Sunday Times article by Jan Morris’s daughter

"What did she want to be? I believe she wanted to be someone totally different from anyone else, a woman who was the centre of attention because of her difference. She was no ordinary woman, as she believed the rest of us were. She was always talked about, always put on some pedestal. 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." (my underlining)

ouch!

I get the feeling there is more to come from Suki. What a horrible man and so emotionally abusive.

What a great article

The way Suki describes her childhood makes me so angry on her behalf

Excellent article. Confirms Jan Morris was exactly like I thought Jan Morris would be.

Thanks for the share. The bit that leapt out at me was this:

"The honest fact is that she didn’t want to be a woman, at least not the way she saw women. And still I couldn’t talk to her about it all; I just got shut down."

That Ephron quote is AMAZING.

I think it's fair to say after reading that article that her father was a twat.

There is an absolutely coruscating review of Conundrum by Nora Ephron. I can't find it online but I do commend it to you.

Here's a blog including a quote from it (and several others): zagria.blogspot.com/2013/11/jan-morris-1926-part-3-travel-writer.html#.Y5T5x33P02w

And, if you CBA to click on it, here's the Ephron quote (which reminds me somehow of Dylan Mulvaney....):

"I always wanted to be a girl, too. I, too, felt that I was born into the wrong body, a body that refused, in spite of every imprecation and exercise I could manage, to become anything but the boyish, lean thing it was... I wanted more than anything to be something I will never be – Feminine and feminine in the worst way. Submissive. Dependent. Soft-spoken. Coquettish. I was no good at all at any of it, no good at being a girl; on the other hand I am not half bad at being a woman. In contrast Jan Morris is perfectly awful at being a woman; what she has become instead is precisely what James Morris wanted to become all those years ago. A girl. And worse, a forty-seven-year-old girl. And worst of all, a forty-seven-year-old Cosmopolitan girl."

I think there is in some of the things I've read from some trans women a thread of, not hatred of female people exactly, but dismissal, a sense that a male person makes a better fist of being a woman than a female, that we have the privilege of being born women but don't deserve it, while they do it right.

It's misogyny of course, just the age old assumption by male people that we are lesser, the unconscious and self-perpetuating need to devalue anything a female person achieves to reinforce the male self image as the default achiever.

A very powerful piece.

Suki - I hope you get to read this thread, if you don't know this place already - you have a wonderful way of writing. Not fantastical. Tender and real.

I am sorry you had to live a life of putting up with this. Sorry for your mother too. I'm glad you have each other.

Thank you for writing this piece about such sustained and deeply personal pain. It is very important that it's heard.

If this is how Jan Morris really saw womanhood, then the hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. Jan’s stance made no logical sense, but it didn’t really need to, as the rest of the family didn’t get a say. Suki and Elisabeth deserved much better.

Currently the most Recommended comment under the article mentions the transwidows threads on Mumsnet.

@DolphinWars I think previous the trans movement have held Morris up as an example of brave and stunning. It's just fascinating that time and again those put forward as apparently inspirational aren't quite what they seem.

I wonder if there is a poster child for the movement.

Reading about/seeing interviews/hearing them talk it seems that narcissism and cruelty towards women is the norm. Happy to be corrected.

Morris was a fucking monster.

The poor wife. Those poor children - especially "replacement child" Suki.

Incredible article.

That's a very powerful testimony. Or should I say stunning and brave?

I've heard Jan Morris being lauded in the past and yet I am not surprised to find she was self-absorbed and cruel. Not the poster child for the trans movement after all.

Also very neglectful of his wife by all accounts, just an odious person.

That's very sad @ItsAllGoingToBeFine . I've actually got Allegorizings but haven't read it. Not inclined to now.

I only ever knew Jan as a woman and loved her travel writing. Another disappointing man , ultimately

It is such a painful read.

As the proponents would say: What's it to you? what's the harm? Stop pretending to care for the children.

Oh well.

Absolutely this.

What a sad, confused childhood Suki had. Who would talk about one child being a substitute for another who had died?! I wouldn’t talk that way about pets, FFS, never mind humans, never mind my own flesh and blood. Absolute main character energy from Morris there, with everyone else around, particularly women there to play secondary, subservient roles.

Horrible.

I am glad she has got the chance to have her say, I am always interested in hearing the stories of wives, siblings and children of transitioners, because my goodness isn’t there a pattern there?