If anyone reading this has been a victim of T-crime, then please report it here:

http://gires.org.uk/assets/tcrime/tcrime.php

It is a new service we at GIRES have setup (I’m a trustee) in the hope of exposing the extent of the problem. There is also lots of advice on transphobic bullying at school and in the workplace on the site.

Kate.

I sometimes try to ignore how much fail there is out there to trans issues as else I would not be able to face them rather then fighting for trans rights as I am. It’s just scary and something I can’t being to understand.

The bit that wound me up most was somewhere in one of those she says something about if every trans woman had to have ovaries and a uterus transplanted it would put them off. I don’t think that sort of surgery is even possible at the moment and actually I think there are probably a number of trans woman who would be delighted to have that option. Plus I thought the point of feminism was that the sum of a woman is not her uterus. BLARGH

That’s pretty rubbish. Although I like her sometimes I did find her speculation about how children should be raised to be ridiculous. I know the heteronormative family isn’t exactly some golden ideal but it’s not necessarily some kind of prison for women. Some are actually quite functional.

You totally win :)

I get the feeling Greer spent so much time proclaiming the power of her own c*nt that she couldn’t take it back once someone pointed out that sex and gender aren’t the same thing *fail*

Greer frustrates me tremendously – because sometimes she says things that are really right, and I’m totally in agreement with her.

And then she has opinions like she does about trans people or the ‘born not made’ thing as if nature/nurture is entirely irrelevant.

It makes me want to hit my head repeatedly against my desk.

…but she’s Germaine Greer! SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT WOMEN EVER. INCLUDING TRANS WOMEN.

She can shut up, frankly. She can shut all the way up. I met her once after a film seminar at University. To my credit, I didn’t vomit on her.

I love how horrified you look in the first panel Mim. Though that may be because the awful statistics mentioned in the post have already induced within you a state of horror worsened by your sweetening of the jasmine tea.

What really scares me about it is that she has so much influence as a benchmark “face of feminism”. I read her book “The Whole Woman” at about fifteen. It has a whole section about her views on trans people, and I had never really read anything detailed about the issues before. It still saddens me that that was the first interaction between feminism and trans issues that I ever had an opportunity to read about – I had no internet access at the time, so I didn’t come across any other views until I was in my twenties.

Her feminism is profoundly not my feminism. I hope that now we’re in an age of greater information access, young budding teen feminists won’t have views like that as their first and only educational experience.

And the idea that not being bigoted is an “academic feminist” pursuit is just such outrageous guff!