Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie interview with Zoe Williams

Just had a look at ZW twitter - she has posted a link to this article saying:
I usually find the free speech debate exhausting but I had a fine old time fighting [!!!!] with CNA

Out of her 70k followers she has 69 likes and 71 comments - overwhelmingly on CNA side

Is that what they call being ratio'ed?

I feel we all should.

GOD ZW is such a moron!

"I’m not having that. “You couldn’t objectively say, ‘All women are threatened by trans women.’ I’m also a woman. That doesn’t reflect my experience.”

She's NOT saying that ffs. She's saying that an object fact is that a transwoman is not a biological woman! What a crap writer she is 🙈

ZW was outclassed at every level. The entire article was an own goal; showing how clever, articulate and reasoned CNA's points were and how crushingly self-satisfied ZW is.

This is very British and cliched of me, but I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to the Guardian.

@DameHelena You rock!

Which is of course exactly what CNA pointed out to her She cannot seem to follow an argument, much less construct one with any substance. Hearing 'Not if you consider women’s views to be valid… Are there no such things as objective truth and facts?' and understanding it to mean ‘All women are threatened by trans women.’ is the height/depths of a failure of comprehension and of basic reasoning.
This is very British and cliched of me, but I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to the Guardian.

Someone could or should point Zoe to the thread on Twitter about the trans police officers. I don't suppose it would do any good, though. She seems resistant to both logic and evidence.

Brilliantly put.

It's the disingenuousness that I can't stand. In the wake of a particularly terrible crime, so many female journalists will write pieces about women's safety and male violence but then, when it's culturally expedient, will openly disparage and ridicule any woman who fears male violence. It's the way they claim fear of men is so silly and unreasonable and not for smart, modern women like them.

The bit about not caring what toilet your brother would want to use if he came out as trans was particularly asinine. Newsflash, Zoe: all the men who have ever been violent towards women have relatives.

"We could have argued all day, but she had a plane to catch"

Well, that's what she told you, Zoe.

Amen to that!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most intelligent women I have ever read or heard speak. Long before the trans debate she was offering carefully considered rather than popular views. And her fiction is out of this world. She is a classic writer. Brilliant, thoughtful, honest.

Thank goodness for that! I don't know how I got confused by the segues in the ZW piece but I did.

"We could have argued all day, but she had a plane to catch"

LMAO Zoe.
I mean, you could try, in the name of free speech of course, but you really are out of your league here. Be kind and lie isn't the greatest argument.....

That bit is an excerpt from Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Reith lecture.

Towards the end of this bizarre auto-hagiography, Zoe Williams comes perilously close to comparing herself as a writer to Gunter Grass.

Almost like projection...

(See ZW; "I'm not having that")

ZW is not worthy! Stand out for me is that Sweden give out We should all be feminists to all their children!

Zoe Williams has clearly not done her Gender Awareness Training - I sat through it at work and heard that we cannot tell someone's gender by looking at them, that some trans people do not change how they look or dress and this should not be a requirement, "for example some women have beards and you must not question someone's stated gender or they will feel unsafe".

@Ginmonkeyagain and @BernardBlacksMolluscs Those are insightful ways to think about "living as a woman", thank you both.

Has she never heard of Danielle Muscato or Alex Drummond?

Apparently not. And I agree with pp, Zoe Williams picked that fight herself.

'But in combat, as she is in her prose, she’s exhilarating and I’m glad we had the conversation.'

How very gracious of you, Zoe.

Also - 'combat'?! You had a discussion, mate. 'Disagreement' is not going to cause you actual bodily harm.

The first Zoe piece I read was about being pregnant. Nowt wrong with that , it's an important subject. The last article I saw was about how awkward it is having a younger , pretty husband on your arm.

In between there were some OK writings. But yeah , she's no Suzanne Moore.

And yes.. exactly who was 'trenchant in her quest to smash every point and win every argument'... she was determined not to be drawn and not to concede.. but it was ZW who seemed to want to smash and win and talked about a fight...

She said in the Times Article "“I don’t want to talk about this and I’ll tell you why: it’s a subject which I have been a part of for quite a while in which it is easy for people to twist into what they want it to mean. I’m writing about it and I want to wait until I’m done writing about it so that I’m using my own words, with thought.”...

yet ZW insists, several times.... give me an example.. 'CNA says she will not... the whole point of this discourse is that cancel culture is damaging yet ZW spends the entire interview looking for an offensive opinion to hang on CNA.

'So the next day I ask her straight out: what was this true thing that the accosting American hadn’t wanted her to say? “Something,” she says. “I will leave it there.” I suspect it was something to do with trans issues- - Zoe making assumptions..

ZW: 'This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm.' CNA has been clear - she does not want this one topic to be the centre piece of her discussion about her fears for free speech.

The dialogue about 'living as a woman' descends into absurdity.. 'you can't say all women and threatened by trans women' - it is different from saying 'women's rights are threatened by trans rights'.

The article is peppered with: 'I'm not having that'.. 'she probably thinks', 'the paradox of her lecture', 'is that real though' , 'The word was that it would be a cat-among-the-pigeons moment' 'the subtext, I think, is to set a grenade off under some issue of the day.' 'It’s all a question of perspective, I guess.', 'I think the opposite is true'..

My understanding is that CNA is deliberately trying to take a wider perspective and is refusing to be drawn into limiting the discussion to one issue...

I LOVE her writing and I am so grateful that she has remained strong against the tsunami of pressure to conform to the trans narrative as so many others have done.