‘No such thing as transphobia’: Greer stuns Union members

Be in no doubt: Germaine Greer can still seriously ‘kick ass’

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Greer took no prisoners – not least transgender people

The iconic feminist’s stereotype-shattering rhetoric shook the Union to the core last night, with little seemingly left unsaid as Greer asked her wide spectrum of critics “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

From the “stupid” feminist press (“the fucking Guardian”) and the transgender community (“victims of stereotyping”) to The Daily Mail and Nestlé, Greer condemned modern society, as well as shooting down many of the Cantabs who asked her questions.

We’ve all lost sight of feminism: “we’re further apart now as women than when I wrote The Female Eunuch.”

A one-woman revolution

She pivoted her argument on the “disappearing woman”: the rising “sin of being shaggy down below.”

Having established that gender stereotypes are now stronger than ever, Greer proceeded to track down the culprits.

First on the list were the “hoards of feminist journalists”, who just aren’t “smart enough”. Greer was referring to her most recent clash with them over her support for Page 3 of The Sun, which she described as a “meek” irrelevance in a Channel Four News debate with Harriet Harman, the Deputy Labour Leader.

“I’ve taught women fifty times clever than she is”, Greer said, adding with delicious irony that Harman was bound to get “the wrong end of any stick”.

Look online

 

Had Harman looked at The Sun’s website, Greer noted, she would have seen “hundreds of tits”, “a phantasmagoria of nipples” and “chocolate brownies” galore: Page Three was not the problem.

Her argument that society was worrying about the wrong things then took an alarming turn as Cambridge’s transgender community came under Greer’s gaze.

“Women are fifty-one per cent of the world’s population and [I’ve been told] I’ve got to worry about transphobia”. She added: “acrophobia yes, but there’s no such thing as transphobia.”

The ballast for her argument came with the blunt statement that “our bodies aren’t right”: it’s a fact “women are fat-arsed.” Those who think they are transgender “are victims of stereotyping . . . the contrasting stereotypes [of male and female] aren’t real.”

Not best buds with Greer

“I’ve spoken all my life against gender polarity. If you get the idea that what you are is a person at one of the other polarities, it’s a delusion, it’s a form of body dysmorphia.”

According to Greer, the actions of transgender people are counteracting attempts to defeat stereotypes: “There’s a hardship about being a woman . . . I always wanted to be a Jew, but I can’t be.”

Greer’s startling frankness did not end there, however, as Union members asked about her departure from Newnham after she opposed the appointment of a transgender fellow.

Greer said she “was not elected . . . none of us had any idea what was going on”, adding: “I lost my college forever”. This was a fact she blamed on the “fucking Guardian” campaign against her.

Lost forever

In response to a question that suggested her arguments were threatening to transgender groups, Greer bluntly declared “they’re the ones throwing stuff at me”.

“Equality? I don’t want it, it’s a conservative idea. We need freedom” and this means “people have to speak up.”

“Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in Europe, but we seem to think she’s a flight attendant. Equality is not visibility.”

“Why give the penis this much respect?” The transgender community, the media and even today’s feminists need to “understand it’s not all rosebuds and lace”, but “a big, hairy vagina.”

But it was clear Greer was not being vulgar for the sake of it, ending her speech on a passionate note of humanism. Breaking away from the “sub-human” binary stereotyping of the “tough world we live in” will, she hopes, finally allow women “to be human beings.”