Controversial feminist Germaine Greer: The all on its feet

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Talking to Germaine Greer has to be a bit like talking to a toddler - every sentence starts with the words, "No, Germaine": No, trans women are not men who have chopped off their penis. No, #MeToo is not a movement of crybabies. In her new book "On Rape," Greer does not skimp on steep theses like that rape is only rape when a penis invades her vagina against a woman's will. No, Germaine. Author and feminist Naomi Wolf wrote in the Times to Greer, "I was raped by my babysitter, the first night orally, the second vaginal, does not the first night count?"

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Germaine Greer: "Well, as an old woman, I get insulted every day"

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And what about men as victims? According to Greer's definition, men exist only as perpetrators. What's more, she concludes that heterosexual marriage is less common than it is unanimous. You have to let it melt on your tongue. To substantiate this, Greer resorts to gender roles from the moth-crate of the last century, according to which the man always wants, while the wife does it only for the sake of the peace of love or so that the children do not wake up. "Greer has missed the connection with the new age," commented journalist Natalie Reilly.

In the process, Germaine Greer stepped on everyone's feet in the seventies. That is and was what she does. Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that generation differences between feminists are discussed above all on the issue of sexual policy, after all, views on equal pay or the right to vote seldom change.

So one of the key questions that haunts feminism is the attitude to pornography. Very simplified: from PorNo earlier to PorYes today. Greer, for example, considers pornography to be one of the reasons why it's about the heterosexual, as she believes it's about him: "Men learn sex through masturbation and then masturbate later into a woman." But even in the seventies there was a whole feminist camp that saw things differently.

Artist Annie Sprinkle said, "The answer to bad porn is not porn, it's about trying to make better porn." For this reason, Germaine Greer was once co-founder of the porn magazine "Suck", for which she even posed naked and in 1971 wrote her essay "Lady love you cunt" in German - defused translated - "Ladys, loves your Vulvas." But there is not much to read about libido in the current book.

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Germaine Greer:
On Rape

Language: English

Bloomsbury; 92 pages; 12,99 Euro

Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.

Another question Greers Generation struggles with is transsexualism. In the seventies was still: Once penis, always penis. In her book "The Whole Woman", Greer compared trans women with Norman Bates from "Psycho", who wears the clothes of his dead mother. Kirsty Wark asked her in an interview for BBC 2015 if she knew how offensive it was. Greer replied, "Well, as an old woman, I am insulted every day." As a result, more than 3000 predominantly young feminists signed a petition against a lecture by Greer at the University of Cardiff.

In fact, Greer's rejection of trans women has less to do with keeping women for the better, but thinks men are socialized in a way that makes them feel like lords of the world. It is this antagonism toward men that Greer is most likely to locate in another generation.

Because in the 1970s, women had so much less rights than men (starting with the fact that they could terminate their wife's employment contract if they thought it did not make the household good enough), that it is unthinkable that - some - Feminists suspected that men were acting badly. One of the phrases that Greer is famous for and that she keeps putting on is, "Women underestimate how much men hate them." Perhaps Germaine Greer overestimates how much men hate her?

Question truisms

Germaine Greer stands for Germaine Greer, in all her controversy and crudity - which, after all, always has something refreshing: with her new book, it all upsets her. This culminates in the statement that victims can decide for themselves if they are traumatized or not. Psychologists of all generations pointed out that if a trauma were a cognitive decision, it would not be a trauma.

At the same time, there is an empowerment in Greer's statement: Carolyn Worth of the Center Against Sexual Assault in Greer's hometown of Melbourne said sensitivity to the potential psychological consequences of rape is essential, "but our communication about rape tends towards the attitude that all victims are incurably destroyed, and that is not only not helpful, but simply wrong ".

One must also credit Greer for not trying to convince. It only demands that people deal with their ideas - and open-minded. If she has a goal, then this: questioning truisms. She does that in part through staid other truisms, partly through radical thoughts. The debates about Germaine Greer's book and person can therefore not be broken down to the formula "grandma vs. hip feminists". It's about much more: Greer shows that feminism is not about icons, but about discussions.