… talk loud and make a crowd”
Iconic feminist Germaine Greer kicked off her UK tour in support of “Disappearing Women” at the Cambridge Union Society this Monday evening past, in what was reported to be a rousing, triumphant success. Attempts by anti-feminist transgender activists to have her speech censored failed, potential threats by males who believe they are female were ameliorated by frisking attendees at the doors, and she spoke to a packed house.
From the Cambridge Varsity:
“Despite the queue created by the heightened security measures, the atmosphere of the crowd was eager but not angry – there were few signs of protest except for a few LGBT+ representatives handing out leaflets at the door. They declined to comment on their decision to boycott the event, and there was little of the sense of outrage that had characterised the statements of the LGBT+ community.
Greer was uncompromising in her rhetoric, condemning from the beginning of her speech the “pressure on women to be clean, sweet, perfumed and submissive” and later suggested that trans women do not know what it is to “have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”. Greer was robust in her championing of the woman as an autonomous person and was anxious not to be diverted into what she described as “side issues”.
Witty and acerbic, Greer had the audience laughing throughout; describing the Sun website as a “fantasmagoria of nipples” whilst simultaneously speaking passionately and intensely about her notion of “the disappearing woman”.
She cited examples of cases in which women are judged but go unheard, condemning the fact that “nobody bothers to investigate” the perspective of women such as Amanda Hutton, who was widely reviled in the media. Her championing of sexual liberation and power for women was clear as she invited her audience to “kick ass and take names and talk loud and make a crowd”.
In the wake of the LGBT+ Cambridge campaign and its recent domination of student media, audience members were relentless in their questioning of Greer on her exclusion of transgender women from her feminist ideas. Greer remained steadfast in her stipulation that her feminism was about women and appeared visibly angered by the fact that discussion lingered upon what she clearly felt to be a side issue: “I’ve got 51 per cent of the world to think about and I’ve got to talk about transphobia”.
When a student quoted her own words back to her she did not compromise her previous position and repeated the word “delusion” to describe the wish of men to become women, causing a stir amongst the audience with her antipathy towards any presentation of men in drag: “I hate Mrs Brown”.
