Germaine Greer says ‘trans women are not women’ in wake of petition (VIDEO)
The comments were made in response to a petition asking Cardiff University to cancel the author’s lecture.
Greer caused controversy in January this year at a talk in Cambridge University, when she said that she doesn’t believe that transphobia exists and that trans women will never be women because they do not know what it’s like to have a “big, hairy, smelly vagina”.
The feminist commentator is due to give a talk at the university on November 18 on for a talk titled ‘Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century’.
The university is now facing calls to scrap the event, from the Women’s Officer for Cardiff University Student Union Rachael Melhuish.
A petition started by Melhuish calls for Greer to be banned under a ‘no platform’ policy, which typically extends to fascist, extremist or far-right groups, including the English Defence League, the British National Party, and some Islamic terrorist groups.
At the time of writing, more than 870 people had signed the petition calling for the university not to host the lecture.
The petition states that “Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether”.
However, rather than apologise for any offence she may have caused to the trans community, Ms Greer has defended her earlier comments.
“I was going to talk about women and power, because I think there is a lot of triumphalist [sic] talk that masks the real historic situation,” she told BBC News.
“And apparently people have decided that because I don’t think that post-operative transgender men are women I’m not to be allowed to talk.”
In addition, she claimed that “a great many women” who are cisgender think trans women – who she refers to as “male to female transgender people” – do not “look like, sound like or behave like women”.
Ms Greer did say she use female pronouns when referring to someone, if that was their preference, but only “as a courtesy”.
She has previously exhibited transphobic comments in both 2009 and 1999, claiming: “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.”
Watch the full clip below
