Feminist pioneer Germaine Greer has defended her claim that that transgender women ‘can’t be women’ in an expletive-laden statement

Speaking to the BBC she said: ‘Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman.’
‘I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel.
‘I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve support in coming to terms with their gender, but it’s not the same thing. A man who gets his dick chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.’

The 74-year-old Australian-born academic had been due to give a lecture called Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century, at Cardiff University, but pulled out after a petition was launched calling on the university to cancel the event over her transphobic views.

Ms Greer had previously come under fire for saying,’Transgender women are ‘not women’.

The student union women’s officer Rachel Melhuish said Ms. Greer’s views towards transgender women are “misogynistic”.

By Friday, more than 200 people had signed an online petition calling for the university not to host the lecture, which is an annual event in memory of former deputy vice-chancellor Hadyn Ellis, who died in 2006.

The university’s vice-chancellor Prof Colin Riordan said it does not condone “discriminatory comments of any kind”.

“At Cardiff University we work hard to provide a positive and welcoming space for LGBT+ people and we are in consultation with student and staff groups to ensure that the views of LGBT+ people are represented at our events”, he said.

Responding to the petition, Ms Greer told BBC News: “I was going to talk about women and power… because I think there is a lot of triumphalist talk that masks the real historic situation.”

“And apparently people have decided that because I don’t think that post-operative transgender men… are women I’m not to be allowed to talk.”

She also suggested that Caitlyn Jenner underwent gender reassignment surgery to ‘steal the limelight’ from the Kardashians.

Ms Greer did say she was prepared to use female pronouns when referring to someone, if that was their preference, “as a courtesy”.

‘‘I’m not saying that people should not be allowed to go through that procedure, all I’m saying is that it doesn’t make them a woman,’’ she said.