Calling on Sydney Opera House and the All About Women festival to acknowledge Germaine Greer's transphobia, and a lack of trans voices within the festival.
Calling on Sydney Opera House and the All About Women festival to acknowledge Germaine Greer's transphobia, and a lack of trans voices within the festival.
In May of 2014 it was speculated that we were approaching a ‘transgender tipping point’ – a point where society was starting to come to accept the lives and narratives of transgender people, and no longer accepting of bigotry.
It is then highly surprising that in 2015 the Sydney Opera House festival ‘All About Women’ has invited Germaine Greer, a speaker who doesn’t see transgender women as women.
While Greer is indeed a noteworthy feminist thinker, her transphobic views are outdated and plainly offensive. Just this year she has made disparaging remarks about the validity of trans gender identities and declared transition-related surgical procedures as “unethical”.
Greer’s views are apparent as far back as the publishing of ‘The Female Eunuch”, and in the 1970’s were in alignment with Gloria Steinem’s remarks. However, in 2013 Steinem unequivocally repudiated and apologised for her previous convictions, and stating “I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives.”
www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/10/02/op-ed-working-together-over-time
We ask that the All About Women festival acknowledges Greer’s misleading views of trans people and come out in recognition of the authenticity of transgender women and the existence of transphobia.
https://www.facebook.com/wipeouttransphobia