Has anyone read Jan Morris’s books? (mentioned in the Madness of Crowds)

[ARoombaOfOnesOwn]

I posted this in Feminist activism by mistake so I’ve reposted here.

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 have one title somewhere here. It’s a long time since I read it.

It must be 50 plus year since Morris transitioned (which she did fully and surgically, I believe). The 1960s and 70s must have been a very hard time to establish a strong, independent identity as a woman, even when you were starting out as a natal girl. There was an incredible assumption of domesticity and male ownership still. So I do have some sympathy for Morris to be honest.

Jan Morris is a really good writer and speaker

Ugh. I was in a workshop with an AGP male just a few days ago - the kind of workshop where everyone is supposed to feel safe to be vulnerable. But the women's thoughts were being kind of appropriated and recycled with added dramatic pauses. That quote from Morris makes me feel gross in exactly the same way the recent AGP's musings did... like they are at the same time pronouncing confidently on what it means to be a woman while simultaneously trying on new ideas in their search for a Grand Theory of Womanhood. It's so dismissive and skin-crawly. FUCK OFF.

Weird, because I knew nothing of Jan Morris previously, but I knew the name as a trans author and I'd assumed HSTS because they'd been around for a while. As soon as I saw that quote my hackles went up and I knew that assumption had been wrong, as even one line of the bio confirms.

Jan Morris has always appeared to me to be someone performing femininity. From an article in the Independent in 1996:

"...I am a flibbertigibbet prose-writer..".

Would a 70-year-old woman have referred to herself as a 'flibbertigibbet'? Would any woman?

I have a faint memory from back in the 70s or 80s, of reading, I think an interview with Jan Morris in which JM made comments like those Douglas Murray quotes. Also about the thrill of getting a bit of minor sexual harassment from a taxi driver, which made JM feel more feminine.

It made me want to pull my own head off. Or yell "You haven't experienced life as a man and as a woman! Your ideas are only valid for yourself, not for women!"

It really pissed me off, because women were working so hard to demolish sexual stereotypes and to achieve the rights that we did in the end mostly achieve. But our victory wasn't a foregone conclusion. We made gains and losses. And sometimes it felt as if every bit of old sexist rubbish you binned came lurching out again like the undead.

So I really really did not appreciate JM's contribution.

Kantastic can I ask what is HSTS?

HSTS = homosexual transsexual

This article was interesting
www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/jan-morris-thinking-again-interview-youre-talking-to-someone-at-the-very-end-of-things

"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.”

I always find this kind of sweeping generalisation bizarre because it is so patently untrue. We have female politcians like Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen. Female CEOs, a female head of thec stock exchange, a female Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, female Directors of NHS Trusts, Local Authorities and on and on.

Yet still they cling to the idea that womens interests are all small and domestic. I mean where have they been for the last 60 years? It just reinforces for me the sexist stereotypes that are at the heart of this ideology.

Yes, brilliant writer.

I suspect the change in Morris' focus had a lot more to do with being married with 4 kids and no longer climbing Everest
than anything to do with the sex change

I've read Morris's autobiography, which was OK, and quite interesting if you want a more eloquently-expressed view of what it feels like to believe you're the opposite sex than you usually get from the foaming TRA mob.

I also tried reading Morris's travel book on Venice, and found it very overwritten. I gave up a few pages in.