Jan Morris has died

[Needmoresleep]

A Mail obit, because I don’t have a Times subscription and can’t face reading the Guardian one. (It may be OK, it might not.)

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8972175/RICHARD-KAY-Jan-Morris-really-boldest-adventurer.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8972175/RICHARD-KAY-Jan-Morris-really-boldest-adventurer.html

I remember reading Conundrum when I was a teenager, along with several of the travel books. The book offered a real window into the pressure on someone with gender dysphoria and it would be hard not to feel sympathy. I wonder what she thought of the current mess.

I first got online (BBS) in 1992.

Different opinion on the use of "widespread". I worked in business IT and using the internet was only really widespread towards the late 90s.

The Independent article is 4 years old and isn't a parody but if it and a tweet which clearly is a parody is the evidence of the supposed anger by the trans community over Harry Styles wearing a dress then that is scraping the barrel.

Man or woman I think Jan Morris had an exceptional career as a journalist and writer

... which would never have started if Jan Morris had been born a woman. JM would never have been anywhere near Everest. JM would have been very much less safe actually doing all that travelling as a young woman. Got famous as a man with all the advantages that brought, then decided he was a woman. If he’s buried rather than cremated, then in years to come his skeleton and any remaining DNA will clearly show he was a man.
But DNA is so reductive I hear the TRAs cry ...

which would never have started if Jan Morris had been born a woman.

Absolutely. How many women were in that expedition to Base Camp, Everest?

Different opinion on the use of "widespread". I worked in business IT and using the internet was only really widespread towards the late 90s.

Yes - my 'this is true' was an answer to a question in my head, rather than the one I then answered.

By the late 90s, when I was at Uni, my University stood out against others I saw in that it had email terminals (text based Pine) in the foyers of the colleges/sports hall, not just in computer labs.

Although Journalism was surely an early adopter.

@Barracker

I'm wondering if the Mumsnet censorship rules on not hurting men's feelings by referring to them as men or he, still apply posthumously?

Does anyone know?

And one day later I still find it PREPOSTEROUS. There is nothing nothing in what I've read about Morris's life that they took an IOTA of interest in women's lives as they are actually constituted. The material reality of women's lives. And the xmas lunch story bears out my thoughts.

In answer to the question about Jan Morris's use of the internet, here's an excerpt from her diary, originally published in March this year:

www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/pygmy-goats-brexit-mrs-browns-boys-read-extract-jan-morriss/

"Never have I felt its disadvantages more than I do this morning, when my computer system has not only gone wrong, but has brought home to me, over my breakfast, the absolute gulf that exists between me and the generations that have come after. For half the time we do not even speak the same language. Who is the Server, who declines to serve me on my screen this morning? What is the Fibre I must apparently upgrade to?"

Also, amusingly, she says this about Mrs Brown's Boys:

"The Irish Mrs Brown’s Boys is a domestic comedy which indulges itself, non-stop, in bad language, sexual innuendo in several shades of subtlety and the crudest kind of humour, the whole presided over by an overwhelmingly comical male interpreter of Mrs Brown herself, knickers and all. It is so frank as to be innocent, and the whole is played with such gusto and self-amusement that it never fails to cheer me up."

Make of that what you will.

I'm wondering if the Mumsnet censorship rules on not hurting men's feelings by referring to them as men or he, still apply posthumously?

I don't know about MN rules, but the Times obit - and remember, Morris was one of their journalists so I assume they did this with knowledge of 'preferences' - used 'he' for pre-transition James Morris and then 'she' for Jan Morris. And it finishes with this which shows the duality ... not sure pronouns would have exactly been top of Morris's agenda.

Jan would describe herself as unofficial sister-in-law to Elizabeth, the woman that James married, and as aunt to his children. His life, and hers, was a conundrum to the end.

Aunt to his children?!

@fatblackcatspaw

I find it utterly preposterous the suggestion that Morris posted on Mumsnet. I suspect that they were not internet savvy being 90 plus.

I've no idea if Morris posted here but there are a number of 90 plus posters on Gransnet.

The early pioneers of the internet would be at least late 70s by now.

Always amuses me when the kids think that oldies are totally computer illiterate. I often wonder how they'd get on with machine code

I find the idea that you've ever needed to be 'Internet savvy' to post on MN quite amusing. It was launched in 2000.

Jan Morris, a transsexual person who was excellent at doing something other than being transsexual.

Her wife Elizabeth wrote in response to Germaine Greer who made public assumptions about her: “I am not very silent and certainly not anguished. The children and I not only love Jan very dearly but are very proud of her.”

In her last interview earlier this year Jan said: “But I should say I would never use the word change, as in “sex-change” for what happened to me. I did not change sex, I really absorbed one into the other. I’m a bit of each now. I freely admit it.”

Interesting person and no need for the unpleasantness. Given the amount of discussion about trans people on here, the words of Jan and her wife are hardly out of place.

Jan and Elizabeth's son, Twm, was asked to write about his mother, Jan Morris, for a BBC Wales piece on international women's day this year.
He wrote about his mother, Elizabeth.
Ha says that Jan would not have been able to write her books without the loyal companionship of Elizabeth, talks about Elizabeth's quiet achievements, and mentions the fact that James (as he was then) was away when his brother Henry was born and at other challenging moments.
He thinks that Elizabeth was aware of what he calls 'her fiancee's mental distress' before they got married.
He mentions Germaine Greer's derogatory attitude towards their relationship.
He ends by asking her 'was it love that kept you from leaving?' Her answer came like lightening through a cloud: 'Of course it was.'

www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/51770605

I really like the way he's written it - not being disrespectful or dismissive in any way to Jan, but telling us who his mother is on international women's day. I knew a bit about both Jan and Twm, and nothing at all about Elizabeth. It's really interesting to hear from one of their children, I think.

For me, Jan Morris was an interesting cultural figure. I have read a couple of her books, and here in Wales she's seen as somewhat of a national treasure, and her sex change seems so long ago that people have almost forgotten.
She is certainly problematic from a feminist point of view though.
My mum and I were listening to Michael Palin talking about her on the radio, and he mentioned her being 'coy'. Coy! we said, we women spend so much time being coy!

Good for Twm - and begs the question wtf the bbc asked for a piece about his father on IWD day, doesn't it?
(the quote from the times obit make it pretty clear Morris did not want to usurp the mother)

Yes, quite, Errol. That's exactly why I really like what he's written - they asked him to write about his mother - and he did.

From Conumdrum, published in 1974.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8994593/Travel-writer-JAN-MORRIS-died-week-tells-1970s-transition.html

... but she would not be the first to have found out that their spouse was not the person they thought they married.

Yes, that's a good point.

I support all women who have been deceived by men.

[quote EmpressWitchDoesntBurn]If anything trans people and gender fluid challenge the patriarchal boundaries that keep us all enslaved.

I don’t agree with that. People who identify as trans or gender fluid depend on patriarchal gender stereotypes in order to define themselves. Look at the anger when signals like wearing a pink hoodie or carrying a gold lame pocketbook aren’t recognised as meaning ‘I’m a woman’, or the statement that liking makeup, heels & nail polish means someone has ‘girl genes’.

Or the anger on Twitter over men like Jaden Smith & Harry Styles wearing dresses because that’s viewed as ‘appropriating trans culture’. twitter.com/sara_james2/status/1327767658520072192?s=21[/quote]
Strongly agree. My impression is that sexist stereotypes are often quite central in how trans women view womanhood.

Also, as trans activism seems to be only erasing the female sex, not the male sex, patriarchy is probably being strengthened by it. That's because it is hard to fight sex-based oppression when your sex is not allowed to be mentioned at all and when you can't organise on that basis. We are rapidly approaching a case where in the woke world there is one biological sex, male, and then a leftover group which anyone can join if they wish to do so and which cannot be defined at all because who knows what being a woman means.

How does one organise that group? What do people in it even share? I have seen on Twitter several trans women argue that sex-based oppression doesn't even affect women as it doesn't affect them and so on.

I read the Daily Mail on Morris and it's interesting that despite Morris being one of the good ones, the true transsexual that the GRA was designed to accommodate, the narrative is oh so familiar. In particular, Morris seemed to have very little inkling about the realities of female experience. Morris writes that they only realised women suffered from sexism after they transitioned. And then they quip that while condescension from men was horrible, flattery from men was wonderful and everyone is sooooo much nicer and kinder to women. They also claimed that after their sex change operation they were anatomically identical to a woman with a hysterectomy which is hilarious in its ignorance. And then it's topped off with a big dollop of 'born in the wrong body' and 'mystical gendered souls.' Maybe one day I will read an account from a trans woman that will make me think 'oh wow, this person really gets it' but I'm increasingly beginning to doubt that.

For those who are interested I recommend listening to Michael pailin talking about her on radio 4. He knew & had interviewed her. It was an interesting story to hear. Tho I am such a fan of Palin I might be biased! But it was so obvious to me that the things she had done before transition (&after too) were not really open to a woman at that time. Accompanying the 1952 expedition to everest & getting the news back for example.

It also told me a bit more about Michael Palin. He really is very nice and sees the good and positive in people. But as a result he would never ask the tricky questions that might give uncomfortable answers. That's in contrast to how Cleese sees this issue, and how he has not been taking it exactly at face value for a while. A microcosm of how different people respond and how it's all playing out.

WeeBisom - the trans person I think speaks in a way that engenders (ha) empathy for me is Kristina Harrison. Clear about reasons for transitioning, but clear that biology matters. I don’t think transitioning is ever a healthy solution, but I can see that for some people it’s a solution in an imperfect world (because of the history of how it developed - can’t put it back in the box). As for James/ Jan, concur with the majority view here. I heard that Jan said quite recently that Jan ‘doesn’t think of matters of sex or gender much at all anymore’ or similar. Nice one, Jan.