Statement from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[Immunetypegoblin]

www.chimamanda.com/, published yesterday.

She is angry. One can understand why. One to watch I think.

Isn't the moira Robin White Post in the wrong thread? This is the chimamanda thread.

Anyway, on the responses to moira and 'both sides'ism' I actually get where some of the cross tra responses are coming from.

Eg "All this shows is that they'd be willing to reduce our rights for a flimsy promise of "being nicer" from t**s and the right wing because they want the "nasty" debate to go away." (I edited the banned word) I am generally pro polite calm conversation, but whichever outcome you want the people just hiding from it are not helping achieve it. If they are pro the trans rights aims, then hiding til it's over does nothing for that either. Focusing on the need for politeness rather than actual hard conversations doesn't protect either group's rights. Not helpful to either side. Fawcett should be on womens side but the behaviour doesn't actually help anyone.

Was Mary beard's interview with chimamanda done before the recent essay?

Fab, thanks! Watching now.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000x2m9/inside-culture-series-3-episode-4

There's another thread on this but here's a great follow up from a Nigerian blogger. Subtitled 'What Chimamanda was too polite to say'

Www.Feminism.ng

Jesse Singal is unimpressed by Emezi's DARVO tactics

twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1406463020474187781?s=21

Oof. That's, erm, disturbing.

Worst of all, a conversation that should have been about transgender identity has been reframed cries Vox predictably, in a hailstorm of denouncing of the 'perniciousness' of CNA and JKR - a couple of privileged t*s and transphobes.

This insistence that everything has to centre transgender identity is a big part of the problem.

https://www.vox.com/22537261/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-transphobia-cancel-culture-jk-rowling-akwaeke-emezi-olutimehin-adegbeye

You might remember the author from this

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n47p

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4076594-Can-I-Still-Read-Harry-Potter-BBC-R4-Thursday-12th-November-2020

I just read this

Yes it's the guardian , put that to one side

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-captures-hypocrisies-too-many-social-justice-zealots

Isn’t it from the observer who have a different editorial stance on the whole issue?

[quote Ereshkigalangcleg]You might remember the author from this

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n47p[/quote]
Ah yes, thought the name rang a bell...

Just bought "Notes on Grief". I still have Americanah and That Thing Around Your Neck on my pile of books to read. Need to spend less time on Mumsnet and more time reading this summer!

[quote midgemagneto]I just read this

Yes it's the guardian , put that to one side

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-captures-hypocrisies-too-many-social-justice-zealots[/quote]
Just read it and then had to read it again to make sure something in The Guardian was this sensible

@WotgunShedding

Isn’t it from the observer who have a different editorial stance on the whole issue?

Yes they have a different editor. I think (happy to be corrected) I've seen Kenan Malik in both the Guardian and The Observer but I can't imagine the Graun would have published this piece. And veering off slightly, I see there's also an article by Julie Bindel in the Observer - not seen the Guardian publish anything of hers for years.

Wonderful writing.

Very good from Kenan Malik. Refreshing to see the word transphobia in inverted commas for a change rather than a statement of fact, a la Vox, Pink News et al.

I'm now going to read everything she's written!

She was interviewed by Mary Beard on BBC Four the other day and I only caught some of it. Was this touched on does anyone know?

It is good by Malik but it's annoying how one side (feminist women) is expected to be personally excoriated, their entire private lives delved into and picked apart and twisted by extremist activists on twitter, and have someone tell their followers to attack her violently. And then that women gets a telling off for publishing (without naming) an email from the person who has coordinated the attack - which she partly did to show the hypocrisy and performative bullshit that it is - because it's "unkind".

The standards that feminists are held to in this debate, relative to the other side of violent extremists, is fucking outrageous.

@PearPickingPorky

It is good by Malik but it's annoying how one side (feminist women) is expected to be personally excoriated, their entire private lives delved into and picked apart and twisted by extremist activists on twitter, and have someone tell their followers to attack her violently. And then that women gets a telling off for publishing (without naming) an email from the person who has coordinated the attack - which she partly did to show the hypocrisy and performative bullshit that it is - because it's "unkind".

The standards that feminists are held to in this debate, relative to the other side of violent extremists, is fucking outrageous.

I agree with your comments, but I thought the writer was spot on with this paragraph:

Trans activists often argue that too much of the public debate focuses on controversies over feminists such as Adichie or de Wahls challenging trans views on identity, rather than on the harm and discrimination that trans people face. There is truth to that, but that is the almost inevitable consequence of placing greater store on the policing of what is acceptable to say about identity than on challenging material harm.

@PearPickingPorky

It is good by Malik but it's annoying how one side (feminist women) is expected to be personally excoriated, their entire private lives delved into and picked apart and twisted by extremist activists on twitter, and have someone tell their followers to attack her violently. And then that women gets a telling off for publishing (without naming) an email from the person who has coordinated the attack - which she partly did to show the hypocrisy and performative bullshit that it is - because it's "unkind".

The standards that feminists are held to in this debate, relative to the other side of violent extremists, is fucking outrageous.

I think there are parallels to be drawn with the way rapes are investigated and prosecuted with this. In both contexts the woman is held to an expectation of purity that the other side is not.

Agree that Malik piece is pushing into the new ground that’s opening up now, where people can start discussing this rationally and look at what’s really going on.

It’s not just that the extreme transactivists who’ve held sway have prioritised language-policing and “identity” protecting above actual transphobia - it’s also that they’ve aimed most of their bullying and accusations at women for ideologically condemned wrongthink, instead of at those who are actually transphobic, mock trans people on SM or actually pose a physical threat - usually men statistically. And even when men do the wrongthink, they are less targeted.

I appreciate how Malik exposes the hypocrisy and illogicality, but we also need the misogyny to be examined in the same way.

Just saw this interview with her on Channel 4. Sorry if it has already been posted and I missed it. https://www.channel4.com/news/stand-up-against-social-media-abuse-says-author-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie?fbclid=IwAR0503zF9Go6L2AARDspmkq6rrcw40nN6TZ-ZBR1gqi47ZfTI2biOoKUg

Part of the problem getting our voices heard has been that it's required people to go against "people like us". I don't think it's a terrible indictment that people find it hard to go against their tribe - if all the people you normally respect are on one side and you find yourself on the other it's normal (desirable?) to wonder if it's you that' wrong.

Chimamanda is so obviously a person on the side of the angels that it's literally impossibel to imagine her as an evil transphobic witch. Hence the new confidence in those now speaking out.

I think the xtreme demands of the TRA movement, combined to their intentional blindness to the many safeguarding issues their demands and their very broadly defined community give rise to. This has the potential to really harm the trans community.

I hadn't really thought about the more passive harms. Instead of trying to encroach on and police women, what could TRAs be advocating for? Third spaces for a start, better health care tailored to the specific needs of their community, accurate data, again so they can advocate for the need for increasing services. Its very like the what could Stonewall have done for the gay community if it hadn't become a trans rights organisation.