Germaine Greer's extraordinary swipe at 'repellent' Serena Williams

Germaine Greer has offered little support to Serena Williams, slamming the tennis star over an act she found ‘really repellent’.

The Australian feminist discussed Serena’s US Open meltdown on Q&A on Monday night, and didn’t hold back.

Greer reckons Serena actually threw the match, slamming the way she acted towards Naomi Osaka after match point.

“The game was gone already because she dropped the first set and she was looking for a way out,” Greer said.

“I mean, she is surrounded by people who expected her to win.

“I found the way she behaved really repellent, especially when she put her arm around the poor young woman who actually won the bloody thing to say, ‘I am the grand dame and you have done quite well, deary’.

“When what she had really done is thrown the match.”

Greer also added a new dimension to the Herald Sun cartoon controversy, believing Mark Knight’s depiction of Serena was actually sexist as well as racist.

“We are so caught up in the fact that it is racist in that it gives you a version of a cliche account,” she said.

“It was simply a coarse account of what a woman of Afro-American heritage might look like. As far as I am concerned, it missed the point.”

Q&A host Tony Jones was left confused as to how the cartoon was sexist.

“Her behaviour was unbecoming a woman,” Greer said.

“It made her into a grotesque female figure and we are used to grotesque female figures.”

‘Herald Sun cartoon was publishable’

Also on the show, two other panellists defended the Herald Sun’s decision to publish the cartoon.

“I would have published it,” said Andrew Neil, a UK politics TV show host.

“It is a caricature. Caricatures exaggerate features. It is a caricature of a particular individual. It is not generic like the Jim Crow cartoons.

“This is a particular individual and it captures the appalling strop that she had and her behaviour which on the court was disgraceful.

“I don’t see what is wrong with that and it also got the point across that it overshadowed the victory of the woman who actually had won the Grand Slam.”