Lionel Shriver on cis gender and trans identity

[busyboysmum]

www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/underground-tales-for-london-lione-shriver-interview-a3788541.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Nor does she feel like “a woman” much of the time. “My sense of self when I’m on my own and not in social situations isn’t gendered. What upsets me about our most recent obsession with transsexuality and having to fit yourself on the gender spectrum, is that it’s not the answer to identity; it’s an impediment. The spectrum is based on stereotypes, and that’s my problem with, say, a young man who decides he feels like he’s ‘really a woman’. What does that mean? I don’t feel like a woman, and I am one.

Well exactly

Well quite. I've always like Shriver

Hurray! A person with a public profile who talks sense on this issue. They're few and far between it seems

Same, she weighed in on cultural appropriation a while back; causing a Guardian storm.

Nicely done

It is always amazing to see someone say the blindingly obvious so clearly, and yet it is such a revelation.

"a deliberate denormalisation of the normal" = the TRA agenda in a nutshell

Good for Lionel. Not that it surprises me - after delivering her lecture on cultural appropriation and writers' freedom of expression wearing a sombrero, I'd have been massively disappointed if she'd gone any other way on this issue.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

She's never been one to avoid controversial topics!
I don't always agree with what she says, but she's very much pro free-speech and comes across as fiercely intelligent.

I think I read a short story by her a little while ago which was told from the pov of a transwoman, so she's visited this topic before.

This is a brilliant essay she wrote a couple of years' ago about gender: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/gender-good-for-nothing

I love Lionel Shriver. Another who doesn't always agree with what she says but she is always willing to debate and discuss issues.

She's a very typical libertarian IMO - when they get it wrong, they get it crashingly, missed-the-point-by-lightyears wrong, but when they get it right, they get it very bloody right.

Whoops, tried searching for it and the story I was thinking of was not written by Shriver at all but by Zadie Smith.

We definitely need to talk about Lionel. I love her for many reasons.

I do wonder how this fits with her changing her name from Margaret, because she felt like a tomboy. Do you think she would now say it shouldn’t have mattered?

This is good, she has a following and is a commercial success in her field (which often seems to help..)

Lionel Shriver has always struck me as a women who has no fucks to give, for which I salute her.

Thank goodness for that
I love Lionel Shriver and didn't want to be let down

I found this article today too, OP. What a breath of fresh air. I'm so happy every time someone demonstrates common sense on this issue now. I was also happy to read the decent response about the GRA that another poster received from a Tory MP & watched the new Ricky Gervais stand up on Netflix (he jokes about Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner & how he (Gervais) now IDs as a chimp called Bobo - he gives zero fucks about being called transphobic or offending anyone). We don't have the right to not be offended! The right to offend is fundamental to free a speech (as Lionel mentions in this article too). 👏

We don't have the right to not be offended!

The 2010 Equality Act (or, rather the explanatory notes that were published alongside it) refers explicitly to "the right not to be offended". I'm an academic, so have - in principle - some additional protection in the workplace in relation to freedom of speech, but when I sought advice about this from my employer, it was pointed out to me that this right to freedom of speech conflicts with the "right to not be offended", and that this conflict could end up being tested via a disciplinary or legal process.

‘The right not to be offended’.

But somebody always takes offence and what if the offence is mutual

I love Lionel Shriver

so do I

Well, quite, AreYouTerfEnough. It's a ludicrous piece of legislation. One doesn't even have to be offended. You can simply claim to be, and how on earth can it be verified that you weren't?

Ha! I knew it. Dh and I are her biggest fans. We have read all her books and always go to her book events when she is in town. Once dh even went and spoke to her - I was too wimpy.

Noone seems to give a fuck about offending women though