A petition started by a student at Cardiff University to have Germaine Greer banned from delivering a lecture there because of her “misogynistic views towards trans women” may seem absurd to some feminists.

Why would the women’s officer of a university, a role that in my experience is usually occupied by the chief feminist on campus, not want Greer, canonical feminist, to come and speak? Regardless of her views on transgender issues, how could Greer be beyond the pale? Is she not feminist enough? The petition is, however, completely in step with the kind of feminism lived by a lot of younger women and offers a good insight into it.

Primary among younger feminists – and I count myself as one – is the desire to be intersectional, as the petition reveals. It matters to them, perhaps even more than it did to their older counterparts, to take account of race, class, disability and myriad sexualities and identities. They have a wariness about speaking on behalf of groups to which they do not, themselves, belong.

This is such a strong tenet of this younger feminism that feminist articles written by younger women and men contain, almost as a rule, a paragraph, or at least a sentence, “disclosing the privilege” of the writer, in which they acknowledge that they are, for example, white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgendered and able-bodied and that while the issue being discussed may be bad for them, it is much worse for poor, BME, gay, trans, disabled women.

This is, in many ways, positive. It shows a desire among the young keepers of the feminist flame to hear the voices of those who are different and, especially, disadvantaged. This is a brand of feminism that would rather rescind an invitation to one of the most significant living feminists than ignore the way she talks about a group that is often persecuted and misunderstood.

And it should be noted that the claims made by Rachael Melhuish, the women’s officer who wrote the petition against Greer, were not unfounded. In an interview with BBC2’s Newsnight after the petition made headlines, Greer did two of the things Melhuish accused her of in the petition. First, she misgendered trans woman Caitlyn Jenner, saying Jenner had undergone gender reassignment surgery because “he/she wanted the limelight that the other, female, members of the [Kardashian] clan were enjoying”. This was despite Greer saying earlier in the interview that she would “with someone who wished to be known as female, use female speech forms as a courtesy”.

She also denied the existence of transphobia, snapping at one point: “It is simply not true that intersexual people suffer in a way that other people don’t suffer.” This is despite statistics that suggest that suicide rates are eight times higher among transgender young people than among all 18- to 24-year-olds, and that crimes against transgender people are on the increase.

Melhuish labels Greer as “transphobic” and I imagine that for her, having Greer come to give a lecture would be akin to having an openly homophobic or racist speaker on campus. For the young feminists it’s not a matter of weighing up the sum of Greer’s work and deciding that on the balance of things she has done more for women than not, but of drawing a line on behalf of transgender friends and saying that despite all Greer has done, as long as she speaks in certain ways about trans issues, she will not be listened to on anything.

But there is a danger to this new brand of feminism as well: in its carefulness to include everyone it may end up excluding anyone who offends or dissents. It’s a style of feminism in which, if you break the rules, or hold an unpopular view, the answer – as was the case with Greer – is to kick you out of the sisterhood.

It’s a style of feminism in which, if you hold an unpopular view, the answer is to kick you out of the sisterhood

This response comes to mainstream media attention when employed against a public figure like Greer, but it happens often in these circles. I once watched gobsmacked as a group email thread among a university feminist group imploded, after one woman shared her idea for an art project encouraging body positivity. The other members of the group began to tear her to shreds, accusing her of being racist and ableist for not having enough black women represented, for not factoring in Muslim women who might not want to bare much skin, and for not featuring any women with disabilities. These are all valid considerations, but at the same time, it’s all too easy to picture the poor woman who proposed the art series staggering away from her computer, throwing her copy of Fat is a Feminist Issue into the bin and vowing off any form of future activism. It is a brave woman who speaks up when the punishment for saying the wrong thing is so severe.

Ironically, the danger of young feminism is that, while attempting to listen to the voices of a broader spectrum of women, the number who are allowed to speak gets smaller and smaller, as people who express differing opinions or inadvertently use the wrong language get thrown off the feminist boat. If this young feminist movement is to flourish and change the world – on behalf of trans women as well as cisgendered ones – it needs to find a way to engage those with whom it disagrees, not just petition them to be silent.