Germaine Greer Tour - questions?

[stickygirl]

I've seen that Germaine Greer "outspoken feminist from the 60's" is doing a tour in the UK. I've not yet read the Female Eunuch (I will) but if you were in the audience what would you ask?
Personally I think she's past her sell-by date, but I know she was respected in the UK. Anyone heard of her pond-side?

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I'm Australian so I have 'some' kinda right to comment...!

Not too long ago I was walking in the main street in the heart of my capital city over here and Greer was walking through the crowd. Absolutely no one, and I mean no one, recognized her.

The two (business) guys I was walking with were younger than me and I had to explain to them who she was when she had walked by.

What real impact Germaine Greer made on the mindsets of women is a very complicated thing to look at now that we are some distance from her major 'fame.'

On the one hand many commentators say that she is highly intelligent - and I have seen her say some very intelligent things - on the other hand, she apears to have become conservative and if anything, conformist to an English establishment which was almost the very thing she most decried all those years ago.

All the same, I would be interested to hear any comments she might care to throw out about Virginia Woolf - who was everything Greer claimed to be, everything the media claimed Greer was...

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Greer is Australian, by the way. Which kind of makes my point for me since many people these days see her as English.

 

[Dyslexicea]

I'm Australian so I have 'some' kinda right to comment...!

on the other hand, she apears to have become conservative and if anything, conformist to an English establishment which was almost the very thing she most decried all those years ago.

What right is that? You're a male Australian? Isn't it strange how men, have a right to this, a right to that. Hell you dudes even want to take ownership of the feminist movement.

Germaine is, by the way, still relevant to the feminist movement. She is still active. She still has many important contributions to make.

Maybe this article can help you come up with some questions to ask.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/12/opinion/greer-women-and-guilt

 

[stickygirl]

Good piece - thank you! I've seen her in a few media shows here ( not 'feminist' ones ) and she disappointed me, but perhaps it was just outside her zone? I'm looking forward to hearing her speak when it's her own forum.

 

[Safe_Bet]

What we ought to see in the agonies of puberty is the result of the conditioning that maims the female personality in creating the feminine.
~ Germaine Greer

You gotta respect somebody who can say something as brilliant as ^^ THAT ^.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've seen that Germaine Greer "outspoken feminist from the 60's" is doing a tour in the UK. I've not yet read the Female Eunuch (I will) but if you were in the audience what would you ask?
Personally I think she's past her sell-by date, but I know she was respected in the UK. Anyone heard of her pond-side?

Mixed feelings. I read TFE when I was pretty young (discovered where my parents kept the grown-up books) and it did a lot for me - really opened my eyes to certain attitudes in society before I'd had the chance to internalise them.

But in recent years... I get the impression she's so used to being a Major Feminist Commentator that she keeps on commenting even when she doesn't have material worth sharing.

Last year she referred to the morning after pill as causing "an abortion" and told people who use it "you should be ashamed and embarrassed and you should try not to do it again but the chances are that you will". It was less inflammatory in context than those snippets suggest, but still uninformed (that's not how the morning-after pill works) and unhelpful.

On the same TV show she took a pot shot at Australia's first female prime minister over her "big arse" and clothing choices. Because fuck knows female public figures don't have enough attention paid to their bodies and fashion choices!

And on transgender women, in her sequel to TFE: "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."

So, yeah. I still think TFE was a great book, but every time I see GG in the news these days I just roll my eyes.

 

[Dyslexicea]

Mixed feelings. I read TFE when I was pretty young (discovered where my parents kept the grown-up books) and it did a lot for me - really opened my eyes to certain attitudes in society before I'd had the chance to internalise them.

But in recent years... I get the impression she's so used to being a Major Feminist Commentator that she keeps on commenting even when she doesn't have material worth sharing.

Last year she referred to the morning after pill as causing "an abortion" and told people who use it "you should be ashamed and embarrassed and you should try not to do it again but the chances are that you will". It was less inflammatory in context than those snippets suggest, but still uninformed (that's not how the morning-after pill works) and unhelpful.

On the same TV show she took a pot shot at Australia's first female prime minister over her "big arse" and clothing choices. Because fuck knows female public figures don't have enough attention paid to their bodies and fashion choices!

And on transgender women, in her sequel to TFE: "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."

So, yeah. I still think TFE was a great book, but every time I see GG in the news these days I just roll my eyes.

I'm always suspicious of something taken out of context, doubly so if it happens to be a man writing about a feminist. Which after viewing that episode of 'Q&A Adventures in democracy', I found that he had quoted only part of what she said, I suppose to prove his point. I thought the whole episode worth watching but for her comments referenced, click on the part called 'Future Generations'.

As per her taking a shot at your Prime Minister, she did try to explain that. I'm not sure she did so successfully but I'm not up on Australian politics, nor your Prime Minister's jacket nor her fat ass. If it doesn't make you happy at least her comments are going to make you laugh. Click Germaine & PM's Appearance.

I don't agree with her views on trans women but she is not the only feminist with similar views. I find those views terribly wrong but they are like all of our LGBTQ issues. We have to fight and educate.

By the way, being I think most television is horrible, I did like that program. I've added it to my favorites.

 

[Bramblethorn]

(Advance notice: grumpy Bramble is grumpy at the state of Australian politics and public discourse and various other things, not at you.)

I'm always suspicious of something taken out of context, doubly so if it happens to be a man writing about a feminist. Which after viewing that episode of 'Q&A Adventures in democracy', I found that he had quoted only part of what she said, I suppose to prove his point.

Yeah, I agree that the quoting was selective there and I'm not defending the way it was covered. But that's not an excuse for slut-shaming women for their contraceptive choices, or for repeating the anti-choice lobby's misinformation about morning-after BC. I know she wasn't intentionally arguing their cause but it's still problematic.

As per her taking a shot at your Prime Minister, she did try to explain that. I'm not sure she did so successfully but I'm not up on Australian politics, nor your Prime Minister's jacket nor her fat ass.

For context: JG is Australia's first female PM and she's come in for a crapload of misogynistic abuse as a result. The man with the microphone in this piece is the Leader of the Opposition and likely our next PM come September. Note the backdrop.

She's had a lot of coverage of her fashion choices, and In addition to "bitch", "witch", and all the rest of it, she's received a lot of coverage of her wardrobe/hair/etc. Maybe GG was trying to help, but she just managed to draw attention back to the earthshattering question of what the PM is wearing, and I'm really over it.

I don't agree with her views on trans women but she is not the only feminist with similar views. I find those views terribly wrong but they are like all of our LGBTQ issues. We have to fight and educate.

Without diminishing the transphobia, I believe that brand of biological essentialism is harmful to cis women too. I was introduced to GG via my mother's copy of 'The Female Eunuch'; well, my mother shared GG's view of trans women as guys playing make-believe, and was thoroughly creeped out when she discovered one of her workmates was transitioning.

Years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a combined mastectomy/hysterectomy/oophorectomy. The illness and surgery and chemo were horrible, but on top of all that, she was psychologically devastated by the idea that she'd lost everything that made her a woman.

So you can probably see why I don't react well when Germaine Greer starts talking that particular line.

By the way, being I think most television is horrible, I did like that program. I've added it to my favorites.

TBH, I avoid watching Q&A because it does bad things to my blood pressure. The usual formula is to start by picking one politician from the Evil Party and one from the Disappointing Party, then fill it out with somebody else obnoxious and one or two interesting & reasonable people who don't get enough airtime.

Occasionally they have episodes like that one where they leave out the politicians and have more room for interesting guests, but nothing on earth can induce me to watch Pyne or Mirabella or Bernardi. If you're planning to watch more I recommend working off the list of panellists and picking the ones that don't have party hacks. I guess the politicians might be interesting if you're curious about Australian politics, but I have to live with it and it's bloody depressing at the moment.

 

[stickygirl]

Thanks both of you for your comments: it's useful to have those perspectives.

Bramble, I was moved by your account of your mother's illness because it exactly describes the paradox set up by some feminists who then scratch about trying to keep their boat afloat. They may not set out to do harm but their inflexibility inevitably leads to that outcome. How tragic that a generation of women have clung to a doctrine that, in your mother's case, betrayed her. Perhaps that inflexibility was a symptom of the times? I don't know enough to comment. It seems as though the longer a status quo has been in place the more extreme the measures needed to break its inertia. The more I learn of recent social history, the more I appreciate the courage of women like GG who spoke up and demanded to be heard. I'd like to think my generation has the job of taking things forward, but I'm sure there are just as many assholes in the world today as there was then, so the job isn't finished yet.

I suspect I will spend most of her presentation sitting on my hands lest I fall into an ignorance- trap of my own making! There is so much history in the movement and such strongly held opinions, that I find it safer to keep quiet ( you might have a different opnion of me from my big mouth here - in real life I'm much quieter! )

I read recently about a father telling his son to stop making his argument louder but to make it better instead. My impression of GG is that she used to do both, but now she has run out of fresh material and is recycling. I watched the excerpt from that programme and didn't see her remark as being chauvanistic, just plain mean. Perhaps Oz humour is just more outspoken, but she had to step a long way from discretion to get the laugh. Cheap laugh.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My impression of GG is that she used to do both, but now she has run out of fresh material and is recycling. I watched the excerpt from that programme and didn't see her remark as being chauvanistic, just plain mean. Perhaps Oz humour is just more outspoken, but she had to step a long way from discretion to get the laugh. Cheap laugh.

Australia does have a tradition of boisterous humour that can seem offensive to an outsider - I understand US/UK folk are sometimes shocked to hear Australians freely calling one another "bitch" or "bastard" as a friendly insult. But it depends a lot on context, and I wouldn't be play-insulting someone at the same time they were being targeted maliciously.

I suspect that might've been where GG tripped up. She's an Australian expat who lives mostly in the UK; I'm sure she keeps up with Australian political events, but it's hard to get an intuitive feel for the tone of discourse from a distance.

 

[njlauren]

The problem with people like Germaine Greer is very similar to what I see with a certain kind of religious attitude, where dogma starts mattering more than the real expression of things . Greer had real ideas about women's roles and how they were often cut off at the knees by social programming and such. The problem was, instead of recognizing that women are all very different, everyone has their own way of doing things, of expressing themselves, in some ways she and people like her wanted to tie women into another kind of straightjacket; rather than the social norms designed to cripple women in favor of men, it was a new kind of social norm to force women to behave as she would want. It is putting ideology in front of reality, and it doesn't work. It is like the RC under JPII and then Benedict, people who saw Catholic Dogma and purity of belief as the religion, and they couldn't see reality. In Africa, millions of people were being infected by HIV, thanks in part to men having sex with prostitutes and women outside marriage, and the innocent victims were the wives and kids, exposed to the virus. There was some serious talk of letting up a bit with the idea of condoms being evil, arguing that the sin brought upon innocents in the form of HIV was a lot less than in using condoms, but of course, ideological purity won out. A nun was excommunicated because she approved an abortion at a Catholic Hospital for a pregnant mother with 4 young kids, she was bleeding to death, literally, and she said she couldn't leave those kids motherless.

When it comes to trans people Greer is like some of the other shit head feminists with their heads up their asses, Gloria Steinham is another one. They rightfully have fought to separate women from their biology in one regards, that all they are good for is to get married and be barefoot and pregnant, that women deserve all the rights and respect of men, that simply because they bear children doesn't make then weaker or worse then men, and rightfully so.

The problem is, they in turn turn it into biology only, as if reproduction is all that a woman is, a breeding mechanism, and use that to slam trans women because 'they aren't clamoring to have the reproductive equipment'. First of all, a lot of the M to F's if it were possible would be delighted to have a fully functioning reproductive system, it is not an uncommon sigh that they can never deliver children or have them. More importantly, if women are only about their ability to breed, then why even fight for women's right to define themselves? Why not put them into the role that Islam and other backwards religions put them in, as baby making machines incapable of any real role in society?

They are so caught up in 'being female means being born with ovaries and a uterus and menses' that they forget about the person inside, or that gender is a lot more complicated then a chromosome or baby making gear. They are basically making the same argument that the bible thumpers make, that God made man and woman, woman have the babies and take the pain cause of eve, and chromosomes trump all, it is no different. Reminds me of when MaKinnon and Dworkin in their ill starred campaign to stamp out porn, sidled up to the religious right in trying to pass laws banning porn as being discriminatory to women, then finding out just how vile the people they buddied with were.