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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

the not so nice Jan Morris

82 replies

JanieAllen · 15/10/2022 09:20

Review of new book about Jan Morris 'disgracefully self centred' after having Jan Morris shoved down our throats this really cheered me up.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jan-morris-by-paul-clements-review-pqtd7z7jl

archive here archive.ph/usCl8

OP posts:

FannyCann · 18/10/2022 08:13

Those last couple of lines - "finding myself still incapable of the role" !
Honestly I struggle to have any understanding or empathy for people who spend their lives rejecting reality in this way. We all have things in our lives that we wish were different. I have my moans and gripes but I have observed that the happiest people seem to be those who aren't spending their lives chasing an impossible dream and feeling bitter because it never happened.

FrancescaContini · 18/10/2022 08:18

MrsOvertonsWindow · 15/10/2022 09:32

Several great comments - loved this one:

"Jan didn't identify into child-rearing, housekeeping, laundry, cooking, remembering family birthdays, school runs... For that, Jan had a reliable support human. A wife."

I wonder why…?

TheMarzipanDildo · 18/10/2022 23:06

“She sounds not like a woman, but like a man's idea of a women.”

Rebecca West sums it all up in 1974. Incidentally, I’ve read a lot of her early journalism from when she was about 19 in the early 1910s, and she was brilliantly perceptive (and genuinely hilarious) even then.

Allthegoodnamesarechosen · 18/10/2022 23:11

Pixiedust1234 · 15/10/2022 12:36

Thanks for the archive link, that was an interesting read. However the part that upset me the most was

Her four surviving children (the fifth died as a baby), aged from 8 to 20, had agreed she should write Conundrum,

The fact they are trying to say everything is fine because the EIGHT year old says so. Putting an adult decision on a child.

I was at University with one of those children. No way did they consent to that self indulgent , sensationalist ‘memoir’

Ereshkigalangcleg · 19/10/2022 10:28

There is someone who often pops up in the Times comments whose argument is always "but remember the lovely Jan Morris, why would you not want to share toilets with someone like that?"

Did he used to post on FWR? I scandalised someone here because they assumed I would back down on my hardline stance because they mentioned the sainted Jan Morris. I did not.

Datun · 19/10/2022 13:05

Ereshkigalangcleg · 19/10/2022 10:28

There is someone who often pops up in the Times comments whose argument is always "but remember the lovely Jan Morris, why would you not want to share toilets with someone like that?"

Did he used to post on FWR? I scandalised someone here because they assumed I would back down on my hardline stance because they mentioned the sainted Jan Morris. I did not.

Yes, I remember somebody called Jan, who was a transwoman, who said they had transitioned decades before.

I believe they were asked whether or not they would still have transitioned, if there was no one there to see it. If I recall correctly, they either didn't understand the question, or refused to answer it.

nilsmousehammer · 19/10/2022 13:27

WildishBambino · 15/10/2022 21:47

Suki had this to say on twitter last year

"I didn't find Jan's transition extremely difficult at all.I don't care what gender anyone wants to be. It's the person that's important.The way Jan treated us caused the rift. The unkindness."

This comes up again and again from many people.

No one cares about the presentation, the clothes, the names, the bit they won't put up with is the bloody awful and entitled way of treating other people.

It is never possible though for someone who protests this to see that the presentation and the behaviour/treatment of others is two separate things. To resist the illtreatment is perceived as a rejection of the transition.

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