a few months is we've seen this see change where women and girls are suddenly able to come together and compare notes and support one another that's what's changed to me to respond to them i was spoken out about rape and about my own rape and i did it many many years ago when i was nineteen years old i'm now eighteen it's not true we haven't been there we've never been here before we have been and we've got nowhere we've got nowhere because the north upside down the lure is if you'll pardon the expression cockeye the most important thing for it to do is defend the defendant against the malicious allegations of other people and there is a legal obligation to do that if the meeting was never just about legal solutions though i mean i don't know where to yes of course but look i don't need to have to have somebody convicted in a court of law of rape to say i don't want to invite that guy to my party i don't want to work with that project you know this is also about creating social

consequences and creating new social norms and that is a big important thing that's changed is always trimble is a historian of gender and relationship she's a columnist for the sunday telegraph do you agree with what lauri saying well i definitely see what laurie is saying and i don't disagree but i just wanted to say that i think there's absolutely a place for jermaine to pour cold water on this movement that's you know if you're going to be someone who's sort of smiled upon by a kind of polite society you must say it's just absolute the best thing since sliced bread jermaine's job is to be a critic and i think you should absolutely be criticizing it i also think that other kinds of threats that a lot of women encounter frankly on the street at night and is me to actually reaching those perpetrators as me to helping those women who are kind of facing domestic violence all the time so i think i think i think you're in the right to question the efficacy and mina salamis a feminist writer blogger founder of the award winning pan-african blog this for politan. talks about why did it take them so long and the whole anonymity issue where do you stand on that the point is not wait so long or a woman war. or what her sexual history is which is which are not claims you've

been making but i'm just saying that it's a similar type of question we're always avoiding focusing on the actual crime and it's incredibly unfair to suggest that me too has not been tremendously impactful i mean for me too is definitely one of the feminist speaks and i think it's unprecedented in one way specifically which is that it is bringing home these conversations into our intimate spaces with me to unless you've been living under a rock you cannot avoid having these conversations with your partners with your father with our fathers with our uncles sons etc and that is really unprecedented and as a as a really unprecedented i think it is you're talking about oh we need to concentrate on rape as a crime now most of the people in this country do not believe that known consensual sex is rape they think it has to be violent wrong it doesn't they

think believe is uncommon monstrous done by outsiders doesn't matter what they believe because in the court of law it is a crime accepted isn't you will not one car it's consensual sex is that right hang on just a minute you will not find the millions of women who had nonconsensual sex last night with their partners fronting up at the police station it never happens and the longest struggle when it came to trying to rationalize the lore of rape which is amiss was the one on whether it was possible to rape your own wife that was not decided in some american states until nineteen ninety four but the fact is it hasn't changed the law but that's why me too is so effective because women are so as faking about again these are very very it's not affective what do you propose instead what is effective. i would i well there are many things that could be

effective but we won't do them. we have teenage girls who have never had an orgasm who have no idea why they're even doing it because the pressure on them to have a partner is so great somehow we have got to rescue the institution of heteros sex from the mess it is in and that is partly brought about by pornography prostitution commercialization and the cheapening of everything about a woman's body but i'm getting a lot of people who wouldn't disagree with you including some of our panelists but again i'm waiting for a solution yes we need to do some of that world white on dear boy i'm not asking you a start it's easy to be a bomb thrower i'm asking for what we need to you say it doesn't work it's not unprecedented. what's come before me too that was similar in your view and b what would you do instead is two very simple questions and we are in has now unsafe situation we have unsaved convictions and we have other marauders like harvey weinstein apparently able to operate with complete impunity not because he is who

in years but because he is surrounded by people who are scared of him and this is this is very much bigger problem so you have to rein here's what all of us harvey weinstein the marauder is now facing trolls are real ask another one of my questions apologies do you support the prosecution of harvey weinstein and bill cosby regarded as two successes. for me too well they're not successes yet one was found guilty and one is now being prosecuted for the first time to say well having the army of people pretend they'll be in the pill in the case of cosby and you want to you want to have him in jail half blind him is a to use after sixty years of doing what he's been doing so they're calling that a victory i think at least belongs there just seeing the guy have to face some sort of justice is a moral victory in itself i think we shouldn't discount that in a way this argument feels incoherent it really does i feel like in the twenty first century we should be living in a sexual culture where we can get beyond let's not rape each other right let's not

rape each other should be a baseline you know we can do better we can actually have some sort of understanding of pleasure desire in agency so you want to have a question why don't we in terms of your questions about solutions is there not a need to think quite pragmatically and simply about well women lack physical confidence that women are consider themselves weak men can overpower them physically after about where the rubber hits the road you know should girls be given martial arts training in school mandatory i mean are is that not just kind of sweet of options we should be turning to first teaching men i mean i mean. let me pick up on the mark i mean you can vote carry on comedies nine hundred sixty comedies you said whether people should slap down the man who kind of harasses them instantly on the spot and stand up for themselves which kind of feeds into all those to what do you really think that's the kind of solution yes. how would that help the women who were drugged by bill cosby how would that have helped dylan

farrow who was seven years old how would she have slapped down look you wouldn't have helped everybody but it would have helped people who themselves were in that situation that ordinary women on the street it helps a physical with the this is not. hurried out stranger rape is very rare most women who are. to complain of sexual assault know who their attacker was and is a friend of theirs and is a part of that doesn't mean they have the ability to fend off an attack i mean harvey weinstein the case you started with harvey weinstein this it was pretty brutal with a lot of these women what are you supposed to do you're saying i'm just wondering what were they supposed to do. when behaving as if susan brownmiller had never written her book on rape and then she argues that men use the threat of rape to keep us all in continual submission and that just isn't true we are all made afraid

ripen god knows why because we most likely to be mugged in raped this strays were not afraid of being mugged or afraid of being raped and the chance to be i was right by a stranger and the funny thing was that i'd i wasn't even annoyed with a mass of the bad stepped in the path of the bus idea i still don't know his name or else are suppressed and it was nice to you know us being half unconscious and ice so that's about as bad as it gets that would i want him put away for seven years ok what this is this is where we get into territory where you being in trouble recently some of the remarks people think you're downplaying the crime of rape. well yes you said recently the hay festival shouldn't always be thought of as a violent crime but as quote bad sex which many would say is not just offensive but inaccurate all for christ's sake non-consensual sex isn't always violent you can have non consensual sex with a woman who's fast asleep without even waking around what world do you people live

in when talking about passing people up we're talking about really destructive six where a man climbs onto his partner because he's in the bed next to him i'm actually passionately opposed to double beds they are probably more responsible for bad sex than any other single piece of furniture. and most of the sex we are having is bad and what we know is not my the rape is bad sex. you stand by that comment it's non-consensual sex which is sex and it's not always violent no because many would argue that all rape is violent because it's a gross believe violation of a woman well you know yes you can argue that if you want but you're pushing the point really violent little crisis in a well says this is penetrating another person's body without their consent is not an act of violence what is rape is an inherently violent crime regardless of whether external visit your beautiful injuries are sustained you better sit tell that to the traumatized women who turn up for

a rape kit examination who are penetrated again and again who are blood taken to have all kinds of liberties taken with them i mean and i'm about it's not about harvey weinstein masturbating in front of you believe me that's completely no we're talking now well we'll talk about rape which is also accused of mean not all rape is violent and it's. sometimes violence does not just mean physically attacking someone violence is using force it's creating damage and you can create a lot of violent sexual damage when you force somebody to have sex with you i would hope that you would agree with that further when i can but you know something of all the crimes in which injuries are sustained rape is the least impressive people get hurt all the time if men had to pretend to a woman that a painless walking down the street is more dangerous than a knife so it's just an orange you cannot just decide what one woman experiences as

the great violation of her of her body and and you have been speaking about you know reducing the sentences for rape. and just a two hundred hours of community service there wasn't me when i bought the land so you also said to the letter are on there why not a tattoo is all right at least and says go go out with this bloke he's got four but they're not it's interesting to clarify something you're saying you don't support reduced sentences for because you've been quoted plenty of interviews saying it should be the burden of proof should be lowered the terrorist ability to get more convictions why do you think juries can't convict. why do they sit there listening to revolting stories and when it comes to the point they can't convict one of the reasons for that is the extremity of the sentences we have them raised and raised and raised in the midst believes that more women will complain and more juries will convict the effect is the opposite you think lowering it would get more convictions

well you haven't got anywhere near enough prosecutions but that's fine the speculation given you never know there's a cult lowering it would lead to more convictions might it mind you imagine we're going to make another big proposal based on nothing and no our headline would argue that they're not convicted not because of terrorist but because i don't believe the woman and really we should be working on getting people to believe the woman well that's a problem because juries these days have women in their own no woman is ever disbelieved in the woman. who knows and now you know me better hang on a minute the really important thing to remember is that most rape if we're talking about you keep bringing this quote it's just hearing from you and you're on t.v. do you support in the u.k. in the us short of terrorists in prison maybe alternatives to prison for rapist for convicted rapist it would depend. they're not all the same you see the crimes are not all the same and the outcome is not all the same in one place or reduce another piece it depends but honestly it seems like this argument hasn't been thought through i think i see more coherence in some ways on twitter the heart of your

argument seems to be that the legal system as a is is inadequate to be dealing with the problem of the problem of rape and consent and i agree with you on that basis but the meeting movement has never been simply about the legal system the whole point is that if the legal system has failed women there is a. just that binary between doing nothing and only ever believing the guy in the shoeman that the woman is lying and you know put the guy in a box forever so yes i think we would all agree that sex is inherently full of gray areas because there are no witnesses it's highly subjective and i think one of the problems with me too has been that it's lumped a lot of things together and we've had sort of ideas of men to women and inevitably what happens is like as german so you get the have such a fella centric image it's like terrifying penis is everywhere and then you get a sort of slightly victim narrative emerging for women so really just the sort of

support the idea that we need to have a system in place just before it sensitive to differences to pick up on that point is probably about to demean mean there's been this criticism of me too that do you . see in too many different behaviors is that do you think that's a legitimate criticism people say well you know there's a difference between somebody groping your work and somebody raping you a lot harvey weinstein allegedly no because they're all part of the same conversation which is sexual harassment second rate sexual abuse toward women these are conversations that we haven't. historically been able to have out in the open and i become so confused with your arguments because they're completely contradictory like you say that on the one hand you have been pushing for women to come out with a first person narrative and to name themselves and surely that is what is happening with me too i mean for the first time you have hundreds of thousands of women speaking about sexual abuse that they have experienced using their personal

name to. yes i agree and i agree that women should come out and take names and talk and draw a crowd and ostracize the person who is behaving badly i mean i have been teaching in universities all my life and i know the sexual predators were in the universities i was in and there's many ways of abusing women they don't all involve the penis in fact the cleanest is the only part of a man i know what to do with frankly ok let me let me ask let me let me ask you this you say now you when you say to me you're welcome that's a good thing because come out and take names and yet just a couple of months ago you were on t.v. accusing me too of presenting women as victims and youth you should also for example if you spread your legs because he said be nice to me i'll give you a job in a movie that's tantamount to consent it's too late now about the women are winning in association to me too do you think they're presented as victims as you're quoted as saying and i mean there is a maria goretti aspect to it is i was

a virtuous i've forty miles and he punished me by not putting me in the movie and i'm thinking somebody stitched together for me here is the executive director of investor in the movie he put the word on you you said no you didn't get a part in the movie how can you prove the things are related and the fact is you can't this is that's what the world is about people are negotiating using sexuality and using very great and using promises that are fake you said to you. that you welcome people taking names you said elsewhere that women are being presented as victims which is it all women being do you believe that me too is presenting women as victims or as empowered strong women coming forward to call for justice which is. well it's probably both and neither at the same time because we're not even allowed plan jail it's all in here if you spend as much time working on rape as i do you know that we're not even allowed to call complainants victims

anymore we have to call them survivors as if being raped was like the wreck of the titanic just fed up with the holes in it one will have to live with we're going to take a break do join us for part two of her going to continue the conversation about feminism is discrimination. germany is going to be equally lovely i'm sure and we've got a very patient audience here in the oxford union who are going to put their questions to her so come back after the break thanks. t. . every weekly news cycle brings a series of breaking stories join the listening post as we turn the cameras on the media and focus on how they report on the stories that matter the most on al-jazeera. when mexico's leaders implemented drastic and controversial energy reforms the country's oil owned by the mexican people for seventy five years was to

be sold to private international companies. but to what extent is the country exposed to exploitation by a profit driven multinational corporation. good harvest on al-jazeera. there's the problem in doha with the headlines on al-jazeera thousands of people in tel aviv have been protesting against israel's controversial nation state law demonstrators have the law as undemocratic and marginalize israel's mon jewish citizens the bill which passed last month officially defined israel as a jewish state and made hebrew the only official language downgrading the status of

arabic a u.n. delegation is in gaza for me since with hamas officials to deescalate tensions with israel meanwhile funerals were held for the three palestinians including a medic who were killed by israeli forces on friday there have been protests for twenty weeks at the guards at israel border fence demonstrators have been demanding the right of return for palestinian refugees. the u.n. special envoy to yemen says talks between warring parties that's month will focus on a transitional government and laying down arms but before those talks can even begin to solve the amorality airstrike killed dozens of children in a hole through stronghold in the north funerals were held for those killed but some parents are still looking for their children among the debris the u.n. security council has called for an investigation into what's being called the worst attack on yemen's children syrian government airstrikes backed by russia have killed dozens of civilians in the last remaining opposition strongholds in the north twenty eight children are among the dead an adlib province and nearby aleppo

anti-government protesters have been rallying for a second day in rumania after more than four hundred were injured in violence with police on friday thousands have gathered in the capital because to protest against the ruling social democrats and anti fascist rallies taking place in the u.s. city of charlottesville the scene of white supremacist violence that killed an unarmed protest in last year this time peaceful demonstrations are being held amid a tight security presence the city is under a state of emergency ahead of planned rallies on sunday now now vs. paul the winner of the two thousand and one nobel prize for literature has died at his home in london he was eighty five nine paul was born in rural trinidad and wrote dozens of books dealing with themes of migration and exile his books cast an unflinching look at the british colonial empire and a legacy his wife caught have a giant in all that. head to head

continues next. thank you to head to head my guest here in the oxford union is the legendary feminist writer intellectual author germain greer jimi we were talking about some of your more provocative claims in part one just to continue in that vein in twenty fourteen you wrote women persecute other women humiliate them and discriminate against them and that while they may not threaten to rate them quote women have more effective ways of doing other women in but you yourself some of your critics would say a pretty well known for humiliating of the women you said on national television that the van prime minister of australia julia gillard how do you big god and you said the nicest thing about hillary clinton is a rear end quote because it's big and fat and close to the ground. i said that about hillary clinton have no notion of her being hillary clinton's ass it's not

the faintest and i don't regard it as humiliating a big arses a wondrous thing but you're the one who has trouble with the idea you think i must it's like a some sort of blight on the one but julia prime minister of australia said your comments reinforce stereotypes of women and it frustrated that you of all people would catapult into that kind of conduct you think it's right to judge female politicians a lot of euros a part of a much longer conversation about clothes and prime ministers female prime ministers well seem unable to reason is loads of close male prime ministers tend to or wear the same thing and they all look the same in it so they get a pass for me no it's not important talking about it it's totally going to last effectively so you can talk about the prime minister's appearance clothes. and. i am allowed to say that if theresa may would give as much thought to break said as she gave to her necklaces. you know that you have to leave that out ok

then we might get somewhere she must be carrying around this enormous case full of very heavy thing they look like the things the donkey's wear outside temples in india these big wooden things just do without them get on with the job here jump out of bed they believed it to get on with the job with semin a slight yourselves weren't focusing on her clothes appearance i don't think she gives a monkey's you rightly pointed out the ages them and sexism in western societies like the u.k. australia us and of course across the world but you've suggested also that feminism has been quote infected by ages and as well why. it's a very curious thing i spent nine hundred seventy travelling in india looking at how women lived to see whether you could grow in or thirty power and dignity as you got older as you cannot in our society even mrs setter got slung out like an old rerig and left government in tears no man has ever had to do that then she had to

go on the elected trail while tony blair the great lawyer blair is rolling because he's got so many directorships and seats on boards and so on and it's always got me that we mostly identify with young sexually active women and we don't think about what happens to all the women i mean i could i went on good morning t.v. the other day and there were talking about you know miss suddenly in nastiness to women i had to say try playing an old woman everybody treats you like an idiot and some younger feminists while agreeing with you on this point they would say the problem is that you are may be out of touch with some of the struggles of younger feminists today in the feminist movement and they point specifically one of the most controversial issues as you know associated with you is your position on transgender women and trans rights and the idea of excluding these women from the modern feminist struggle you said i said they should be excluded from the modern feminist struggle. and i got used to being you've been accused of being

a bit because you said they're a good quote ghastly parody driven by missile genest it believes. they're not women how is that not exclusionary one of my exploiting them from i don't understand i mean i'm i'm not a jew i'm not an aborigine i'd love to be one or other or both but i'm not. that happens to be just the way people are organized or i don't i don't find your position your excuse i don't believe in a vote how many can say to me you are not a woman you're a cease woman i'm the real thing i'm very happy to believe that men make better women than women do because we know from the what it takes to turn you into a woman we used to call it conditioning nobody ever mentions that anymore where you learn how to dress how to speak how to love pink and all the other things that make you a girly girl we had to learn all of those things and they are psych and they are a masquerade you've been with now we have to accept the masquerade as the thing

that is more real than we are at this point as the author of i can't do anything else but generally not exclusionary put aside the rights and wrongs of the issue to my excluding them from the other women when you say they're not women by definition that is exclusionary going to question that definition as well i don't know what's the group that they're being excluded from but you stand by the position that they're not women yes i do larry plenty want to come in well i think this distinction this idea that it is some offensive to draw it to say you know you were assists woman people used to say that about the word straight people used to say oh i'm not straight people to call me straight i'm just normal those people over there are weird i think what what the trans movement today is concerned about is making it clear that there is a spectrum of gender experience and just because gender is a made up construct and is that artifact of conditioning doesn't mean that it's not also a real thing that people suffer under the affects people's bodies you know most trans

people are not living in this stereotype you call them pantomime danes that doesn't actually reflect reality most trans people do not live like that ok let me put it stereotypical offensive to suggest that they do come in here and there does seem to be this incredibly strong reaction to the definition is this person the woman is not and germane to. it's huge the reader no platform for sticking to one definition which other people who is very interested people when it comes down to are actually obsessed with the definition of woman i think i would also say you know i just i really worry about the fact that those there's no platform in culture and i love this conversation because what you're doing is what you're supposed to be doing which is a gauging you theoretically as feminists and you know i you can see the damage that no platforming type of thing really to the women's liberation movement nine hundred seventy s. shut everything down so you know on the issue itself the question of. exclusion do you think she's guilty of excluding people from family. absolutely when you say that they're they are not of women even though they are trans women and furthermore

if you never read or heard or come across a trans woman say i have the exact same experiences assists woman they're very aware of the fact that they have unique experiences and strands women just as i am aware as a woman of african heritage that there are certain experiences that i have had that none of i do you have had that is what runs women are saying so to to dismiss that and to dismiss that they can be women with a set of you unique experiences is absolutely exclusionary and it's don't you find it somehow dreadful that we are doing this work of exclusion and oppression that we as feminists are fighting at the same time. you know. one of the things that's been happening over the course of my life is that women who had a raw deal when i started out a getting an even worse deal now but nobody talks about it you know we can't run maternity centers where they open and close like lambs where we get sent here and

yawn we can't explain miscarriage so common a catastrophe why don't we understand men a pause why don't we have a little bit of trauma as women is it but nobody says a lot about the problems over here no no what can you do with both the point is i'm being told that i'm being exclusionary because i'm not taking on board caitlin jenner's problems i can't take them on board i'm true concerned about the woman who died in the back of an ambulance when during a crisis of post-partum psychosis because they can survive what a lot of german one of them say ever have to do why not when interviews like me or others come up and say what's your position want to say you know what i want to talk about why you make gratuitous offensive remarks now you can't you know you do i want to come to. you there's stuff you said i can't even say here because. that happens to be a quotation from a book called the whole woman written years ago i have not been going around making

these statements that is a quotation from a whole chapter about your brain i have quoted from you from two thousand and two thousand and fifteen two thousand and eighteen when you regret for the way you've talked about this issue given this is a community which in the words of many human rights groups is facing an epidemic of violence no one so you know in total to your views but the way you've expressed yourself in the any regrets i have to had to listen to so much stuff about an issue that doesn't interest me i've been forced to talk about transgender as now not once not twice but a thousand times and i think that the male to female transgender community is very good at talking about itself very good. reading the headlines appears all over the place and is caressed by all and sundry that's fine go right ahead but don't expect me to join in i'm not someone here that's a really good self description as well but let's go to the audience here who have been waiting patiently to come in raise your hands if you want to come in and asked

a range of questions here in the front row thank you i'm from some us women say we work with women who've experienced domestic and sexual abuse and one of the things i want to speak to you about or ask you about is the lifelong experience of trauma that very many here have gone through what happens is that the blame that their experience from the courts from the police but also from people around and society is obviously catastrophic me too is part of a culture of change and we need that culture of change and i'm asking here as an icon of feminism to stand up and to name such a knee and to challenge that rather than what you're talking about in terms of rape and the courts well. i'm for ever attacking message me and trying to get people to believe or understand how pervasive it is and how unconscious it is now to we're going to learn it from the time they're small. and i think i do

understand about the lifelong state of a basement that can result from extended abuse from childhood on about the traumas you talked about you've been quoted as dismissing some of the trauma that for example rape victims of have experienced absolutely not true the idea of them suffering p.t.s.d. for example oh listen when somebody tells me that you're more likely to suffer p.t.s.d. as a rape victim then you are as a veteran of foreign wars something's gone seriously you say that in your position as a leading psychologist now i say that in my position is the right thing. i mean every rape victim they are trying to lead what have you was a horrible it does not you know you don't minute for all women what i mean there have been studies done just. says p.t.s.d. is associated consistently with sexual violence in the most traumatic event you know more than the w.h.o. . yes i think so and. we will think about it the first thing that happens to you

as a rape victim is you get told that this is ruined your life this you will never get i want to learn how to make sure it's not what happens you know that before you even have a look at well here's a couple here's a here's a study in the u.s. study that in the first two to three hours after an assault before the people even gone to the police ninety six percent of victims experience physical shaking trembling in shock you know that it happened if you were run over by a bike i mean really and truly this is you're saying this is getting silly the i let him being run over by a bike and on the silly one you know turning of the turning into something that happens every day we've already talked about the fact that rape is a universal right because in practically every house and in the land but non-consensual sex is everywhere and then you want to say and it will drive you mad you'll have to go by to not be doing a reprint is going to hand over a face and so it was the idea that the idea that when you you when.