Lacklustre protest failed to address the genuine issues
A glitter bomb was the ultimate passive-aggressive missile to fire at feminist Germaine Greer, writes Eilis O'Hanlon
By Eilis O'Hanlon
Sunday March 18 2012
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/lacklustre-protest-failed-to-address-the-genuine-issues-3053812.htmlSTAND up for human rights: startle a 73-year- old woman today!
That seems to be the slogan of the so-called Queer Avengers, who last week glitter-bombed feminist writer Germaine Greer at an arts festival for New Zealand for being less than supportive of those who undergo sex change operations -- or "gender reassignment", as that most Orwellian of interest groups demands that the process be called.
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Why is it that sexual roles are so rigidly defined in our society that the only solution which is contemplated to gender confusion is to pick up a scalpel and hack away at the body until the desired result is achieved? For Greer, this is a clear case of mutilation, and the fact that the victims are grateful to those who mutilate them doesn't change the fact. She regards such intervention as "profoundly conservative in that it reinforces sharply contrasting gender roles by shaping individuals to fit them". Just as Freud could only think of women as men without penises, so surgery now declares that all it takes to be a woman is to remove the penis. Transgender activists don't even bat an eyelid at this deeply offensive interpretation of womanhood.
Greer has never argued that those who feel uncomfortable in their own skin should simply shut up and accept their fate. Her point has always been that, in other cultures, there is an acceptance of a third sex, neither completely man nor completely woman, but that this option has been ruthlessly closed off on the basis of cod science, and that this has consequences for everyone.
