High profile Australian feminist Germaine Greer is causing great upset once again as she continues to publicly express her extreme transphobic views. Greer has cancelled an upcoming talk scheduled to take place at Cardiff University after she became the subject of student protests. Calls to have her talk at Cardiff University about Women in the 20th Century cancelled resulted in an online petition gathering over 2000 signatures and Greer subsequently taking it upon herself to cancel. “While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous. Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views, and by extension, the transmisogyny which she continues to perpetuate,” the petition read. “Universities should prioritise the voices of the most vulnerable on their campuses, not invite speakers who seek to further marginalise them.” Greer has previously expressed opinions that trans women are “some kind of ghastly parody” that don’t know what it is like to have a “big, hairy, smelly vagina”, most recently referring to Caitlyn Jenner as a “he/she”. Further vocalising her transphobic views in a statement read out by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire during her television interview with the trans actor Rebecca Root, Greer claimed; "just because you lop off your penis...it doesn't make you a woman”. “I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve support in coming to terms with their gender but it’s not the same thing. A man who gets his d**k chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.” Root says she was completely “gobsmacked” and that the comments are "grossly offensive” to trans women. Greer has spoken out saying; “People have decided that because I don’t think that post-operative transgender men are women, I’m not to be allowed to talk.” “I’m not saying that people should not be allowed to go through that [gender reassignment] procedure,” she clarified. “What I’m saying is that it doesn’t make them a woman. It happens to be an opinion, it’s not a prohibition.” Greer was glitter bombed at the Readers and Writers Week here in New Zealand in 2012 by members of the Wellington protest group The Queer Avengers.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 27th October 2015 - 1:31pm