I'm a bloke. Shoot me. (thing)

I really, really really did not want to post a reply to this arrant nonsense here. I've /msg'd lagrange about the factual error in this node, and rather than correct it, he has just said (in the added comment at the end, added today) "well, she may never have said it, but she means it".

The simple fact is Professor Greer has never said all men are rapists, or anything remotely like that, as a simple perusal of the node in question should show. While lagrange seems to take this imagined quote as a libel against him personally, imputing those opinions to someone who has never said anything like them, on no evidential basis whatsoever actually is libel in a very real sense.

Don't assume you can predict someone's opinions from a media caricature - Professor Greer is in many ways a deeply conservative person, in her attitudes to such subjects as abortion or transsexuality, which the caricature portrayal of her would also not let you see.

Some actual quotes, as opposed to imagined ones, from her recent book Men And Women:

I have always been principally interested in men for sex. I've always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I'd fall in love with a woman. Damn.

One of my greatest struggles over the last 30 years has been to persuade women that they should be victims no longer -- in particular, when it comes to rape. Insofar as rape is the assault via the penis, it's one of the least destructive assaults. And it bugs me that women are still so impressed by the penis that they think it can destroy their personality and their life.

Chat Participant : Germaine, do you think that men too have been castrated by a society in which they are measured by only money and prestige? How can men like this respect themselves, let alone the women in their lives?

Germaine Greer: Precisely. I have never envied the condition of one-dimensional man, but the best I can do for him is to get off his back

Do these sound like the quotes of someone who would say 'all men are rapists' or who even considers rape a particular problem in the world?

I disagree with Prof. Greer on many issues, and with Ms Dworkin on many more (Ms Dworkin in fact sounds absolutely insane from most things I've read that she's written). But if lagrange is going to complain about 'libel', he should at least have the common decency not to libel other people merely on the basis of his own prejudices, without bothering to look at what they have to say. Dworkin's quotes do not say all men are rapists, but she has made statements that many people would see as very similar to that. Germaine Greer hasn't.

I really wish I didn't have to post this w/u , but since lagrange has included information that is simply wrong in this node, and refused to alter it, I don't really see much choice.

I'm not even going to bother arguing with the 'oh poor me I'm a man, help help I'm being oppressed' drivel that makes up the 'argument' itself