Arch-Feminist Leftist Germaine Greer May Be Disinvited from University Talk For Denying Caitlyn Jenner Is a Woman

Scorpions in a bottle.

As you probably know, hardcore feminists, who are convinced of the inherent superiority of the distaff gender, and who do in fact tend to be "man-hating," are essentialists when it comes to femininity, and don't much like men coming along and saying "Hey look at me, I'm a woman now."

Germaine Greer has opined, pungently, that no man could be a woman because men don't know what it's like to have a "big, hairy, smelly vagina," and is very annoyed that Bruce Jenner received Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year" award for his role as "Caitlyn Jenner."

And a university wants to disinvite her from a talk due to this her-esy.

When told that such comments are hurtful to the transgender community, Greer doubled down. "Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time, I’m not about to walk on eggshells."

Those who have long walked on eggshells trying not to offend Greer's feminist sisters should feel free to laugh.
...

Now Greer's the target for these liberal censors, as Cardiff University is being petitioned to ax her upcoming lecture there, "Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century."

And feminists support the censorship. As Kaite Welsh wrote: "Isn't it often the way? You fight your way from the trenches to the throne, overthrow the corrupt regime and set about remaking the world in your own image, only to realize that you have become the thing you most despised."

Greer's gone from "revolutionary to oppressor," she said.

Carrie Lukas notes this argument can have more serious dimensions: When corporations are pressured to hire more "women," for example, do transgenders count?

This is of course just the latest censorship from the intolerant, illiberal fascist barbarians we call college students. Williams University had a series called "Uncomfortable Learning," the entire point of which was to invite speakers who might raise hackles or challenge dominant thought, and a feminist-skeptic was disinvited from that.

Uncomfortable learning should not really be uncomfortable at all for the most special snowflakes in the crowd.

To be clear: Venker was disinvited by the students who had asked her to speak in the first place, not by the college. Mary Dettloff, a spokesperson for the college, told me that Williams has "a history of bringing controversial speakers to campus."

"We don't shy away from that," she said in an interview with Reason. "We don't cancel commencement speakers."

Rather, it was the students who host the Uncomfortable Learning series--an unofficial, unregistered campus club--who ultimately made the decision.

"They were feeling very uncomfortable about the amount of protest and the tenor of the protest that was going on," said Dettloff. "Students were being very vocal about not wanting her to come here. I think it was just getting a lit bit over the top."

The would-be speaker, Suzanne Venker, wrote about it at Fox.

Content warning on this next one; if you click on the link, you'll get a facefull of languid bisexuals draped over each other.

But a New York magazine, a parade of special snowflakes who want -- nay, demand -- your attention and applause.

The article is all about the Parade of Sexual Self-Definitions the young and purposeless are subscribing to these days.

"Currently, I say that I am agender. I’m removing myself from the social construct of gender," says Mars Marson, a 21-year-old NYU film major with a thosta of short black hair.

Film major? No serious, for real?

Marson is talking to me amid a roomful of Queer Union students at the school’s LGBTQ student center, where a front-desk bin offers free buttons that let visitors proclaim their preferred pronoun. Of the seven students gathered at the Queer Union, five prefer the singular they, meant to denote the kind of post-gender self-identification Marson describes.

Marson was born a girl biologically and came out as a lesbian in high school. But NYU was a revelation -- a place to explore ­transgenderism and then reject it. "I don't feel connected to the word transgender because it feels more resonant with binary trans people," Marson says, referring to people who want to tread a linear path from female to male, or vice versa. You could say that Marson and the other students at the Queer Union identify instead with being somewhere in the middle of the path, but that's not quite right either. "I think 'in the middle' still puts male and female as the be-all-end-all," says Thomas Rabuano...

Wait, let me hit the "Pause" button on Time Itself so you can work out the precise sexual vocabulary which might explain you in all you multifaceted uselessness.

Let me finish that sentence, by the way:

...says Thomas Rabuano, 19, a sophomore drama major who wears makeup, a turbanlike headband, and a flowy blouse and skirt and cites Lady Gaga and the gay character Kurt on Glee as big adolescent role models.

You don't say.

"I like to think of it as outside." Everyone in the group mm-hmmms approval and snaps their fingers in accord.

Yes, yes -- snaps all around. You've earned it.

Anyway, here's the glossary these completely unaccomplished, no-account nobodies want you to study so you can really understand them and "get where they're coming from, with their sexuality."

A GLOSSARY

The Complex Linguistics of the Campus Queer Movement

Agender: a person who identifies as neither male nor female

Asexual: a person who doesn’t experience sexual desire, but who may experience romantic longing

Aromantic: a person who doesn’t experience romantic longing, but does experience sexual desire

Cisgender: not transgender; the state in which the gender you identify with matches the one you were assigned at birth

Demisexual: a person with limited sexual desire, usually felt only in the context of deep emotional connection

Gender: a 20th-century constraint

Genderqueer: a person with an identity outside the traditional gender binaries

Graysexual: a more broad term for a person with limited sexual desire

Intersectionality: the belief that gender, race, class, and sexual orientation cannot be interrogated independently from one another

Neutrois: agender

Panromantic: a person who is romantically interested in anyone of any gender or orientation; this does not necessarily connote accompanying sexual interest

Pansexual: a person who is sexually interested in anyone of any gender or orientation

It should be noted that several of these categories are "just not very interested in sex" (a common thing, based on a survey of my girlfriends) or "just not very interested in emotional attachment to sexual partners" ( a common thing, according to my girlfriends complaining about the guys they were cheating on me with).

In other words, people want now to be "recognized" for very unremarkable things, like "my hair is curly, but like, not completely curly, you know...? I'm like a mixed cis-curly quasi-linear anti-perm fluffduffer."

All juveniles do this -- they're literally trying to figure out who they are, and what makes them "special," and very into contrived self-definitions. All that crap about being so into this band or that one, or this music genre or that, or this type of fashion -- all that crap is people who have never done anything interesting or remarkable attempting to contrive some Medal, some Decoration they can put upon their chest to make them stand out (if only in their imaginations).

This silly crap about "graysexuals" and "aromantics" is just the latest, most rancidly stupid variation of this unfortunate tendency -- the radiant narcissism of the unfashionably plain and heroically unaccomplished.

Yes, yes, let me get out my Moleskine notebook and my best pen; I want to take a deep dive into the Ocean of You.

posted by Ace at 03:01 PM

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