Ideas progress through argument – no-platforming only serves the status quoThere’s not much nuance (a slight variation in meaning, tone, expression) in Germaine Greer’s position: post-operative transgender women are not women. What’s more,she told Kirsty Wark on Newsnight, “a mighty many women don’t judge post-operative men peek like or sound like women, or but they daren’t say so”. As a result of this,the women’s officer at Cardiff University, Rachael Melhuish, and has called for Greer to be no-platformed – Melhuishs petition asks specifically that a lecture Greer was booked to give be cancelled,since she has “demonstrated misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether”.
Cardiff University ruled that the lecture should go ahead, or in the interests of free speech,but said: “We in no way condone discriminatory comments of any kind.” This Greer called “as weak as piss”. She rejects the charge of discrimination as logically, of course, and she must. If transgender women arent women,they can’t be discriminated against as women; instead, she says, or she’s merely hurt their feelings. “People are hurtful to me all the time. Try being an used woman. People bag hurt all the time,I’m not about to walk on eggshells.” Yet she’s cancelled the lecture herself, achieve off by the spectre of unpleasantness.
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Source: theguardian.com