I don’t go to university to be in someone else’s echo-chamber

Imagine if Germaine Greer had spoken of transgenderism in the same breath as paedophilia, cannibalism, or something that could be potentially criminalised. Of course she has never said such things, but an international public speaker by the name of Hamza Tzortzis did with regard to homosexuality.

In a blog post, he wrote: “Most Western societies have laws that prevent the sexual abuse of children, polyandry and cannibalism. If it were argued that these crimes were really an expression of human nature, most would reject them as inappropriate actions”, supposing those who would accept homosexuality as “an expression of human nature” would have to accept them as “inappropriate actions”.

Furthermore, Tzortzis wrote: “There are societies past and present which accepted paedophilia and cannibalism as normal parts of human life and they would find Western society oppressive preventing them from carrying out these practices”, so as to say that perhaps person’s right to be homosexual is akin to a paedophile or cannibal’s right to “carry out their practices”.

He also wrote that those who would object to criminalising homosexuality are “totally inconsistent as they would have to objectively show that it is wrong… Islam, like many other spiritual traditions, argues that homosexuality is not the right way to manifest the instinct of procreation.

“Hence Islam has viewed the public expression of homosexuality as a crime and as a result has placed a mechanism in which to protect its vision for society.”

But what does any of this have to do with Germaine Greer you may ask?

Almost exactly a year before the day she was supposed to deliver her lecture Hamza Tzortzis was jointly invited by Cardiff University’s Islamic Society and the Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society to debate with Cambridge University lecturer Dr. Arif Ahmed on Islam and Atheism.

This is interesting because I cannot recall any petitioning against Mr Tzortzis from coming to Cardiff University in the same way as was made against Greer.

If we were to use the petition made against her as a point of reference, then surely it would seem obvious as to which speaker had the most “problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups” whose “attitudes contribute to the high levels of stigma, hatred and violence”, as the petition bio claims.

Not that I would describe either one of their views in such a manner; especially since you will notice the petition provides no link or citation for Greer’s alleged “transmisogyny”, and you can judge for yourself how well Tzortziz clarifies his views here. Nor would I advocate for either of them to be “no-platformed”, for reasons best made clear by the title of this article.

Hopefully it shouldn’t be necessary for me to explain how absurd the whole Germaine Greer vs. Cardiff University controversy has been. If not, you can take your pick from quite a considerable consensus of finely expressed spouts from across the media since the petition began.