Oh Dear, Ms Greer

Disappointment, we all know that feeling. Whether it's the shop being all out of your fave chocolate bar, being let down last minute  or someone doing something that totally shocks you, disappointment is rubbish.

But what happens when someone, a public figure, says something that so largely contradicts everything you thought they stood for?

If you don’t know who Germaine Greer is, you’ve either never really been that into feminism, never studied ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ or have just generally been under a rock for the past few decades. Writer of ‘The Female Eunuch’, Germaine Greer is one of the world’s ‘super feminists’. So when she wrote back in 2010 that Page 3 of The Sun wasn’t all that harmful, you couldn’t help but feel that a mother of the feminist movement had kicked you in the proverbial balls.

Last Tuesday, 4^th February 2014, at ‘An Audience with Germaine Greer’, 16 year old Kathryn (who hasn’t even taken her GCSEs) sat and listened to a lecture Greer was giving on breast cancer, cosmetic surgery and image issues faced by women. At the end of the lecture, Greer opened the room up to questions, and a journalist asked Greer if she had heard of NMP3 and what her thoughts were on it. Greer (the swine) replied that she thought Page 3 was totally innocent and that it was only bought by old men (lies, I think Greer lives in some sort of bubble, anyway…) and that it was nothing in comparison to the porn that’s available online anyway.

Firstly, Ms Greer, I think you’re a traitor to the cause here. I studied you at 16 after reading Atwood and thought you were this fabulous voice of reason and now, now I just think you’re a hypocrite.

And it would appear that I’m not alone. Following Greer’s response, Kathryn got given the mic, stood up and quite calmly stated,

'I am a full supporter of no more page 3. Page three is part of mainstream culture and sexualises and objectifies women shamelessly, and is essentially a gate way into hardcore pornography. If this 'soft porn' is openly available in mainstream culture, then it makes it seem like looking at the more hardcore porn is acceptable. How can you not support a campaign that is trying to shut that down, and how can you call it innocent?'

The whole room applauded.

And it says a lot.

SHE IS 16! 16!
A 16 year old girl stood up in front of Germaine BLOODY Greer and a room full of A2 Sociology students (I repeat, she hasn’t even sat her GCSEs yet) and spoke her mind. Not only did she speak her mind, but she said the words on the lips of thousands of young women up and down this country and across the world who are BORED of being objectified on a day to day basis and being told it’s all ‘harmless’.

I wish I’d been that brave at 16. I wish I’d had the guts to stand up and shout back when told that I was over reacting about the boys who branded my friends ‘sluts’ because they’d kissed someone at a party… Hell, I wish I’d had that much courage 9 months ago when I was bartending and customers felt it perfectly ok to comment on my chest when making their cocktails as if I wasn’t even there at all.

Germaine Greer is meant to be a feminist figure head. She should be at the forefront of a campaign that is trying to end the daily objectification of young women. Porn and Page 3, simply cannot be compared in my books. You go looking for porn, you know what you are doing, you’ve made the conscious decision to watch it. Same goes for when you buy a ‘lad mag’. You know what you’re looking at. People buy The Sun because it is a newspaper, Ms Greer, they buy it because, presumably, they want to know what is going in the world. Therefore, please, please, PLEASE tell me how this image of a young woman, boobs akimbo, on the third page of a NEWSPAPER is in anyway innocent, because I’m obviously missing the point here.

I mean, Page 3 has become so damn normalised that even one of the world’s leading feminists thinks it’s ok!

We live in a society where, when the lights get dimmed and music goes up, it is ok to see women as objects. Where girls are taught that if they go out alone in the dark they risk being attacked and where the media has no issues using the bodies of women to sell whatever product the latest big cooperation has invented.

We need more Kathryn’s. We need more young women (and men) who see the things that need to changed and aren’t afraid to challenge those who stand in their way.

Young girls are starting to find their voices. The idea that Page 3 out dated is no longer the fight of middle aged, middle class women with little more to do. We’re finding our voices, and we’re using them.

So society should be prepared that we won’t be silenced until it’s an equal playing field out there…
Greer, I’m talking to you.