In an interview with BBC Newsnight, Australian-born feminist Germaine Greer said on Friday that a sex-change surgery doesn’t make a man a woman.
Greer is scheduled to speak at Cardiff University next month, but many students have protested against her comments on transgenderism. They circulated an online petition, which has nearly 2,500 supporters, in an attempt to bar her from the campus.During the interview, Greer reiterated her opinion that men who identify as women are not, in fact, women.
Host Kirsty Wark asked repeated questions that suggested a confusion about Greer’s comments. A sample:
KW: But surely if a man who feels what he feels actually would like gender reassignment, to make him/her more comfortable in her body, then … they should be allowed to do that?
GG: I’m not saying people should not be allowed to go through that procedure, what I’m saying is that it doesn’t make them a woman. It happens to be an opinion, it’s not a prohibition. Carry on if that’s what you think it is you want to do. I’ve been accused of inciting violence agains transexual people, that’s absolute nonsense.
KW: But do you feel the transgender community is too big of a voice now?
[…]
GG: A great many women don’t think post-operative men look like or sound like women, but they daren’t say so…Not everybody does feel comfortable, by the way, post-operative, there’s been a couples of cases I’ve found very interesting where the actual accepter of the procedure has felt that it’s been a disaster.
KW: But for those who do not feel it’s been a disaster and feel more comfortable, then do you understand how they might feel that you’ve been hurtful towards them?
GG: People are hurtful to me all the time! Try being old woman. For goodness sake! People get hurt all the time, I’m not about to walk on egg shells!
After the interview, Richard Dawkins took to Twitter, defending Greer’s views on transgenderism.
Is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by chromosomes, no. If by self-identification, yes. I call her "she" out of courtesy.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) October 26, 2015
He also called the protesting college students a bunch of babies.
Students who suppress a distinguished scholar’s lecture because they disagree with her have no place in a university https://t.co/jgAeJGvzoB
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) October 24, 2015
A university is not a "safe space". If you need a safe space, leave, go home, hug your teddy & suck your thumb until ready for university.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) October 24, 2015
According to a recent survey of American college students, an excerpt of which was recently published in the Wall Street Journal, most college students (63 percent) prefer trigger warnings and one-third of students couldn’t identify the First Amendment as the part of the Constitution that protected free speech.
When asked about Glamour magazine’s decision to name Bruce (who is now asking to be called “Caitlyn”) Jenner “Woman Of The Year,” Greer called it “misogynist.”
“Misogyny plays a really big part in all of this,” she said. “That a man who goes to these lengths will be a better woman than someone who is just born a woman… It seems to me that [Jenner] wanted the limelight that the other female members of the family were enjoying. And he has conquered it just like that.”
Jenner’s Glamour magazine cover will hit stands November 3.
