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Last week I responded to a Facebook post of a friend about a petition to ban Germain Greer from speaking at Cardiff, a college in Britain. Being of the ancient boomer generation, freedom of speech still looms important for me. But I admit my reading of feminist literature began to lag during my push to finish my dissertation and subsequent hunger for employment to pay the bills. So I was somewhat unnerved by the heated feedback I got from some of the people on the thread. One trans woman (I made the mistake of writing “transwoman” in my post; I won’t do that again. :-/ ) was particularly incensed. I don’t know if she is 3rd or 4th wave trans feminist, but she was unbudging in her calling me out as a Greer apologist and thus possibly responsible for who knows how many trans deaths. I am not making light of that serious problem in any way, but those were her words about Greer. The dreaded TERF label was mentioned; I surely do not want to be called that.
So I began an effort to catch up on my feminist and trans feminist reading. The last formal publication (i.e. book) I read on the topic was Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl a few years ago.