Feminist icon and author Germaine Greer has attacked the singer Elton John for registering his gay partner as the ‘mother’ of the couple’s children.
During an address at the annual Hay literary festival in England, Greer said the move to list David Furnish as a ‘mother’ served to illustrate how motherhood has been damaged and rendered invalid by redefined familial units.
“Sir Elton John and his ‘wife’ David Furnish have entered on the birth certificate of their two sons that David Furnish is the mother. I’m sorry. That will give you an idea of how the concept of motherhood has emptied out. It’s gone. It’s been deconstructed.”
In a wide-ranging address, Greer did not confine her criticism to Elton John’s realtionship, moving in turn to the process, IVF, by which the John had two sons.
Pointing to a further diminution of motherhood, Greer said: “We now have a ‘genetic mother’, who supplies eggs. It depends entirely on where she is if she is going to be allowed to know what happens to the eggs. And women tend to care.
“In some places you are allowed to know what happens to them, in other places you are not. What you get is a reduced bill for IVF because a child is being born by the people involved using your eggs.
“I’m sorry. Did we talk about this? Did we sit down and talk about what eggs mean to women?”
In her address, Greer went on to challenge the idea that England’s 1967 Abortion Act had come about as a result of feminist activism, suggetsing instead that it was as a result of pressure from the fertility industry.