I know no-one is losing any sleep about the dearth of content. But I miss writing so, like, whatever.

Can’t think of a better thing to write than a half-thought-out, half-started, half-finished stream of word-think about something quite sensitive and emotive.

We are all obsessed with being right. This means other people are wrong. Identities and groups now seem increasingly linear.

So now someone who is pointedly a feminist has some views on gender reassignment, which in turn means she cannot speak as a feminist about feminist issues because she isn’t aligned to a view on gender reassignment consistent with a view that someone transitioning from male to female is a woman in the same sense that someone born as a female (anatomically?) is a woman.

(If we’re going to to the outposts of humanity) a comment on a Huffington Post identified an absence of patriarchy in the Greer debate (as though that were a bad thing), referring to two groups of women fighting over the right to be the biggest victim. In the midst of a moronic comment I did think: at least he is recognising the trans community as women. When you’re looking into the semantics of a misogynist’s comments for some sign of a pyrrhic victory for my eyes – having made them read this shit.

This is maybe not a good example. I can’t say that I agree with her views, but I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t understand her frustration at some people telling her she wasn’t a feminist because of her ideas about one thing. Indeed it’s a pretty odd thing when Germaine Greer is referred to as a misogynist. I’d also be lying if I said I knew a lot about the evidence for her views, having just googled it to have more context than having read two articles about the latest farrago.

It seemed like it might be a good recent bit of news to illustrate my point but now I fear I am empathising with an transphobic agenda. A friend often argued against the -phobic suffix being applied to anti-thing agendas. “They aren’t scared of <<thing>>,” he would say. And while fear isn’t the defining characteristic of hatred, I’d not argue against it being a root cause. Along with ignorance and stupidity.

Anyway, lets stick with this now. So, rather than look at each other’s points and debate the conflict the solution is to not talk about it, i.e. ban Greer. Aside: this doesn’t mean Greer is in “the right”, both remain in “the real world”.

Groups need to engage their detractors. We all like it when people share our view, it’s easy. This is, I assume, why people feel the need to share things on social media with statements such as “like this if you hate genocide”.

The way to change the world involves engaging those who view things differently. If you are definitely right it should be easy, no? If, perhaps, there are legitimate very different views in something (helps if you’re prepared to admit this is the case A LOT) then perhaps listening to each other will enable a mutual position to emerge. Or at least more mutually acceptable.