It was bound to happen. From the moment the media got wind that Glamour magazine would even consider Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner for "Woman of the Year," tension in man-hating feminist circles have been brewing to the point they are now starting to boil over, thanks to Germaine Greer.
Greer is considered one of the biggest and longest-lasting voices in the feminist movement. She's also landed herself in some major hot water on some recent comments she's made about transgender people. Ironically, she's doing to them what she's accused men of doing to women for years -- viewing them as an unequal.
In a recent interview with BBC2's Newsnight, Greer had some rather strong words over the news that Caitlyn Jenner, along with actress Reese Witherspoon, was being considered for Glamour magazine's coveted "Woman of the Year" award. Greer said Jenner's angle was nothing but a media ploy created to steal attention away from ex-wife Kris Jenner and the rest of the Kardashian clan, and thinks "misogyny plays a really big part in all of this, that a man who goes to these lengths to become a woman will be a better woman than someone who is just born a woman." Those must be some great lengths to go to!
She went on to say that the male to female transgender hasn't faced the same sort of hardships as those born as female - like dealing with, as she puts it, "a big, hairy, smelly vagina."
Those comments created a social media firestorm. After getting lambasted for her comments, Greer posted the following statement:
"Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn't make you a fucking woman. I've asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I'm going to wear a brown coat but that won't 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 it's not the same thing. A man who gets his dick chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself."
That certainly didn't help the situation on the Left. Greer, who was supposed to visit Cardiff University next month, has had a petition brought against her "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century" lecture. At this time, the school wouldn't accept the petition, but Greer may cancel the lecture anyway.
This hasn't been the first time Greer has made comments against the transgender community. In her 1999 book, The Whole Woman, she criticized transgender women as "men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated." She's also called them "deluded" for "thinking" they are women, and at one time told students at Cambridge University that transphobia doesn't exist. I'm sure she would feel the same way if someone dare say sexism didn't exist.
And that's just her views against male to female transgender persons. Greer has been "feministing" for nearly 45 years and targeting men the entire time. She authored The Female Eunuch, and wrote that, "Men are the enemy. They know it - at least, they know there is a sex war on, an unusually cold one." She also writes that "the male perversion of violence is an essential condition of the degradation of women."
The only degradation coming from anyone is from Greer herself.
