Je Suis Germaine
I don’t quite know what happened last week but, one morning, Germaine Greer was the philosophical mother of all Women and Equality Officers in every Student Union across the country and by the evening she was the Abu Hamza of the progressive intelligentsia for not holding the ‘right views.’
The way we live now.
For those of you who don’t know, a petition against Germaine Greer giving a lecture at the University of Cardiff has been started on the basis that she has previously expressed views on transgender women that some people find offensive. It is also worthwhile to note that the lecture she was due to give is on a completely different subject.
I disagree with Germaine Greer on so much I couldn’t write a single blog post on it. I am, however, glad she’s held her ground.
This follows a distrubing trend of only those deemed ‘politically correct’ being allowed to speak at University events. The rate it’s going Laurie Penny and Owen Jones will be the only social commentators deemed fit to address the ‘safe zones’ – perish the thought! What annoys me most, however, is that Germaine Greer is an academic, not a politician nor a hate-preacher, but an actual academic. If academics with challenging views aren’t allowed to speak at Universities why bother having Universities at all?
Perhaps we should be delighted that Universities are making themselves obsolete. They’ve become Victorian parlour rooms where one must not speak of indelicate things lest the Womens’ Officer gets the Vapours…