Has anyone read Jan Morris’s books? (Mentioned in The Madness of Crowds)

[ARoombaOfOnesOwn]

I’m reading The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray. In the trans chapter he talks about Jan Morris. I know transsexuals like Jan are a world away from the TRAs are today, but below imo is still just patronising stereotypes about women -

“For instance, Morris describes the fundamentally different viewpoints and attitudes between the sexes. So, as a man, James was far more interested in the ‘great affairs’ of his time, whereas as a woman Jan acquired a new concern ‘for small’ affairs. After becoming a woman Jan writes, ‘my scale of vision seemed to contract, and I looked less for the grand sweep than for the telling detail. The emphasis changed in my writing, from places to people.”

Douglas does say that much of what Morris writes about would not “satisfy a modern feminist”. I feel I should read Morris’s books on the subject but it might just annoy me too much. Has anyone read them?

I haven't read them but it may be that Jan envisaged becoming a woman as a citizen of a microclimate. I suspect that was the novelty of the change. It does not seem anywhere near as exciting to dwell on 'small affairs (rather that it's far closer to condescension) when one has been shoehorned into the role from birth. I will read the Madness of Crowds and mull it over.

I've read several of Jan Morris's books, including Conundrum which is about her transition (or perhaps, better to say an autobiography which traces her experiences of sex/gender). Interestingly when it was published in the 1970s there were a few reviewers who criticised it for presenting 'being a woman' as a set of stereotypes - much as people on FWR still protest today!

Regarding her comment about changing writing styles, she's since said she doesn't agree with her former self on that comment. I think before she started taking hormones doctors warned her she might lose her abilities as a writer (!) so I think she may have been primed to analyse any changes if that makes sense?

www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597281783/british-travel-writer-jan-morris-weighs-in-on-the-advantages-of-androgyny?t=1595741271147

I wasn't GC when I first read Conundrum, so I should read it again now. I suspect I would still enjoy it and have sympathy with Morris. I've also read quite a few of her recent interviews and I think she still sees her sex change as something deeply personal or even spiritual, and she stays well out of commenting on current day identity politics. She's also got a good sense of humour and has expressed amusement/bemusement at how much attention her sex change attracted; she once joked about how when she died there'd be articles headed "sex-change author dies".

I also think it's important to read Morris's account in light of the era in which it all occurred. Just as her trilogy on the British Empire is a product of the time she grew up in, so too is her account of changing 'sex'.

Yes, I read Conundrum a few times back in the late 70s or early 80s, seeking some insight or validation of my own gender dysphoria.

At the time, in my late teens, I found the book a little underwhelming and to be honest, was also balancing and absorbing critical viewpoints from a number of sources, including Janice Raymond's The Transexual Empire, as well as other trans autobiographies and articles (e.g. Caroline Cossey, Renee Richards etc) and a handful of social science/observational works, as well as picking up snippets of news about Sandy Stone, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, but

But this is how it worked back then: you're young, you're not really sure what you're dealing with except grappling with this enormously subjective but ultimately unknowable impulse to actualise, at considerable risk to your personal privacy and safety. You need to keep things secret from your family etc... but there was no internet. You had to rely on libraries, books, magazines, tiny little local support groups, ordering books from overseas etc.

I'm in my mid-50s now, many years since I moved to the UK and underwent full reassignment, a process that wasn't fully supported or understood in other countries that I've lived in when younger... and I must admit – perhaps like Jan Morris – being a little discouraged by the retro nature and entrenched views of some of the discussions I've recently seen across published and social media. I've also fought my own considerable wars and a large part of me is done with reductionist, essentialist or unresolvable circular argumentation and persuasion with unreliable allies wherever they're found.

Coming back to Janice Raymond's critique of Jan Morris's book (or selected passages), I found some of her views highly resonant, but in other places, overstated, polemical and inaccurate... as well as reductionist, but it also challenged my thoughts in ways that have stayed with me for many years.

However – and I don't want to derail this thread too much – I take a slightly sceptical view towards some proposed changes to the GRA, but will also admit that I'm not following the policy and legislative details that closely. Having worked with physically-challenged children and teenagers, as well as elderly people in a professional capacity, I'm sympathetic towards opposing arguments, particularly around the safeguarding of vulnerable people of all ages...

Jan Morris no longer thinks they are a woman. They think they are some sort of spiritual middle creation.

I also remember reading about how they didn’t come down to the dinner table on Christmas Day with his wife and all the children waiting. Writing you see. Terribly important.

I have some thoughts about JM.