Michael K for violating some confidentiality oath. Such are the SJWs these days.
Shouting Thomas, you are anathema. Can't you find ANYTHING better to do with your life?
Whatever Ann Althouse is about, it is not and never has been about wallowing, sexual hatred and vendetta.
Probably she and Meade are rolling around in frabjous joy over that comment. I can imagine Ann ducking behind one of Meade's monster plants, wailing something about revenge, and waving a table knife at Meade while he's cooking dinner. If the food gets burnt tonight it will be your performance art that did it.
But for the rest of us, it just interrupts a somewhat interesting conversation on a topic that is generally confusing. You're blowing a police whistle in the middle of a nice jazz concert, and everyone's looking at you as a buffoon, at best.
Re Greer
Woman complaining about what women have to do to please other women.
Men care very little about all that.
Womens lib was, I suppose, liberating themselves from each other. It still seems to be that, because its not working.
jr565 - I think you are misunderstanding the issue. It is not so much that Greer thought there was only one correct way to be a woman as that she accurately targeted the cultural imperatives that were telling women that they weren't doing it right, and correctly commented that trying to be the "right" kind of woman was getting in the way of being an effective woman for far too many women.
It is still true today. When you are a young woman in the mating frenzy, of course you feel the need to be attractive, or as attractive as you can be. But even focusing just on physical attractiveness often gets in the way of finding the guy you really want to be with.
While there's a huge gulf between Greer's psyche and mine, this quote from her does resonate with me:
The freedom I pleaded for twenty years ago was freedom to be a person, with dignity, integrity, nobility, passion, pride that constitute personhood. Freedom to run, shout, talk loudly and sit with your knees apart. Freedom to know and love the earth and all that swims, lies, and crawls upon it...most of the women in the world are still afraid, still hungry, still mute and loaded by religion with all kinds of fetters, masked, muzzled, mutilated and beaten.
As MaxedOutMama quoted Greer: ..."most of the women in the world are still afraid, still hungry, still mute and loaded by religion with all kinds of fetters, masked, muzzled, mutilated and beaten".
That seems to be what steams Greer the most about the transexuals' crusade. She's very much involved and active in work with women living in dismal conditions in the rest of the world, and this fixation on the lot of a tiny minority of troubled (for whatever reason) people she finds obscene.
The freedom I pleaded for twenty years ago was freedom to be a person, with dignity, integrity, nobility, passion, pride that constitute personhood. Freedom to run, shout, talk loudly and sit with your knees apart. Freedom to know and love the earth and all that swims, lies, and crawls upon it...most of the women in the world are still afraid, still hungry, still mute and loaded by religion with all kinds of fetters, masked, muzzled, mutilated and beaten.
I don't think that included the freedom to pretend to be someone or something else and to be taken seriously doing so. I think Greer would reject that outright.
Jupiter @5:07 PM: Don't disagree with anything you say; just took issue with what I took you to be saying: that for a woman it's a choice between cat-lady-hood or accepting the dreary, self-abnegating role Greer was describing. I grew up in a "traditional" family; I live a pretty "traditional" family life myself. Nobody in my family then or now acted or acts like these people. (Simpering women with no wills or personalities? Hahahahaha.) I've always thought that was the problem with a lot of feminism: it's a projection of personal experience onto the "culture". I'm not entirely without sympathy here - it's hard not to see things through the lens of one's own family experience. But it's distorted and wrong.
For some women, like Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem, feminism may actually have enabled them to do what they really wanted to do, which was to be a pointy-headed academic loudmouth, and get paid handsomely for it.
That's the thing. I'm not interested in living in a rigid, stick-up-the-butt society where behavioral outliers like Greer can't do their thing. Any society that has reached a certain level of development ought to be able to handle that, tolerate eccentrics and outliers, no problem. But it's a huge problem when the outliers (and people who aren't really outliers, just out-and-out fucked-up people) start demanding that society see them as normal (they're not normal), and start wrecking important institutions that necessarily are built around the norm, in the name of assuaging their pathologies.
Jenner will be a dude again in less than 5 years. The tranny lawsuits will be going full blast in less than 10, with malpractice insurance forking out tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. Good times and remember I predicted it. Of course, the future of trannyism is eminently predictable. Don't even get me started on the coming tattoo lawsuits. Whaddaya mean, permanent?
And, by the way, once you have this level of skepticism, the opinion about transgender people becomes almost meaningless.
I don't think that's the case at all. She is rejecting both the "count the Y chromosomes" argument and the "I am what I say I am, RESPECT MY AUTHORATAA." I admit she's not articulating a coherent standard, but let's face it, the medical community can't do it either.
As I understand it, their basic position is that gender dysphoria is a real mental illness that they don't have a cure for. Surgery is one thing that doctors have tried to help these people live a reasonable life. Some still think it can be a reasonable approach. Others (like Hopkins, who was one of the early adopters) think that it has proven to be ineffective. I'm not a doctor. Neither are most of the people who have strong opinions about this. Far as I'm concerned, its up to the people with this condition and their doctors to figure out how to cope.
So, I hope that one day there will be an opinion that will actually help people with this condition. If so, it will be far from meaningless. I am guessing that it will be in the "level of skepticism" of Greer's. We will see.
[Side note: I hate that Jenner has become the poster child for this. He's an attention whore hooked up with the Kardassians. No one can take his honesty for granted. He a distraction from a question about a serious mental condition.]
You cannot understand the True Essence of Woman until you understand Bukkake.
The problem with Western Women is they try to do it just one guy at a time.
Bruce can still probably hit Caitlyn's face all by himself.
He WAS an Olympian.
I am Laslo.
The whole thing kinda sucks.
It's Tuesday night, there's nothing to do, and there's a 65-year-old woman at the bar.
Why not? I'll fuck you, ma'am.
Then it turns out she has a dick and balls.
Criminy.
Lady, you have a dick and balls.
No, you can't suck my cock, either.
Fuck you, AARP.
I am Laslo.
Celeborating the temporary nature is all most media-wise folks have, Hellaton more than most.
Akira the artist becomes "AK IRA" and all points of view surmise "what the heck, anymore, is a viewpoint?"
Answered, asked again because structured systems demand.
Akira.
If men want to pretend to be women and women want to pretend to be men, that's their business, but why should the rest of us have to pretend along with them?
One of the common heresies fought by the Medieval church was Manichaeism or dualism. In Manichaeism our spirits are created by the Good One (the Monad or dunamis). Our bodies and the material world were created by the wicked demiurge to imprison our pure, sexless spirits. The world we live in is corrupt because it was created by the demiurge, and not by the Monad. Manichaes believed that Christ was kind of an emissary sent by the Monad into the material world to free us from bondage to the corrupt world of the flesh created by the demiurge.
It's not difficult to fit modern feminism into this template. Nature is the Monad, the Patriarchy is the Demiurge. Our sexualized bodies are corrupt matter enclosing an idealized, sexless spirit.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Greer is the orthodox thinker in the room. She says women are women and men are men. All she ever opposed was play acting and dress up that counterfeits the real thing.
" . . . why should the rest of us have to pretend along with them?"
That is the entire point of the exercise, Douglas. It is the equivalent of Gessler's hat in the William Tell legend.
What! No Magaret Thatcher? The Guardian lives in a small world.
I was reading today in Bottom Line Health about "body dysmorphic disorder" but apparently that only applies to someone tormented by minor perceived defects in their body, like splotchy skin or a pointy nose, or maybe eyes the wrong size, or thinning hair.
It said:
Three-fourths of people with BDD seek unnecessary cosmetic procedures (including surgery (which brings only temporary relief at best) Depression, anxiety and substance abuse are common among BDD sufferers, and their suicide rate of 45 times higher than that of the general population
Especially if you diagnose it or report it, only after death, maybe.
It goes on to describe various kinds of treatment like "perceptual retraining" or drugs (different drugs than the ones they don't want them to take.)
And here is a web page about this:
http://bddfoundation.org
But if it's not a pointy nose or eyes the wrong size, but someone has such a bad case that they think, or claim, they're entirely the wrong sex, then surgery is supposed to be the answer.
At Johns Hopkins, they discovered in the 1970s that that didn't work.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/
Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers....
....But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh-transsexual.html
...Paul McHugh. McHugh saw SRS as unnecessary mutilation, and set out to kill the program. He assigned Dr. John Meyer to do a long-term follow-up study of 50 transsexuals who underwent SRS at Johns Hopkins. Meyer's report, issued in 1977, claimed that SRS confers no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation for transsexuals. Although the paper was widely criticized as flawed, it led to the October 1979 closing of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic
Op-ed Article by Paul McHugh in the Wall Street Journal Jun 12, 2014
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120
And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery...
The difference between attempting to cure "body dysmorphic disorder" with talking, training exercises, and medication, and attempting to cure "gender dysphoria" with surgery, is that there's different doctors involved.
Lydia - I don't think Greer is steamed about transexuals. I think rather that she doesn't find it a central issue for women, and she refuses to back off her main focus.
It is easy to get hung up on some of the more extreme discussions Greer has conducted, but before doing so, her critics should be forced to deal with Greer's framework, which is historical and global. When she said that she thought men hated women, it has to be understood in the context of two modern village Indian women being sentenced to be gang-raped and marched through the village nude because a relative ran off with a woman that offends the sensitivities of that society.
And THAT JUST HAPPENED, and it is not an outlier.
http://www.news.com.au/world/girl-10-raped-at-the-command-of-village-chief-in-jharkhand-india/story-fndir2ev-1226985244797
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/11/india-revenge-rape/12544347/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2544450/Kangaroo-court-orders-Indian-woman-gang-raped-13-men-having-relationship-man-village-judges-carrying-punishment.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/villagers-deny-indian-sisters-rape-punishment-claims-10480865.html
Female genital mutilation is still common in many areas. Women can be beaten in many societies for showing their hair.
The assertion that women are full human beings with full human rights may seem commonplace to us, but it is not globally true at this time.
Greer is not a petty feminist.
I personally find it hard to accept anyone as female who is agitating to eliminate female-only restrooms. The problem is obvious. If the legal prohibition remains, then individuals who are passing as female will of course use the restrooms (I've seen them myself). If the legal prohibition is lifted, women are going to have to form gangs to go the bathroom safely in public.
The reality is that rape is a different threat for a woman with a uterus and functioning ovaries, and, as the Marines just discovered, a remarkably lower capacity to exert force when compared to men.
Chickelit - Greer also criticized the social pressure to be "masculine" as opposed to male. I think she would be highly sympathetic to the transexual dilemma, but not to the point of ignoring a biological reality which has produced many highly oppressive social forms for thousands of years and which are still causing massive trauma to millions today.
In her later works she evolved quite a bit. While always more than a bit wacky to me, what prevents her from being just a fish/bicycle type is her genuine concern for personhood.
And later on, she realized she could not have children of her own, due in large part to her earlier behavior, and she sharply modified her stance on the correct use of sexual freedom. But in a world in which millions of women are married without their consent, sexual freedom for women is still an important and highly relevant topic.
I find her writing as irritating as blackboard scraping, but she is, in her own way, searching for something real.
A female becomes a woman upon attaining a certain age. A male does not become a man until he proves himself one, acts like a man. Greer seems to want to adapt that approach to women. Except she seems to think that woman does not become a woman until she acts like a man. Otherwise, she is a female impersonator.
"But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle. "
Yup , and I am sure there is money to be made. Follow the money.
MaxedOutMama -- I think we're in agreement re Greer, and I did use the words "crusade" and "fixation."
A perfectly permissable view.
Spotted the mistake right away. There are no permissible views other than those we say, comrade. DOMA supporter? Prop 8 backer? Same sex marriage opponent? Not permissible. Prominent Democrats who you think held those views just a while ago really didn't--they were playing 3D chess or fighting a rearguard action, and anyway we won't ask them about they (they "evolved" after all), so that's all down the memory hole.
We have always been at war against those who don't think Caitlyn Jenner is a hero(ine?).
Blogger MaxedOutMama said...
. . . but not to the point of ignoring a biological reality which has produced many highly oppressive social forms for thousands of years and which are still causing massive trauma to millions today.
That would be your demiurge, right there.
Recall that in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the goal of Big Brother was arbitrary power. For Big Brother to be bound by any rules, even consistency or reason, was limited his power.
So don't ask the SJW's to be consistent or reasonable. Any criticism of whatever they are going on about will be rightly seen as an attack on them.
Terry said...
It is the equivalent of Gessler's hat in the William Tell legend.
Thank you for the forgotten history lesson. The Left only knows the William S. Burroughs version of the story and evaded consequences.
@Moneyrunner:Remember when JFK refused to wear a hat to his inauguration
Lots of people "remember" that, but he did in fact wear a hat.
Thanks Gabriel!
Nixon in a top hat:
http://s378.photobucket.com/user/zetwal/media/9b7c5b57.jpg.html
So for this latest over reaction does Greer blame Capitalist Men for trying to suppress her speech, or the left wing feminist thought police she indirectly helped create?
@Gabriel I stand corrected, he bought a hat and is photographed wearing it, but here's the rest of the story:
The turning point, most people say, was John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Before Kennedy, all presidents wore top hats on their first day at work. Kennedy brought one, but hardly ever put it on. Fashionistas say Kennedy, one of our most charismatic presidents, made hats un-happen. And, chronologically speaking, after JFK, guys everywhere, even balding ones like astronaut John Glenn, went topless.
You can read - and see - the evolution of men's hat fashions here:
Who Killed Men's Hats? Think Of A Three Letter Word Beginning With 'I'
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem - who celebrated her abortion by getting the T-shirt - thinks feminism has been given a bad name because of men like Rush Limbaugh. It's not photos of crazy women in "slut walks" proclaiming their feminism, it's not man-hating lunatics shouting "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," it's not a multitude of female college students claiming to have been raped after the object of their affections dumped them, it's not "mattress girl" being hailed as a feminist heroine (then making a sex tape). It's not feminism telling young women to be "explore their sexuality" by jumping the next guy in line via the Hookup Culture, then demand a u-turn making sex without a written contract or video tape "rape". Oh no, it's all Rush Limbaugh's fault.
It IS sort of funny except for the collateral damage to the women - and men - who bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Politicized explorations of complicated phenomena often become asinine and vapid.
MaxedOutMama said...
"I think she would be highly sympathetic to the transexual dilemma, but not to the point of ignoring a biological reality which has produced many highly oppressive social forms for thousands of years and which are still causing massive trauma to millions today."
There are other biological realities, like war and starvation, that have produced other oppressive social forms, like slavery and capitalism. The question, I suppose, is to what extent one can eliminate the social forms without encountering the biological consequences those forms were developed to avoid. We seem to be managing pretty well without slavery.
It's a wise child who knows who his father is, and the goal of patriarchy has always been to ensure that the children a man is raising are his own. This necessarily involves controlling women's behavior, and especially their sexual behavior. The educated elites in the West are attempting to develop a system based solely on trust. Perhaps they will be successful. But I can't help noticing that, as women become more "free", men are less and less interested in helping them raise their children. Cow, milk.
Traditional sexual mores were a form of social contract. You don't sign a social contract, you are born into it. But it has been negotiated for you by thousands of generations, and you break it at your peril.
It's a wise child who knows who his father is, and the goal of patriarchy has always been to ensure that the children a man is raising are his own. This necessarily involves controlling women's behavior, and especially their sexual behavior. The educated elites in the West are attempting to develop a system based solely on trust. Perhaps they will be successful. But I can't help noticing that, as women become more "free", men are less and less interested in helping them raise their children. Cow, milk.
Today's"Julia" expects men to raise other men's children or at least pay for them. Men are supposed to like it, too.
Ken is right:
Transvestites? I think she is saying a lot of women -- biological females-- are impersonating women --social concept.
Greer is talking about Sarah Palin not RuPaul.
I think that Greer is talking about appearance only when she says "some women are not women". Would anyone think that Jenner was a woman if he/she wore a t-shirt and jeans and had a man's haircut?
"Greer is talking about Sarah Palin not RuPaul."
Proving the point that Greer and people who take her seriously are crazy.
Recall that in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the goal of Big Brother was arbitrary power.
And they did that by controlling the language, just as Feminists do by denying that there is something that's objectively a woman. By inventing a multiplicity of sexes when there are only two. By declaring that an operation will transform a man into a woman and vice versa. By denying her gender to people like Sarah Palin (see jacksonjay) for political power. If Feminists insists two and two make five, like The Party did in 1984, Feminists will line up and swear to it and lawyers will fight and win to make that true.
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable…what then?"
Perfect example of the snake of identity politics eating itself. It is interesting how with the modern gay rights movement being all but won, transgender have become the new poster children for the oppressed. I used to think it was absurd how much attention gay American received given their relative size (perhaps 3% of the population. Transgendered Americans are perhaps 1/3 of one percent. This is such an unbelievably trivial issue. I think these are obviously troubled people. If surgically altering their bodies or dressing a certain way brings them some level of comfort, more power to them. What do I care. But the fact of the matter is that social pathologies exist within the transgender community that are in all likelihood a component of the same pathology that produced the transgenderism. However, as an identity politics movement, it commits the classic trope of blaming all internal pathologies on the bigotry and intolerance of the majority population. I'm an atheist, but what we are essentially seeing is an instance of a secular religion enforcing dogma.
Unfortunately, this is not confined to any single side of the political spectrum. Modern talk radio/Fox News conservatism has become a type of secular religion with all the attendant trappings. I find it amusing that in the comments sections of the gay-themed blogs I read, I am routinely called things like "right-wing," "republican hack," "fascist," etc. When I talk about why the Middle East and Sub-saharan African suffer from some of the problems they do, I am called a racist. When I criticize Obama's drone campaign or Libya War, I am told how bad a president Bush was. And then I come to a blog like this, and I am accused of all of the opposite. I am told I am left-wing, a democrat, an Obama supporter, a Muslim lover, blah blah blah. I criticize something about Israel, and I am called a Jew hater. But that's life in the world of partisan politics, I suppose. No real way of escaping it.
Frankly, the US is most probably too large and regionally diverse to be successfully governed nationally. It would probably be a better course for the US to divide into perhaps 5 or 6 regional nations that manage a few issues like trade and currency through a federation system.
"We don’t really know what women are,"
Perhaps, but we know well enough to know that it's not a good idea to let a man-who-says-he's-really-a-women compete in women's athletic events in the Olympics, or any other high-level athletic competition. Because we know that if enough men did so they'd prevent actual women from participating in these events, because we can see that in such athletic events there's a huge performance gap between the best men and the best women.
To take just one example. What's being pushed is a form of mandatory doublethink, in which it is demanded we keep "of course he's a woman if he says he is!" in our heads, along side with our knowledge that, in fact, he's really not a woman.
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