The hypocrisy of the left on free speech for Germaine Greer

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https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/germain ... ree-speech

EDIT: The first half of this article is pretty spot-on, but the second half just drags things on way too long and gets way too breezy, and engages in mocking as well as even putting out a few slurs. Maybe this is because it's Vice?

Last edited by beneficii on 20 Nov 2015, 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You probably saw my thread on this.

Free speech exist in a jurisdiction. A university is not a jurisdiction, it simply resides in one.

WP is not a jurisdiction either.

Having said that Greer should have been allowed to come becuase then they could have grilled her, that would have been more interesting.

I am usually not that into transsexuals but the author is kind of hot. Other than that I don't have much to add because I don't know who Germaine Greer is.

She did come.

The university rejected the petition to ban her.

"Germaine Greer: Author gives Cardiff University speech despite protests against her comments on transgender people"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... 39746.html

At this speech ....

"She was asked by a member of the audience: 'Doesn’t language which attacks the identity of transgender women lead to exclusion and violence?'”

"She replied: 'I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock. Beating me over the head is not going to change my mind … if you don’t find your pants full of blood at age 13 then you don’t understand what it is to be a woman'.

source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... 39746.html

It is all rather silly.

I get it women bleed. However what is this got to do with helping women obtain equality? This is the problem with some in these movements.

The way I see it, this is identity politics clashing with itself, nothing to do with equality.

Perhaps it wasn't about whether she had a "right" to speak in that venue, but rather whether her rhetoric has the potential to induce real harm. As it is, her power and potential influence may have been overestimated. The views she stated in her talk only furthered public realization as to why and how Second Wave turned out in practice to be just another power game, as shown now by the vitriol spewed by TERF's who still try to promote it. Like old generals without a war, their reliance on Blank Slate theory has blinded them to the biology knowledge & social shifts gained in the last twenty years.

TERFs have been known to team up with conservative Christians (now there's irony for you) to vilify, oppress and terrorize trans people. However irrelevant she may seem to have become though, in many ways she still represents the same sort of locus that in another environment on the other side of the world turns angry, powerless, directionless young men into weapons. And while a few individuals may be drawn to her rhetoric, many who know of her now group her with the intolerant American evangelicals who fund and promote Kill the Gays laws in Africa, or Imams who declare jihads against the West.

Thought game: If no one had protested her planned speaking engagement, would as many people now know that she's a vile relic of the era that saw feminism exclude virtually everyone who wasn't white, middle class, urban or suburban, educated women?

One of my main criticisms of second/third wave is they use this augment that speech they don't like is harmful and advocate for censorship often. I think such a views can be problematic in a number of ways.

I was quick to condemn Greer for her comments and show the hypocrisy within these moments. I try to critisise the ideas, but I acknowledge they exist within the realms of free expression. The main problem with the idea that ideas can be inherently harmful, is not so much that is is not possible but how easily such a concept could inadvertently degrade right further.

I don't think the way to fight this is to limit expression. It is as Mary Beard advocates through the politics of persuasion.

Otherwise the trans rights movement will fall into the trap that second/third wave feminism has right now.

Germaine Greer is correct when she says that trans people are not women because they fail to meet certain biological criteria.

It's reasonable that feminists should not wish for people who do not meet the biological criteria of womanhood to usurp the platforms dedicated to the needs and concerns of womanhood. It is not reasonable to demand that intellectuals focus on your desires at the expense of their chosen fields of inquiry, or to ask them to muddy their epistemological categories until they make useful and articulate work impossible.

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 21 Nov 2015, 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually Nebogipfel "usurp the platforms" is not the issue. I doubt very much trans women care very much about aligning with Greer's movement.

Greer has implied that Trans women are in essence misogynistic.

Me personally I'm less interested in that, I'm interested in her own hypocrisy. So her position on identity on this issue is well known, but her other positions of female identity and gender role are directly at odds with these views in my opinion.

So it seem to me that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander, if you catch my drift.

Otherwise have not problem with an different viewpoints.

I also think there is quite a lot of bandwagon jumping.

"Women" is not a biological term.

I don't know if it's accurate to say that Greer is leading a movement.



Greer is not an equality feminist, and offers multiple reasons for that. One of them being that she does not think that the condition of men is something worth aspiring to. This does not mean that she hates men. She is not a misandrist. She merely points out that men are often socialized by this society; by their peers and their institutions, to act in ways that are destructive to themselves and those around them.



I guess not.

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 21 Nov 2015, 10:12 pm, edited 11 times in total.

That pretty much says it all. Then why would she object that men to aspire to be like women?

Equality isn't actually about aspiring to be exactly like someone, it is about opportunity and freedom. But then again equal opportunity is regularly confused with equality of outcome.

In any case her social theories and the somewhat different social theories of other second and third wave lack evidence to back them up.

If Caitlyn Jenner is a misogynist for having to audacity to want to steal the limelight from a matriarchal attention grabbing family, where attention is literally a currency, then I can breath easy for calling Greer a jealous hypocritical misandrist for saying that. Are these women something to aspire to be but it not OK for the to grab some of the limelight if you are born a man? Or was Greer satisfied that Jenner was suitably emasculated until she actually decided to be come a woman.

Whether Greer is normally misandrist is somewhat beside the point. If she has made her point better perhaps I would let it pass, however this is the example she used, so if you make you bed you sleep in it.