The last time I took to the pages to Varsity to write about Germaine Greer, it was because, on the grounds of our Union, she had proclaimed that since objectivity and accuracy were inherently male qualities, it was wrong to expect women to perform to the same standard (an opinion she would later amplify in print by adding that “big ideas” were not meant for the fairer sex).  Now Ms. Greer is back to inform us that the British Army should not be deployed to Libya because there was “no guarantee” that they would not become another rape squad on the prowl.

I have no idea whether Greer has ever met any British soldiers, or whether, as is usually the case, she cannot move a millimeter beyond the confines of her narrow skull, but this charge is simply insane.  As a member of the Officer Training Corps, I have had the good fortune to meet soldiers from many branches, including the hyper-testosterone Royal Marine Commandos, and the idea of any of them going feral in such as way is simply nuts.  Not to mention the fact, that were any single individual to go mad in such a way, he would be prosecuted by the full force of the entire armed forces.

I think that people generally, and our ossified ruling class in particular, are very ignorant of the astonishing achievement that the British Armed Forces represent. We have managed to create a warrior-caste that does not turn predatory on its own population, but faithfully protects it.

Yet let us be serious: Greer, the vaunted feminist warhorse, does not give a crumb for rape victims, nor a thought to the crime’s occurrence.  As a follow up act, she pooh-poohed the idea that Gaddafi’s troops had been ordered to rape and even provided with Viagra for the purpose.  Anyone who knows anything about the rape squads operating up and down the African continent is unsurprised by this.

Nor was this all; digging deeper and passing up the shovel, she dismissed as fiction the horrors inflicted by the Pakistani military during the genocide that predated Bangladesh’s independence.  Of course, this is the same woman who claimed that there was nothing to choose between Darfur and Melbourne in terms of women’s rights.

Described as “one of the most significant of feminist voices of the latter 20th century”, Greer is an embodiment of the decadence in first world feminism.  There is an comfortable coincidence between those who defend the practice of Female genital mutilation and the supposed feminists in our own society who always seem to be doing something else when I have tried to interest them in standing up against real and provable oppression of women.  I might also mention those pampered types at our own Union, who, as members of the most privileged fraction of a privileged fraction, decided to endorse the proposition that the Islamic veil was a symbol of empowerment while neatly ignoring their innumerable sisters who are beaten and raped and murdered every single day.

A single British soldier fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan or Al Qaeda does more for women’s rights than Greer has done in her entire life. That is worth bearing in mind, as is the fact that there is a small band of radicals who genuinely are fighting for the emancipation of women – women such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to name only some of the most prominent – who deserve our maximum support and solidarity, and yet do not receive anywhere near the fawning treatment that Greer does.  Whatever this says about human nature, it is nothing good.

I should add in closing that I would like nothing more to be proved wrong about this.  I would be delighted to see a movement that does reach out to its poor and voiceless sisters, that does practice internationalism, and that does stand by some of the bravest radicals in the world today.  That would be a step towards reclaiming the honor of what was once a great movement.