Sunday Times article by Jan Morris’s daughter

J M May have enjoyed controlling her and the headmistresses too.

Oh goodness. I had a flashing thought when I read the bitabout moving schools, that it couldn't have been a control tactic. That would be too horrific. But it's been on my mind ever since and bloody hell that fucking monster.

I agree with scrollingLeaves it wasn't only controlling Suki and disrupting her life, her potential, punishing her for being what he wasn't. Even one of those aspects makes it unforgivable. But it didn't stop there. There was that little cherry on the top of his control cake of the headmistresses too. A woman who is in a place of authority, so got to make sure to stick the middle finger up her.

Good on the headmistress who wrote that she hoped Suki could have less disruption in her education going forward.

I have a narcissistic mother (diagnosable, not "simply" that I don't like her). She is very skilful with words and people think what she says is nice, but when you know there aren't mistakes, you know it's a takedown. It's utterly soul destroying because you're then gaslit by anybody who hears her or sees her words who thinks she's wonderful and you're just not being nice. JM makes my mother look like an archangel though. That headmistress saw straight through JM and her writing, not only speaking, which can't be held as proof, but putting it in writing, on the record. That was a great small action in there. Suki knew, or does now, that somebody else knew. Somebody else saw.

I think it's safe to say that Suki now has a whole band of women, at least, behind her who see.

I also would buy a book if she writes one. It doesn't have to be about this. I enjoyed her writing style, even though I definitely didn't enjoy what she was converting with it.

This was from a scathing review of Morris' book earlier in the year:

Her second son, Henry, chose to go and live abroad. Asked about Morris after her death, he said: “We were introduced, but we never actually got to know each other."

This is a brilliant and brave article. Thank you for sharing OP.

The following sentences jumped out at me, they often seem to apply to late transitioning MTFs who have fathered children:

She couldn’t cook, I never saw her clean anything and she certainly didn’t want to stay at home and be with her family.

I believe she wanted to be someone totally different from anyone else, a woman who was the centre of attention because of her difference.

Her ego was massive, with people constantly rubbing it. She was a woman who enjoyed being in a man’s world because she stood out.

So much hurt. Suki writes beautifully and exposes the lies that are told and the destruction that this creates and then leaves.

Badging traumatised people as women shouldn’t happen.

Such a brave woman to write that. Beautifully written - my heart breaks for her.

I've always felt uncomfortable with the way Morris is venerated. I remember Michael Palin gushing on the radio once. To the end Jan Morris's wife and children were mere satellites circling around his monstrous ego which must have been perfectly apparent to anyone who knew the family. But they were just conveniently overlooked.

No one asked.

I feel so bad for Suki. Normally that level of wickedness and envy in a parent is the stuff of fairytales. I feel angry he was able to live out his days without being held to account for it.

Thank you for share token

Children know their own parents without any of the magic social gloss that the rest of the world sees.

Defiantly selfish and cruel to his own child.

Is that typical of the ilk?

Yes. See childrenoftransitioners.org/

It’s like he blamed Suki for doing something he never could by being born female and being a girl, and then spent all of time and a lot of his effort in punishing her every chance he got.

I guess she was a constant reminder that she excelled at something he could only ape.

I saw her on twitter when the book of Morris's life came out earlier in the year.

She wanted to tell her own story, and I am so glad she has because everything that has been put out before is so glossy and shiny, with fine words, but it misses out what that actual life was.

What an awful man.

Everything in that article is shocking, but the bit where he asked her to proofread his will in his presence and she realised she wasn't in it is absolutely sickening.

Absolutely!
Poor Suki - and her poor mother, too.

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision that was Jane Fae. The main transition announcement just before the daughter's A-levels, which she then didn't do well in. (The daughter herself says she is happier with the different path she then went down, tbf). There couldn't be a clearer example of someone regarding the women of their family as shadowy bit-players in the fascinating feminine drama of their own life.

The boys presumably did board at their 'finest schools in England', but if she had to change school because of moving that would have been an obvious reason why, so she would not have written I was sent to six schools, constantly moving from one to another, not ever being told why. I just accepted it; it was what Jan had said I had to do.

My assumption, as wrong as it may be, was that the boys went to boarding school and she went wherever as they moved around.

There's one who not only made the announcement of an intention to live as a woman during a teenage daughter's school exams, but did it the night before one paper. (I can't remember whether GCSEs or A-levels.)

Actually, I think that more than one individual has disrupted a teenage daughter's exam revision with such an announcement. There is a second I've read of.

It is good that Morris finally gets exposed. A cold and calculating person who enjoyed inflicting cruelty on others, and yet so many fawned over him.

NitroNine · Today 22:39
I’d love to know what caused JM to move Suki repeatedly from school to school. It was a deliberate act of cruelty - purely an isolation technique; but perhaps also an attempt to thwart her educational attainments & prevent her from being able to take any of the limelight? No ro in that family for another successful &/or famous woman, clearly.

J M May have enjoyed controlling her and the headmistresses too.

I too found this one of the most concerning aspects of JM’s mistreatment of Suki.

Funny that. I thought exactly the same.

Suki should write a whole book. I’d buy it.

Defiantly selfish and cruel to his own child.

Is that typical of the ilk?

I’d love to know what caused JM to move Suki repeatedly from school to school. It was a deliberate act of cruelty - purely an isolation technique; but perhaps also an attempt to thwart her educational attainments & prevent her from being able to take any of the limelight? No room in that family for another successful &/or famous woman, clearly.

Great way of putting it. Poor kid.

As does the fact she still thinks she's not good enough. Which from that writing quite obviously isn't the case.