Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie interview with Zoe Williams

[irishfeminist]

www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/28/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-bbc-reith-lecture-freedom-truth-trans-rights

Good for her, refusing to back down. Williams is a woman from a wealthy background who went to an extremely expensive private school and Oxford (like most Guardian writers) who revels in the virtue of her luxury beliefs. She doesn't offer anything or argue anything new here and I hope it'll peak a few more people.

But she comes across as affable, maybe she's nice to have as a colleague and that's partly why she keeps her job? Don't quote me, but I think she refrained from signing witch hunt lettersb against colleagues.

If that's the case, I'm amazed that in 20-odd years working alongside Hadley Freeman and Suzanne Moore, she never sat down with either of them and had a chat about the trans issue (which going by this interview she's very interested in).

She could have learned so much from them.

Whereas Zoe and others think pointing out actual absurd cases, or even suggesting that they're possible, is somehow offensive.

Great post, Necessary. Again, you'd expect an Oxford-educated journalist to understand the philosophical test of reductio ad absurdum.

You’d think she could stay within her own wheelhouse of writing slice of upper-middle class London life pieces for the lifestyle section though.

Clearly even celebrity interviewing is beyond her.

This is such a good point. I remember after the murder of Sarah Everard seeing a number of grifters prominent female pundits all attention seeking talking about the times they had been approached or made to feel unsafe by strange men. These people had only a few days before been ridiculing feminists for not wanting to share bathrooms with strange men. The volte face gave me whiplash.

Yes, and in adult terms, how many times have you heard people make excuses for male relatives or friends who've been caught/convicted for crimes against women?

Yes potniatheron. Not before they'd got women to donate money though. Which they (that woman called Patsy something?) then delighted in telling us would be spent on causes committed to dismantling women's boundaries.

It's one of the reasons that, despite being very left myself politically, I sometimes find talking to right wing misogynists easier than left wing misogynists. Right wing misogynists may deny your experience of trauma at the hands of men, or say it was your fault; Left wing misogynists are happy to use your traumatic experience for their own ends right up untill the point it threatens one of their sacred beliefs. I find the first position more honest. The second position can feel like being used and betrayed all over again.

By jove. That's exactly what she's doing in advance! And advancing it as an approach we should all follow.

FFS, all male sex offenders have relatives. They don't spring up out of the crowd after someone sows a mythical beast's teeth.

*up out of the ground.

CNA lecture is s on radio 4 now...
👑

Was interesting to see Arwa Mahdawi go for Tampax in her column this week. Started off well enough but then descended into an inexplicable rant about people who "don't want trans people to exist". I stopped reading her a long time ago and was sorry I bothered today. If Mahdawi and Williams are the best they've got now it's not looking good.

And she’s absolutely storming it.

Yeah.

Isn’t it amazing how she just swept the issue of a misogynistic and almost sexually threatening tweet aside to focus on how unfair it was not to focus on biological males when discussing a product for the very biologically female process of menstruation.

I think she should consider not spending 60% of her life on twitter and try some
actual journalism.

I was just going to post a similar comment. The exact quote:

"While I admit spending 60% of my life on Twitter isn’t healthy, it’s not as unhealthy as spending 99.99% of your waking hours obsessing over trans people’s right to exist, which is what a depressing number of people seem to do."

As with Williams, the stupidity is depressing. No one is obsessing over trans people's right to exist - I have never once heard anyone say that trans people don't have a right to exist. Once again, these people find that the only way to boost their argument is to misrepresent what their opponents are saying.

And I don't know about anyone else, but I feel so weary with all this. I've generally found that in other contentious topics where people argue bitterly (Brexit, Israel/Palestine, immigration) there is usually a nugget of rationality there somewhere that you can get hold of and debate. With the trans stuff, everything they say is totally detached from reality: "you are creepily obsessed with people's genitals"; "you are literally guilty of genocide"; "half of trans people commit suicide" and so on. How can you possibly debate with people whose only style of argument is to make totally lunatic assertions?

It's a bloody tragedy that Zoe Williams is the best writer the Guardian could put up to interview CNA. She is so.........average.

Yes, obsessing over my child's right to a physically healthy future not fucked up by taking the wrong hormones, my child's right to have children not fucked up by removal of their sex and repro organs, my child keeping their right to experience orgasm, my child keeping their right to pee without pain... that is fucking depressing.

Arwa Mahdawi and Zoe Williams can take my word for that. And so can all the other "useful idiots".

The Reith Lecture was amazing. Really grateful to her for articulating her concerns about free speech. Totally agree with everything she says.

Is there more to come? Irritated by Bonham Carter and her dismissing the legal system in Uk, on Depp. The vilification of Heard has been disgusting. Depp may be a lovely bloke when he's straight, but like many abusers, when out of it, capable of violence. It's never simple is it?

Ah, my edit didn't make it. Must have failed to save it after reading the preview.

For anyone who's interested and/or hasn't alreday read them (that incldus me, to my slight shame), there's a a three-book collection comprising Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah and Purple Hibiscus on Amazon for £11.49. I've just bought it.

*already