She's a hardcore second-wave feminist, and sharp as a tack in her writing, wrong though many of her views may be. I think it would be useful to engage with her, from a historical standpoint. That would be a huge opportunity for anyone looking to get into women's studies as a career discipline. It's like, would you, as a feminist, turn down an opportunity to hear a talk by Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Betty Friedan just because they were huge racists? No, there's a lot to learn from them, like how old the old prescriptivist judges of feminism address what we know today, and perhaps most importantly, how to avoid becoming a new faction of trans-exclusionary feminist police like they did.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Richard Dawkins tells students upset by Germaine Greer to go home and hug a teddy
- Thread starter Erin S Kittens
- Start date
- Status
it's the horseshoe. those at each at the extreme ends of the spectrum are closer than they wish to admit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
it's ridiculous. I'm personally very left wing, but im willing to listen to any opinion even if it's just so I can argue against it. but shutting people down won't change anyone's mind, you need open discussion on a subject and you need people to make up their own mind about an issue.
If you can't bring someone round to your line of thinking on something e.g transgender issues. then you don't shut down all opposing arguments to prevent that mindset from spreading. you have to appeal to the opposition see things from their point of view and form an argument that works in the context of that individual. you can't jsut sit there shouting "IM RIGHT MY WAY IS BEST" and expect everyone to agree.
NOTE: I'm not arguing against you here im just agreeing with your frustrations at the totalitarian way that the far right and left apply their views.
I agree, Facism is always alarming, the facist left is just as much a problem as the right.
I would agree with Dawkins if it weren't for language such as calling trans people "some kind of ghastly parody.
That's just mean. I don't think it's hate or ignorance exactly but it's just ugly mean spirited nonsense against people who are struggling. If you want to express a dissenting opinion from academia at large on the subject then be an academic and leave this stuff to 4chan and Reddit.
That's just mean. I don't think it's hate or ignorance exactly but it's just ugly mean spirited nonsense against people who are struggling. If you want to express a dissenting opinion from academia at large on the subject then be an academic and leave this stuff to 4chan and Reddit.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Generally... but we only have finite time and resources. Some issues have to be considered settled to learn and move forward.
For example, if there are 10 different types of bigots and 5 non bigots and you have 10 seminar slots, you cant just randomly decide the speakers.
In this case however, a good response to the speaker could have been educational.
Risking sounding like Yoda, it's definitely hate and ignorance brought on by anger. She's an incredibly sharp women who has written some important things, but her strict focus and the righteous anger she uses as fuel clouds her.
I take back what I said earlier after consideration, she shouldn't be denied a platform just because she's said some hateful things. She should be oven a platform and contested by the intelligent, open-minds of a new generation.
Not only to put these new minds to the test, but also for the potential of the debate doing some good for Greer and everyone involved.
I understand the protest, but I think it was short-sighted.
I wouldn't regard Greer as a bigot. That word gets bandied about too often these days.
She definitely presented her trans views in a bigoted way.
Garrett Hawke
Member
So she cancelled the talk on her own and Dawkins is blaming the protestors? ok.
where?
She seems extremely intolerant of opposing views regarding transgender women. I'm basing this on the language she's used so far so I could be wrong.
There are a half dozen quotes you can find via a quick google that seem to fit the idea her views regarding this are bigoted.
stump sock
Member
or just read the OP, I guess
Any idea that doesn't get rebutted but silenced is only going to grow stronger. No, not every idea is equal, nor every idea deserves to be automatically considered as a default "equally acceptable opposite side of the debate" (hers are surely not) nor they need to get exposure into the mainstream either.
But shitty-ass ideas needs to be confronted and debated. Not only merely politically defeated, but intellectually defeated too. So let Greer come to the university, I say, just like Amayinehad was. And then tear her a new intellectual asshole when she attempts to defend her garbage prejudices, too. People that worries about giving a "voice" for extremist views are simply unaware that bad publicity do exist and it is far more effective than silence per se when it comes to defeat harful beliefs and ideas.
But shitty-ass ideas needs to be confronted and debated. Not only merely politically defeated, but intellectually defeated too. So let Greer come to the university, I say, just like Amayinehad was. And then tear her a new intellectual asshole when she attempts to defend her garbage prejudices, too. People that worries about giving a "voice" for extremist views are simply unaware that bad publicity do exist and it is far more effective than silence per se when it comes to defeat harful beliefs and ideas.
Dawkins is perfectly right in this case.
However is it a bad thing to prevent this woman to speak in a college? I don't know her very well but she seems uselessly inflammatory and insulting. "ghastly parody" and such.
You are not accepting trans people?
Good for you I guess but when we give a tribune to someone to express their opinion we expect them to be at least a bit intelligent and articulate, and not have a raging hateful and insulting orator.
I don't see the point of inviting her to have an intelligent debate to make things progress if this is the way she express herself, it will just end up in people getting angry.
However is it a bad thing to prevent this woman to speak in a college? I don't know her very well but she seems uselessly inflammatory and insulting. "ghastly parody" and such.
You are not accepting trans people?
Good for you I guess but when we give a tribune to someone to express their opinion we expect them to be at least a bit intelligent and articulate, and not have a raging hateful and insulting orator.
I don't see the point of inviting her to have an intelligent debate to make things progress if this is the way she express herself, it will just end up in people getting angry.
I don't think she's espoused prejudice of any kind, she's giving her opinion on the matter(trans being women).
Damerman
Member
I agree with this. This greer person seems to be talking nonsense... I'm not sure where it's coming from, maybe its hate or maybe it's something she genuinely believes.
But to keep students from engaging her just once is a missed opportunity for a learning experience that would definitely help in a real world situation.
Some examples:
In 1996: Vocally opposed the appointment of a trans woman (a physicist) to her college institution (Newnham College for Women), resulting in the physicist's outing to the UK tabloids (a source of immense distress for her over the following years). Greer resigned in protest when her opposition amounted to nothing.
In 1999: Published a book called "The Whole Woman" with a chapter on trans women called "Pantomime Dames":
"Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males. The biological truth is the opposite; all biologists know that males are defective females. Though external genitalia are the expression of the chromosomal defect, their removal will not alter the chromosomal fact, any more than removal of the tails of puppies will produce a tailless breed. "Sex-change operations" can only be carried out in Swift's Laputa."
"The transsexual is identified as such solely on his/her own script, which can be as learned as any sex-typed behaviour and as editorialized as autobiographies usually are. The lack of insight that MTF transsexuals usually show about the extent of their acceptance as females should be an indication that their behaviour is less rational than it seems. There is a witness to the transsexual's script, a witness who is never consulted. She is the person who built the transsexual's body of her own flesh and brought it up as her son or daughter, the transsexual's worst enemy, his/her mother. Whatever else it is gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother. When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her. His intentions are no more honourable than any female impersonator's; his achievement is to gag all those who would call his bluff. When he forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done."
In 2009: Wrote an article for the Guardian on Caster Semenya, including a diatribe on trans women:
"Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn't polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female."
In 2015: To a BBC programme, just within the last day:
Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn't make you a fucking woman. Ive asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and Im going to wear a brown coat but that wont turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel. I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve support in coming to terms with their gender but its not the same thing. A man who gets his dick chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.
While I'm sure that Greer doesn't command as high of a price as other speakers, the money not spent on her could go to things that would do a much better job at challenging them than a one hour presentation. Stuff like, say, hiring more faculty to prevent critical course sections from being merged into 100+ student classes, which probably do more to damage the chance of students being challenged.
partyphone
Banned
bigoted views don't challenge anyone. they're the status quo and they're fucking exhausting to deal with.
feminism is intersectional or it's garbage.
feminism is intersectional or it's garbage.
yeah, she's definitely not keen, I think from her position as a feminist, it's quite a rational view.
And this response is any better?
Rational? You might want to explain further.
Kenshin001
Member
She wasn't going to talk about transgender people. She was going to talk about feminism. Probably a lot of men would object to her speaking about that issue too on the grounds they think she is hateful and insulting.
Krauser Kat
Member
I still think Dick is right. As much i think Orson Scott Card is a fuckwit. If we was being paid my the college to speak on writing fiction. It would be a worthwhile talk. I think Greer has some reprehensible views and on trans people. If she speaks about feminism and her experiences with it the talk would be fine.
Thornton Reed
Member
I definitely expected her to have this point of view, I'm not surprised by any of her comments which she has made.
From HER position, not mine dimwit.
boiled goose
good with gravy
There is a subtle and complex discussion somewhere underneath here.
At least when it comes to brain chemistry and brain states my understanding is that trans individuals differ from cis individuals of the sex they were born with but also dont exactly match the gender they identify with.
The whole who is a real woman angle seems silly and no true Scotsmaney. If you identify as one and society largely perceives you as one then that seems like enough.
Trans individuals are a small minority and face lots of issues so any additional discrimination and criticism is completely counterproductive and misguided.
My (privileged) perspective: we should push for a rhetoric of acceptance and inclusion rather than get into dirty and messy fights about what a real woman or man is.
Thoughts?
At least when it comes to brain chemistry and brain states my understanding is that trans individuals differ from cis individuals of the sex they were born with but also dont exactly match the gender they identify with.
The whole who is a real woman angle seems silly and no true Scotsmaney. If you identify as one and society largely perceives you as one then that seems like enough.
Trans individuals are a small minority and face lots of issues so any additional discrimination and criticism is completely counterproductive and misguided.
My (privileged) perspective: we should push for a rhetoric of acceptance and inclusion rather than get into dirty and messy fights about what a real woman or man is.
Thoughts?
I'm asking why you find her position rational.
Being against evil is not evil so yes.
He's saying that it makes sense that feminists who are very anti-men would hold this kind of viewpoint.
Thornton Reed
Member
nice put post and i agree with this.
would this comment also apply to someone like rachel dolezal?
look at the language you use.
I'm pretty sure calling trans women "ghastly parodies" would be considered evil, yes.
I don't think "rational" is the right word, the things she's saying might be expected by someone with such views, but the view that trans women are men trying to usurp womens rights or some such shit is definitely an irrational view
I don't think "rational" is the right word, the things she's saying might be expected by someone with such views, but the view that trans women are men trying to usurp womens rights or some such shit is definitely an irrational view
partyphone
Banned
yeah this is on the right track, i think. biology is super messy and imprecise and to say that there are only two genders and that your gender is only determined by the configuration of your sex chromosomes is highly inaccurate. even ignoring epigenetic factors how would do you explain people who are XXY?
there's no reason to give someone with outdated and harmful views a platform when there are a lot of other prominent feminists who would be better.
but we should all know how these sorts of things are booked. it's largely who you know not who you are.
Totally agreed. People are damaging others for egoistic gain
It's like Nazism, Islamic fundamentalism and other ideologies based on a group of fragile egos wanting to feel special. They needed love when they didn't get it.
Are her loses when accepting trans people als real women or men bigger than the damage that trans people feel today? I very much doubt that but she is mentally ill and has a persecution complex and that's her real issue. She just can't communicate that without feeling ashamed.
Gnome Scat
Member
Yeah Dawkins is right on this one.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Is she the lady that passed as a black woman?
Much like gender identity racial indentity has a few things that go into it. Your experience, your self identity, how society perceives and treats you.
There is a big difference between gender and sex compared to race. Things like biological sex are generally much more easy to delineate biologically. But as others have pointed out, sometimes it is not clear. Binary reductionism is silly, especially when we sre talking about the individuals in the minority that dont fall into the more frequenct categories. Race is largely a societal construct. So to me trans race is silly. Identifying more with another group culturally and experoentially is fine.
My personal issue with Rachel is she tried to hide and lied about her background instead of just embracing it. Some of her answers suggest to me she has some issues...
This.
They didn't physically bar her from speaking, she chickened out because they were speaking their minds. *shrug*
My mom was also very susceptible to the brand of transphobia people like them spewed over the decades.
All that stuff she said over the years sounded like exact rephrasings of Greer or Janice Raymond.
All the pain, tears, all those lost years and misunderstanding we had between each other just because some people feel entitled to vomit their hatred into others minds...
No, thanks, I don't honor people who thrusthed a stake between me and people I deeply care for.
If there is one thing that deserves to be hated, it's hatred itself and only that.
All that stuff she said over the years sounded like exact rephrasings of Greer or Janice Raymond.
All the pain, tears, all those lost years and misunderstanding we had between each other just because some people feel entitled to vomit their hatred into others minds...
No, thanks, I don't honor people who thrusthed a stake between me and people I deeply care for.
If there is one thing that deserves to be hated, it's hatred itself and only that.
Her use of language is a pretty obvious tell to me.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Damn fair point. As long as protests weren't disruptive, then it is also free speech.
Free speech doesn't mean you cant be criticised.
Yeah regarding the Dolezal comparisons, if she didn't do the blackface makeup and lie about her family, etc, she probably would have been OK. It's OK to be a white person and say you love black culture and want to be a part of it and work towards civil rights, but Dolezal was deceiving people. White people are allowed to join the NAACP of course
Yes. The whole point of a forum is to talk and hash out the underlying support for their viewpoints.
That said, it's David Duke. Most people aren't going to be interested in hearing what he has to say so it would be a waste of forum space time over a better speaker. Why invite him if he's going to make people not want to participate?
ReplacementPelican
Member
Yes
I read the rest of your post and it's clear that you have no idea who this woman is. I'm actually relatively sure that a lot of people saying she shouldn't speak haven't known anything about Greer until today, she is not some sort of outwardly multi-phobic bigot who has been at this for years, a lot of people are genuinely surprised that she would say something like this. The idea that we should lobby against someone speaking at a University because they have said one thing that we disagree with out of a 45 year career, it's ridiculous. The comparisons with people like David Duke are absolutely outstandingly ignorant as well.
Anyone ready to jump at me for defending her, my post is the second reply on the first page.
Kenshin001
Member
She was worried about people throwing things at her which happened when the Queer Avengers threw glitter over her in New Zealand. She doesn't want to deal with that shit at her age.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
You're essentially suggesting maintaining this smoke screen vacuum of speakers of the same cloth. Speakers who can already pander the students along the same echelon of thought and discourse. That seems counter-productive to me. Students should be prepared for the real world. It's good to give them something to fight that exist out there.
It is silly to try and shut down people. Engage them in debate. Allow them to speak, to show that the campus can walk the talk they claim to be.
That is why in many democratic societies we allow KKK and Neo-Nazi rallies to persist. They are plauge on society, but we allow them express their "toxic", "hateful", "Outdated views" and [insert ruined cliche shut down semantic] because it just proves that democracy work. Their trolling has little effect, and nobody is falling for that shit.
You kill with love, you kill with debate. You don't put your head in the sand and pretend this is not going on. That is the whole problem with safe-space. I'm all for that lecturers like this don't get paid for doing this, but absolutely does students need to engage in this discourse. People like Greer are a product of the world.
I don't buy that students will be corrupted by her sthick. Any semi-decent person can see how telling it is when someone hates someone else for no reason. It's personal suicide that only touches those who have already fallen so far down the slope that they can't see straight.
But there is always a line. And that line is hate speech. It doesn't read like that. It just reads like childish ignorant ramblings of woman putting out her anger on others. I don't get the impression that she wants them to die or be gassed or that she instigating people to harm them.
- Status