GG’s been in the news of late because she’s of the opinion that male-to-female sex changers are not women, they’re men who’ve had some cosmetic surgery. I think her position is that biologically the person remains the same regardless of the operation and that they don’t ‘look like, sound like or behave like’ women.
I think she has a point.
Gatz says
Well the counter view is that transsexuals have always identified themselves as other than their birth gender, and that surgery will just align their appearance with their psyche. Biology and chromosomes don’t really come into it. Seems an odd fight to pick for Dr Greer, whom I admire very much, but she is sometimes guilty of starting arguments for their own sake. Makes no odds to me, except to say that addressing someone by the gender with which they identify is just good manners.
niscum says
‘Well the counter view is that transsexuals have always identified themselves as other than their birth gender, and that surgery will just align their appearance with their psyche. ‘
Hmmm, not sure about that or they wouldn’t opt to ‘change their sex’ – were that even possible – from male to female. I get the impression that trans people wish to become the opposite sex not ‘other’.
‘Biology and chromosomes don’t really come into it.’
I think they are at the crux of GG’s argument. You can chop and change as much as you like but at a chromosomal level, your DNA, you remain the sex you were born into.
‘Seems an odd fight to pick for Dr Greer, whom I admire very much, but she is sometimes guilty of starting arguments for their own sake.’
I admire her too for her forthright, no nonsense common sense. This isn’t an odd fight for her because the context of her statements is the rumoured award of ‘woman of the year’ by Glamour magazine to the Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) an award which she regards as based on misogyny.
And, as pointed out below she points out that she is respectful towards anyone who has had a sex change out of courtesy.
BaldySlaphead says
To be fair to Greer, she’s already said she’s use a person’s preferred pronouns.
Isn’t it the case that for many M-F transsexuals that their biology is already different? They’ve had the first surge of testosterone that results in the male body but not the second that causes a brain to develop as a female brain.
Certain recall reading something along those lines before, but perhaps the thinking has changed since.
niscum says
‘Isn’t it the case that for many M-F transsexuals that their biology is already different?’
I don’t think that is the case. They certainly may feel different but they are biologically the sex they were born into and a sex change op won’t make them women.
DougieJ says
Agreed. It might be the case that a person feeling they are a different sex to that which the evidence suggests they were born as is of a different magnitude to other mental health issues such as:
A feeling that one is fat despite being to all observers severely malnourished.
But. Ah hae ma doots…
niscum says
Yup.
The evidence suggests that after the post op euphoria has waned people tend to settle back into the same if not worse state of mind that they were in before the change.
DougieJ says
I also find it strange, that the people who insist that if a man/woman feels he/she is a man/woman then he/she is a man/woman are the very same people who insist that sexuality is a continuum and that ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ are redundant.
If that’s the case – why the clamour for Bruce to be seen as Caitlyn when Bruce could be free to choose his sexual partners at will in any case?
niscum says
I think it’s often the case that mtf transgenders go from ‘straight’ male to ‘gay’ women. Seems odd but kind of backs up their position that they are not just gay men who want to wear nice frocks and shoes.
ianess says
Greer’s views ‘have no place in feminism’. Well, that’s according to the women’s student union officer of Cardiff University who has started a petition calling for a forthcoming lecture from Greer to be cancelled because of her ‘transphobic’ views. The illiberal left – don’t you just love them?
niscum says
Tbf – don’t judge feminism but the pathetic ‘mili tant’ ravings of a middle class lefty student mouth-piece.
Judge it by Germaine instead.
ianess says
I do. Greer is a titanic figure and someone I admire greatly. I also enjoyed her in ‘Nice Time’. (one for the nostalgia-buffs)
Carl says
I do remember her in that – most notably for having a bath in milk, with the milk delivered by Kenny Everett.
DougieJ says
I think she has a point as well, but that’s by the by. We should be free to express our views on all manner of topics.
However, as Brendan O’Neill, among others, have pointed out, there is a growing censoriousness in ostensibly ‘liberal’ circles which, in his opinion and mine, is far from healthy:
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/germaine-greer-can-say-whatever-she-likes-about-trans-politics/
and…
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/free-speech-is-so-last-century-todays-students-want-the-right-to-be-comfortable/
BaldySlaphead says
There was, ironically, a gender-confused sentence in my post above. It should have read;
“They’ve had the first surge of testosterone that results in the male body but not the second that causes a brain to develop as a *male* brain.”
Kid Dynamite says
This is my understanding as well (it’d be interesting to hear an informed view from @retropath2). One of my acquaintances is a woman who has gone through this surgery. She has written eloquently of how as a young boy she would cry into her pillow at night, hoping that when puberty came she would grow breasts and start to menstruate. I think it must be an absolute torment to go through this situation and my heart goes out to anyone in it.
ernietothecentreoftheearth says
To put this in some perspective, by this morning a stonking 1% of he students had voted for Greer’s invitation to be withdrawn.
Mike_H says
I’d imagine, though I could be wrong, that you’d need to be above the legal age of responsibility to have Gender Reassignment Surgery and that therefore the 18 or more years of social conditioning you’d get being obliged to be Male, before you have the ability to change your “gender” to Female, might have some bearing on how you behave as a transgender “Woman”. You’d miss out on the negative bits of the conditioning, but you’d also miss out on the positive side.
ewenmac says
When I was a kid one of my teachers had a sex change and he went from being a nasty, short-tempered bastard to one of the loveliest women you could meet. I found the gender-change baffling but my main concern was that (s)he’d stopped battering my knuckles with a ruler every ten minutes (it was the 70’s).
He’d always thought he was female; every since he could remember, and he joined the army when he left school as he thought it might make a “real man” of him. As I understand it he’s not untypical; sometimes there seems to be something in the mind/brain that isn’t wired up to the body that goes along with it. Nature makes mistakes all the time so maybe that’s just another one.
I don’t see the harm in letting Greer her express herself on this. It’s hard to get your head around it, so it’s best to get these things out in the open and let people say what they think – move the debate along a bit.
Are they really women? I’ve no idea and I’m not that interested TBH. Out of politeness I go along with the idea that they are if that’s what they want – it doesn’t cost me anything.
DougieJ says
Exactly. These issues need to be aired, not ‘No-Platformed’ which seems regrettably to be the position taken following shouting-down by a disproportionately influential, aggressive minority
Jim Cain says
Like others have said, I would always address a trans person by their preferred pronouns. It’s bad manners not to. But I do find it hard to get my head around these issues. @baldyslaphead supplies a convincing explanation above, but it doesn’t explain gender fluid people. I’m just not sure whether it’s an accident of birth requiring surgery to correct, or a psychological disorder, requiring therapeutic intervention. The medical community seems to think it’s unanimously the former.
(I apologise in advance if anyone finds this post rude, but it’s borne of genuine curiosity rather than malice).
niscum says
I think there is no doubt that there are gender identity issues, disorders, but the question is whether a “sex change” operation is the right solution. It’s a big money making industry and those with a vested interest will always support it whilst many in the medical community strongly oppose it (though admittedly that may just be because their vested interest is in something else, eg psychotherapy).
Blue Boy says
I don’t know what the biological analysis would be but I have no problem accepting that a transgendered male is now a woman. But the idea that Greer’s views as expressed are misogynistic , and so beyond the pale that she should be banned from speaking at a University is insane. Three things I’d want to ask the woman who has put this petition up
1. Do you have no idea what Germaine Greer did for the cause of feminism, and for you and your generation?
2. Do you really believe that having someone speak at the university means the university endorses all of their views?
3. This is a wind-up, right?
Tiggerlion says
Point two is the key issue for me. How is it possible for a university to stage any debates whatsoever if each participants’ presence means the university endorses their, by definition, opposing views?
BigJimBob says
I find the contrast with Rachel Dolezal’s “outing” informative:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/rachel-dolezal-new-interview-pictures-exclusive
In contrast, Vanity Fair celebrated Kaitlyn’s emergence. It seems that you can identify as a different sex but not race….strange?
Jim Cain says
I think the key difference is that Dolezal was dishonest, and secured a prominent role via deception. She never said she was born white and now identified as black. She used to have a black man accompany her to events, who she’d introduce as her father.
BigJimBob says
True, good point, but then one thing y that is much discussed in the TG/TS communit is the ability to “pass” – kind of like the AA concept of “fake it ’til you make it” Most TS/TG people would not go around telling each other they were born a different sex. Unless they were famous to begin with.
SteveT says
This is a topical subject in our family at present as one of my wife’s cousins in Germany has a husband going through the process at the moment – awaiting final operation in the new year. I can tell you in this instance that it was not for any reason of sexuality. Quite the reverse he/she wants to stay in the marriage. Addressing the person by the correct gender is very difficult when you have always known them by the opposite gender. There are also kids involved – very traumatic for them. I think in relation to this post that Germaine Greer doesn’t deserve criticism as what she is saying is largely correct. However a very difficult subject that requires sensitivity not just to the transgender person but to their family too.
Poppy Succeeds says
I don’t see a problem. The Cardiff woman thinks Greer has toxic views and she’s organised a petition to see if anybody agrees with her.
Blue Boy says
Well, no, she’s organised a petition urging Cardiff ‘to cancel this event’ because hosting Greer ‘is dangerous’ and ‘endorses her views’. If the petition was urging people to boycott the event, or to protest outside that would be one thing; demanding that, in effect, any speaker who expresses views which are deemed to be unacceptable (by whomsoever) should not be allowed a platform at a University seems to me to be antithetical to academic debate and free speech.
Junglejim says
I concur, BB. It appears the petition organiser is one of those icreasingly common ‘distressed on behalf of others’ type, who for reasons best known to themselves – but I strongly suspect it’s for reasons of lack of intellectual rigour & essentially cowardice – would sooner close down even the possibility of discussion rather than have have to engage in a contrary opinion.
Greer can look after herself, she’s a highly intelligent & experienced public figure who’s had a scrap or two prior to now. It’s worth recalling that her stance on the ‘issue’ at hand is not one of vioent antagonism – she’s not a Le Pen or a Farrakan – but of disagreement.
The only person this reflects badly on is the one trying to have Greer excluded.
How fragile must the stance of those she feels she is protecting be, if it will be imperilled by the visit of a repected writer to the institution to talk on another topic entirely?
Greer correctly sees such folk as tiresome pygmies, who should find something bettter to do if they’re sincere in improving the lot of any one group of humanity.
Poppy Succeeds says
Well, all right, to put it another way, she obviously thinks Greer’s view are SO toxic she shouldn’t be allowed to air them in public, and is seeing how many people agree with her.
By the sound of things the answer is: not many.
ianess says
I love the use of the word ‘dangerous’. ‘Dangerous’ to whom? In what way? Positively inviting the University authorities to ban Greer on ‘safety’ grounds.
H.P. Saucecraft says
In Thailand, transgender people (either direction) are not unusual, and the process isn’t weighted with “issues” like it is in the prurient, meddling, judgemental West. Nobody’s much interested, basically. “It’s your business, nothing to do with me, be what you like” is about as political as the argument (if you can call it that) gets. This is a fantastically sane attitude. Nobody has to make a stance, to insist, to platform, to speak out. None of that tedious bollocks. Germaine Greer’s opinion would be met with a shrug at most, which is exactly what it merits. I’ve known a few transgender people, and I can’t say that they become “happy”, but this is a facile measure. Is any of us “happy” just because we were born into a certain sex? People go through the process because they feel very unhappy with the way they are, the hand they were dealt, and they have to do something about it. Happier is good enough. Niscum’s remark about them being gay men who want to wear frocks (whatever, can’t be arsed to search for it) is as ignorant and shallow an opinion as I’ve seen on the subject, but he’s a lad who loves a ruck, so I’m not upset by it.
For some time now, I’ve been in email communication with a New York musician, known as Asa Millbanx, whose work I admire. He’s recorded with The Latters and Analog Birds as well as under his own (fake) name. Some while back, he told me he was transitioning (his word of choice). That was a surprise. His selfies along the way show someone “coming out”, like breaking out of a shell. She’s now named isobel Morris, and the new Analog Birds song is available here:
http://analogbirds.bandcamp.com/track/the-tigers-grin-single
It’s gorgeous. Live and let live.
DougieJ says
Nicely put, HP.
I don’t disagree. My ‘beef’ has never been about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and others doing whatever they wish to do but about the stultifying conformity that has developed around the subject.
As <a href="http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/06/call-me-caitlyn-or-else-the-rise-of-authoritarian-transgender-politics/" Brendan O'Neill pointed out following that Vanity Fair cover:
“The photo is indeed iconic. And not just in the shallow celeb meaning of that word. It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society.”
DougieJ says
try that again (bit OCD about my href tags):
Nicely put, HP.
I don’t disagree. My ‘beef’ has never been about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and others doing whatever they wish to do but about the stultifying conformity that has developed around the subject.
As Brendan O’Neill pointed out following that Vanity Fair cover:
“The photo is indeed iconic. And not just in the shallow celeb meaning of that word. It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society.”
garyjohn says
‘None of that tedious bollocks’.
Never was a truer phrase written.
Sewer Robot says
Take the time to search. Observe the word “not” right in the middle. Disarm your warheads before the sky fills with missiles..
niscum says
SR – Ditto.
HP – are you having another meltdown? I’m concerned, you’ve been getting increasingly unpleasant on here again. The jokey schtick it’s becoming more and more infused with clench-jawed bitterness. Just an observation.
Maybe time for another break, eh.
Leedsboy says
HP gets it right.
The Greer debate isn’t about who is wrong and who is right. It’s perfectly sensible that both Greer and the upset student can be wrong here.
ianess says
The point being the Cardiff reactionary doesn’t want any ‘debate’. She wants opposing views to her own shut down.
Leedsboy says
That was my point really. Whatever Greer thinks, it shouldn’t be shut down because someone doesn’t like it.
niscum says
In what way is Greer wrong?
Leedsboy says
I think the argument is that she oversimplifies gender reassignment into a men having cosmetic surgery angle.
Although I didn’t actually say that I thought Greer was wrong, my view is that she raises an interesting subject that is worthy of debate with all the sophistication of, well, you.
With the end result that the debate isn’t about what it gender reassignment is and how society thinks and acts about it, instead the debate is about a debate.