"There is a witness to the transsexual's script, a witness who is never consulted. She is the person who built the transsexual's body of her own flesh and brought it up as her son or daughter, the transsexual's worst enemy, his/her mother. Whatever else it is gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother. When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her."
These are meaningless assertions with no basis in reality. They are gross over-generalisations and like all gross over-generalisations they are absurd. The mother is 'never consulted'? Never? No transsexual person has ever consulted his or her mother? And Greer would know this how, precisely? Stripped of Greer's rhetoric and expressed in plain and simple language the statement is plainly absurd because a) it is highly unlikely to be true and b) as no one has every been present at every discussion between every transsexual person and his or her mother, neither Greer not anyone else will ever know how many mothers have or have not been consulted!
I will refrain from rising to the bait of Greer's use of the word 'it' in the quote above, as that is so far beneath contempt as to be unworthy of a response.
Where is Greer's evidence that a transsexual person's worst enemy is his or her mother? Where is her evidence that gender reassignment is 'an exorcism of the mother'? Where is her evidenced that a male to female transsexual is 'impersonating his mother'? What does the reference to Norman Bates and 'Psycho' add to her argument, other than to be gratuitously insulting? What do any of these statements actually mean? Where in all of her ranting is there any acknowledgement of the existence of female to male transsexuals? Their existence does not support her argument, therefore she pretends that they do not exist. Neither, apparently, do fathers.
"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."
Again, an assertion for which Greer has no evidence. She has no basis for this claim. She would know this how? She has not been present at every consultation, she does not know what transsexual people have or have not asked for. Are we supposed to believe that she somehow magically knows how transsexual people would react to the offer of uterus-and-ovaries transplants if they were available? Are we supposed to believe that she is omniscient? Transplantation of the uterus remains an area of research and experimentation (see the links below) so for Greer to hold it up as some litmus test of the sincerity of transsexual people is akin to accusing migraine sufferers of faking it because they are not queuing up for head transplants.
"As sufferers from gender role distress themselves, women must sympathize with transsexuals but a feminist must argue that the treatment for gender role distress is not mutilation of the sufferer but radical change of gender roles."
I'm not sure quite how, in Greer's head, she manages to reconcile the statement that 'women must sympathize with transsexuals' with her own gross insensitivity and penchant for gratuitous insults. Whatever. I think we will survive without her sympathy. And I don't accept her argument that radical change of gender roles is necessarily the solution to all gender role distress. It is entirely possible that even in a society free of rigid, imposed gender roles, some transsexual people would still need the surgical option. But we do not live in such a society, and unfortunately are unlikely to live in such a society in the near future. Radical change of gender roles is not going to happen in the short term. To suggest that it is the solution for those who need help right now is unrealistic and cruel.
But yes, yes, a thousand times yes to radical change of gender roles! Stop trying to make me dress the way you think I should, behave the way you think I should, think and feel the way you think I should, on the basis of whether I was born with a penis or a vagina!
It's amazing the way some people believe their arguments apply to everyone but themselves, isn't it?
Some articles on ovary and uterus transplantation ...
Some articles on Germaine Greer and her attitude to transsexual people ...
WOW - that is an impassioned post - wonderful.
ReplyDeleteGreer is an idiot, Female Eunuch has finally been more or less been discredited as the overbearing ignorant opinion piece that it is.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the blogging!
Dublinswitch
That is a most impressive and articulate think you've written here. I can't believe she voices such horrid ideas as facts and generalises to this extent, does she not remember the centuries of generalizations and demeaning concepts that have been applied to women? How can one give such a sweeping and all encompassing application to a whole genre of people? You are some pub, my lovely! DC
ReplyDelete