Statement from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the subject of Profile on Radio 4 this weekend following her essay. The programme is only 15 minutes long, so it is a very brief but fair (IMHO) outline of her life, career, and the recent "social media firestorm," as they put it. The programme is online at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xdgg and will be repeated on air at 5:40 on Sunday.

Here's a piece from a female journalist (Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times) describing what it's like to be targeted on social media:

archive.fo/v9vY1

As a female journalist I am sadly used to online abuse, from jihadists who hate western women, or Pakistani hardliners because of my association with the activist Malala Yousafzai, whose autobiography I worked on. This was different. People apparently thought it was a perfectly reasonable response to abuse me, my husband and son. The jihadists were polite in comparison.

“Be strong,” said one woman in Afghanistan (yes, it had even reached there). “Don’t abandon us and cave in to a mob.”

TanteRose

Kenan Maliks very good article on this in today's Guardian/ Observer is worth a read.

Wow. Wow wow wow. So powerful.

A spoken version would be epic. I read it out to my DP (as I read JKR's essay before it).

I didn't do either justice, but this one was great to perform aloud...

What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.

Wow. Wow wow wow. So powerful.

It's not really a "conspiracy" unless it's hidden though. This stuff is in the published literature...

I belive the reason TRA's haven't been advocating for things that society could really get behind is because much of this is political ideology and the trans debate has offered a perfect platform of how to move a political ideology into society by stealth with much wider implications for the take over of society by CRT and Queer theorists.

My apologies but on this, I am a conspiracy theorist because there is no other way to understand what is happening

I think the xtreme demands of the TRA movement, combined to their intentional blindness to the many safeguarding issues their demands and their very broadly defined community give rise to. This has the potential to really harm the trans community.

I hadn't really thought about the more passive harms. Instead of trying to encroach on and police women, what could TRAs be advocating for? Third spaces for a start, better health care tailored to the specific needs of their community, accurate data, again so they can advocate for the need for increasing services. Its very like the what could Stonewall have done for the gay community if it hadn't become a trans rights organisation.

Part of the problem getting our voices heard has been that it's required people to go against "people like us". I don't think it's a terrible indictment that people find it hard to go against their tribe - if all the people you normally respect are on one side and you find yourself on the other it's normal (desirable?) to wonder if it's you that' wrong.

Chimamanda is so obviously a person on the side of the angels that it's literally impossibel to imagine her as an evil transphobic witch. Hence the new confidence in those now speaking out.

Just saw this interview with her on Channel 4. Sorry if it has already been posted and I missed it. https://www.channel4.com/news/stand-up-against-social-media-abuse-says-author-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie?fbclid=IwAR0503zF9Go6L2AARDspmkq6rrcw40nN6TZ-ZBR1gqi47ZfTI2biOoKUg

Agree that Malik piece is pushing into the new ground that’s opening up now, where people can start discussing this rationally and look at what’s really going on.

It’s not just that the extreme transactivists who’ve held sway have prioritised language-policing and “identity” protecting above actual transphobia - it’s also that they’ve aimed most of their bullying and accusations at women for ideologically condemned wrongthink, instead of at those who are actually transphobic, mock trans people on SM or actually pose a physical threat - usually men statistically. And even when men do the wrongthink, they are less targeted.

I appreciate how Malik exposes the hypocrisy and illogicality, but we also need the misogyny to be examined in the same way.

I think there are parallels to be drawn with the way rapes are investigated and prosecuted with this. In both contexts the woman is held to an expectation of purity that the other side is not.

Trans activists often argue that too much of the public debate focuses on controversies over feminists such as Adichie or de Wahls challenging trans views on identity, rather than on the harm and discrimination that trans people face. There is truth to that, but that is the almost inevitable consequence of placing greater store on the policing of what is acceptable to say about identity than on challenging material harm.

It is good by Malik but it's annoying how one side (feminist women) is expected to be personally excoriated, their entire private lives delved into and picked apart and twisted by extremist activists on twitter, and have someone tell their followers to attack her violently. And then that women gets a telling off for publishing (without naming) an email from the person who has coordinated the attack - which she partly did to show the hypocrisy and performative bullshit that it is - because it's "unkind".

The standards that feminists are held to in this debate, relative to the other side of violent extremists, is fucking outrageous.

I'm now going to read everything she's written!

She was interviewed by Mary Beard on BBC Four the other day and I only caught some of it. Was this touched on does anyone know?

Very good from Kenan Malik. Refreshing to see the word transphobia in inverted commas for a change rather than a statement of fact, a la Vox, Pink News et al.

Wonderful writing.

[quote midgemagneto]I just read this

Yes it's the guardian , put that to one side

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-captures-hypocrisies-too-many-social-justice-zealots[/quote]
Just read it and then had to read it again to make sure something in The Guardian was this sensible

Just bought "Notes on Grief". I still have Americanah and That Thing Around Your Neck on my pile of books to read. Need to spend less time on Mumsnet and more time reading this summer!

[quote Ereshkigalangcleg]You might remember the author from this

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n47p[/quote]
Ah yes, thought the name rang a bell...

Isn’t it from the observer who have a different editorial stance on the whole issue?

I just read this

Yes it's the guardian , put that to one side

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-captures-hypocrisies-too-many-social-justice-zealots