Julian Barnes defends Greer’s transgender comments
BRITISH writer Julian Barnes has entered the transgender row by defending Germaine Greer’s comments as “perfectly legitimate”.
Germaine Greer, a leading feminist for more than 45 years, claimed that transgender women “can’t be women”, saying “just because you lop off your penis … it doesn’t make you a woman”.
The Australian-born academic, 76, was due to give a talk at Cardiff University last year but cancelled after a number of activists protested against her comments about transgender women and called her a “misogynist”.
And now Mr Barnes, 70, the author of more than 20 works of fiction and non-fiction, has waded into the debate.
He said he worries about the rise of self-censorship and thinks people have a right to offend and be offended.
“It’s right that we are much more racially sensitive, gender-sensitive and so on, but I suppose also your generation kicks in at a certain time,” he told the
Financial Times. “Then things like Ger- maine Greer isn’t allowed to say just because a man has his bits chopped off, it doesn’t turn him into a woman.
“That is a perfectly legitimate point of view, seems to me.”
In October last year, Mr Barnes cited an article by the English poet James Fenton called “Mrs Thatcher’s Bum” and used it as an example of a period that accepted that “offence could and should be given”. Ms Greer, the author of The Female
Eunuch, a classic feminist text on women’s sexuality, provoked a backlash on social media when she told Newsnight in October: “I’m not saying that people should not be allowed to go through that procedure [gender reassignment], all I’m saying is that it doesn’t make them a woman.”
Drag costumes have been banned by the Edinburgh University Student Union in case they offend LGBT students. Students have also been banned from dressing up in ways that others may find offensive, including “gangster” and “Mexican” costumes.