It’s about the way the world treats us
Uh oh. Uh oh uh oh. A woman said a wrong thing, again. A feminist woman. A feminist woman who is an author and widely respected. Uh oh uh oh uh oh; everybody get ready to throw things.
Feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has found herself at the center of a controversy over gender identity after comments she made about transgender women during an interview, which can be viewed in the clip above, recently went viral.
I like that “has found herself” – it’s so passive-aggressive.
Speaking earlier this week with the U.K.’s Channel 4, Adichie, who is promoting her new book Dear Ijeawele Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, said, “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.”
Her argument appears to stem from her idea that because many trans women have been assigned and raised male from birth until whatever point they decided to transition, she believes the male privilege they may have received fundamentally sets their experiences apart from those of cisgender women.
Silly silly woman, right? To have an “idea” that people raised male from birth have the experience of being raised male from birth. Where would anyone get such a zany and wicked idea?
“I think the whole problem of gender in the world is about our experiences,” she said. “It’s not about how we wear our hair or whether we have a vagina or a penis. It’s about the way the world treats us, and I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man with the privileges that the world accords to men and then sort of change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning as a woman and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.”
While she did also add that she supports transgender people’s existence, saying they should be “allowed to be,” she ultimately asserts that their experiences should not be “conflated” with women’s experiences.
Adichie, who is perhaps best known for her critically and commercially acclaimed book Americanah and a guest spot on Beyoncé’s track “Flawless,” was almost immediately called out on Twitter for her comments.
Of course she was. No woman can be allowed to talk like that without being “called out” on Twitter.
She wrote a post about it earlier today:
Of course trans women are part of feminism.
I do not believe that the experience of a trans woman is the same as that of a person born female. I do not believe that, say, a person who has lived in the world as a man for 30 years experiences gender in the same way as a person female since birth.
Gender matters because of socialization. And our socialization shapes how we occupy our space in the world.
To say this is not to exclude trans women from Feminism or to suggest that trans issues are not feminist issues or to diminish the violence they experience – a violence that is pure misogyny.
But simply to say that acknowledging differences and being supportive are not mutually exclusive. And that there is space in feminism for different experiences.
Crazy, huh?
Fixed it for you.
Seriously, I am getting very sick of this. Yes, of course, trans women had different experiences than women growing up. Just like rich people have different experiences from poor people, and poor people who become rich later will usually be rich differently. White people have a different experience from people of color. And so on…my brothers and I were brought up in the very same family, but they were brought up much differently.
By the way, did you see PZ’s article on gender essentialism today? I often wonder how he squares his views on gender essentialism with his acceptance of the “innateness” and “essential nature” of the trans experience?
I am not of the impression PZ is an essentialist. He is reading Cordelia Fine’s new book (great book, by the way) and speaking highly of it. He had a later post defending a woman who was being attacked on Twitter for daring to suggest that experience and socialization matter (to be sure, it was largely about not attacking people for raising questions, but it was also about the points raised).
Sackbut, I am aware of that. But at the same time, he appears to accept the most radical of trans ideas that gender is somehow essential to their nature. That’s what makes me curious, because these do seem to be incompatible.
And I did go and buy Fine’s book solely on the basis of his review (and the fact that I have read her book “Delusions of Gender).
I think PZ tries to be supportive of marginalized groups, and sometimes accepts whatever they claim without enough critical thought, or running it through the same filters he runs other things through.
Y’know, I think Adichie’s views are very representative of women’s feelings about trans women.
Trans women exist. They have every right to exist without being subject to harrassment or threats. Any human being has the right to dress how they like, call themselves what they want, express their personality in any way they feel confortable without anyone telling them they shouldn’t (except if they are harming other people. You’d hope that would go without saying…) Trans people should have the right to appropriate medical and psychological treatment which should be covered by national or individual insurance. Trans people are trans people and there is absolutley nothing wrong with that.
But all of that is different to insisting that there is no difference in experience between a trans woman and a “cis” woman. That’s like saying if a white person dyes their skin dark brown their experience has always been the same as a black person’s. It’s nonsense when you put it like that – so why isn’t it nonsense to say that a person who has been treated as male by the world (even if they didn’t want to be) has experienced the same as a person who has always been treated as female?
Why does cultural appropriation exist for all groups except “cis” women?
I didn’t mean to imply you were unaware, it’s obvious you read his blog, my apologies.
I think your assessment of accepting “whatever [marginalized groups] claim without enough critical thought” sounds quite accurate. There’s a lot of that going around.
You say something thoughtful and nuanced, and the internet will boil it down to a short sentence or pithy phrase. That’s what will get around, and you’ll draw fans and haters based on that. When it comes to trans experience, nothing short and pithy is going to be true, meaningful, memorable and inoffensive too. And like any marginalized group (even groups that only identify themselves as marginalized, like the poor oppressed white Christians) with internet access, there will be a blowback whenever the boiled-down nugget gets out and ticks someone off, however poorly that boiled-down nugget represents what it came from.
It’s not even primarily about an obnoxious strain in trans activism. Granted, there IS one, and granted, trans activism is probably more vulnerable to the smart getting lost when arguments are stripped down to sound bites. But the same thing will happen elsewhere. Right-wing bubble “news” media is a huge industry based on doing it deliberately, with very little effort.
Jeff;
Well, some people think that short and pithy is the best way, don’t they, Ophelia? “Come on, it’s a simple yes or no question; do you accept that trans-women are women?”
“It isn’t that simple, there are so many factors to consider. Physically a woman? Mentally, psychologically We don’t even know if iall granswomen actually belive themselves to be
Bloody smart phone now thinks it’s fine to remit my comments before I get the chance to see how they’re going to turn out! It also has it’s own spelling of ‘transwomen'”.
None of this is my fault. It can’t be. I’m a man, one of the old-fashioned variety, white, watching middle-age recede in the rear-view mirror, and straight; the variety that’s never wro…..oh! Mrs. o’Sagan (my equal in age, whiteness, straightness; my better in knowing when I’m wrong) is mocking me and pointing to my sausage-fingers.
Anyhoo, where was I?
……whether all transwomen believe that themselves, and then there’s…”
“FUCKING TERF IS TERFING! ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION; YES OR NO?……,”
Never mind that giving either single-word answer would condemn you in their eyes. No, hang on, you already were condemned before the inquisition. Is ‘condemned more bigly’ good grammar?
I’ll be honest, not a lot can anger me, much less stir me to violent thoughts, but when I saw what had happened I wanted to climb through the internet and punch those vindictive shits into next year.
#3
I had the impression during The Sundering (or whatever) that he was not really an advocate of the more essentialist/ineffable gender stuff, but rather felt that he couldn’t/shouldn’t take a side in the interests of keeping the network together. Not that that worked.
#9
An other aspect was/is the notion one couldn’t/can’t question someone’s feelings. Sure I understand that when someone is angry, one shouldn’t deny the angryness. But there was/is this notion that one shouldn’t get into the question of whether those feelings were justified.
I can’t find it now, but I seem to remember the post from Ed Brayton announcing his move to Patheos and him acknowledging a lot of readers would feel betrayed, as if their feelings of betrayal was all that mattered and the question of whether Ed actually betrayed them was totally unimportant.
I also wonder if people can actually feel betrayed. I seem to remember having “feelings of betrayal” described somewhere as a quasi-emotion because it combines an actual feeling like frustration with an idea about what caused this feeling. This makes sense to me and also, I think, allows me to understand what is going on when someone says they feel like a woman.
Holms – that was the way I read it at the time, too, but since then he has basically seemed on a few occasions to be suggesting that anyone who didn’t accept the whole thing was a bigot.
Here is a problem I have: at work, our new bathroom policy is simply that you don’t question anyone’s choice of bathroom. Now, I have PTSD because I have been verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by men, so if I see a man-looking person in the bathroom, I am not going to stop to puzzle out whether that man-looking person identifies as a woman or not. I am going to get the hell out, and if that is seen as bigotry, that’s their problem.
With college campuses claiming to be serious about dealing with rape issues, it seems strange to me that they can’t come up with a more nuanced bathroom policy, allowing trans people to use the bathroom that fits their identity, while not making it impossible for women who have post-rape issues to use the bathrooms.
And PZ, who understands perfectly why a woman might be uncomfortable alone in an elevator with a man, seems to think that any woman seeing a man in the bathroom should assume that they identify as woman. Otherwise, bigot. But we are more vulnerable in a bathroom in many ways than we are in an elevator, since women are not really able to simply unzip a single zipper to use the restroom.
So I stand by my commentary on PZ’s inability to think this thing through to the natural conclusion. I am not a bigot, and I actually have very little problem with transwomen in the bathroom, but if they appear to be men in every way, I cannot stop my instant reflex. We need to make sure we do not violate the needs, rights, and safety of women in order to accommodate trans-women. We need to find a way to be sensitive to both without sacrificing one for the other.
A thought that’s just occurred to me is that it’s unfortunate that these two things are happening at the same time:
1. the vastly increased visibility of trans activism and the attendant focus on locker rooms and public toilets
and
2. the vastly increased availability of porn, including violent porn
We’re living at a time when men are more or less being incited to rape women, and when women are being ordered to be cool with seeing apparent men in women’s locker rooms and public toilets.
Women have ample reason to be afraid of encountering a man in a private enclosed space, and they’re being told to ignore that ample reason in case the apparent man is actually a trans woman.
“my feeling is trans women are trans women.”
Just how badly have people lost their grip on reality when this is a controversial statement?
Ah well we saw just how badly in the summer of 2015, when I pointed out that obviously trans women are not literally women in every possible sense, because that’s what trans means – and various “colleagues” gave themselves carpal tunnel syndrome typing long posts exclaiming that the word “trans” is exactly like the words “black” or “Jewish” or similar in not making the noun they modify not-that-noun.
Ophelia, I apologise for the length of this comment. I promise to return to my usual bite-sized comments forthwith.
I’ve wondered for a long time about the wisdom behind the thinking of those making demands for school pupils to be allowed to use the showers, locker rooms and toilets of their gender identity, no questions asked. It’s almost as though they’ve never met teenaged boys.
For a no-question policy to work, the general population of teenaged boys would have to be both intelligent enough to understand the concepts and rules of boundaries, privacy, trust, etc. and mature enough to respect and obey them. All of the evidence is to the contrary. The closest thing in nature to the average 14 year-old boy is an adolescent chimpanzee;ahe is awash with sudden massive doses of new hormones and emotions, driven by urges he doesn’t yet understand, he is beginning to practice adulthood and looking for his first forays into what had been until now the enemy camp – girls. Unfortunately, all of this is taking place with very little check from his conscience, which has been kicked into the corner by all of these new arrivals, like a host whose party has been gatecrashed and who can only wander around, forlornly asking the invadors not to do this or touch that, and being largely ignored.
In any population of these horrid little monsters there will be those who would exploit a no-question policy to their own ends, and that cannot end well.
Yet the supporters of these policies, including P.Z. and the Horde, will not directly address these types of concerns. Instead they straight to the accusations of transphobia, claiming that those questioning any aspect of the policy are demanding that their bigotry be allowed to cause emotional and physical harm to the victims of their petty hate, that they are awful people who want to strip the transgender youth of their basic human rights.
It’s a horrible and deplorable tactic, combining insult with ridicule and emotional blackmail whilst never having to say why people have no cause for concern, why any fears are as groundless as they claim them to be.
Hmm, snowflake doesn’t like the thought of cis boys lying so they can shower with the girls after sport. They won’t, any penis in the female showers and locker rooms will be girl’s penises. ….Oh, it’s Mr. Bigot’s 13 year-old daughter who’s mentioned being worried. Well here’s the thing, Mr. Bigot, you are a fucking failure as a parent and you’ve raised another bigot…..Yes, you’ve said that your concerns are very real, so ok, you go ahead and ruin lives ‘cos you’ve got fee-fees, selfish bastard……What’s that, cupcake, what’s so wrong with the transgendered kids requiring agreement fom a parent or guardian to be registered by the school as being allowed to use facilities matching their identity? Do you know who else demanded registration of the people he hated? Would you like a special trans shower block where the water is replaced by gas, maybe?….Oh, and this one wonders what measures would be in place to ensure his kids aren’t sexually assaulted in such a no-question environment. Yeah, right. Projecting a bit there, aren’t you….What’s that? You say I’m misinterpreting you? That wasn’t what you mean at all? Guess what? Intent is not fucking magic. Own it!
Usually, when people refuse to engage in debate and instead retort to low tactics, it’s because they know that their stance is indefencible. Apparently, with this mob it’s because bigots don’t want their concerns answered because their concerns are lies to hide their bigotry behind. Oh, and because they’re SJW’s and hold the moral highground so fuck off and have another wet dream about genocide.
And these are the one’s who claim to be the good guys. You know, I suspect that at least some of them have spent so many years immersed in RGPs that they are confusing their characters’ identities with their own; they might even actually believe they are superhero types, the mightiest and purest noble warriors fighting on behalf of the oppressed everywhere in the never-ending battle with bigotry.
The absolute worse part? Their tactics are becoming increasingly successful in silencing the opposition, getting heard by shouting loudest and by their complete willingness to be as dishonest as neccessary to achieve their goals.
I agree re PZ and others failing to think things through on these issues. (My previous comments I realize were clumsy and poorly worded; apologies.)
A few things going through my mind at the moment:
There is a popular form of meme that typically features a muscular bearded trans man standing in a women’s room and asking whether he belongs there. Usually the response is obviously not. The meme bothers me, because there is no way of telling from appearances what that person’s gender identity might be, and it reinforces gender stereotypes. (Not to mention that there are bearded and muscular trans women, too, but they don’t get their pictures in these memes.)
There was also a conversation on NPR the other day between two high school students, one a masculine-presenting girl who was interviewing a trans boy. The girl said she “presents as male”; the boy said he “presents, as male, obviously, given [his] gender identity”. I don’t think it’s obvious in the least; there is a counterexample standing in front of you, a girl who does not present in accordance with her gender identity.
The boy went on to talk about how there were no trash cans in the men’s rooms at school (fair enough, everyone needs trash cans), because he needed to dispose of menstrual pads or tampons, and people were confusing sex and gender. It sounded to me like the other way around: the bathrooms were set up based on sex, with urinals provided in rooms where people who can use urinals might find them.
Locker rooms didn’t come up. Hmm.
I don’t think the answers are at all obvious, and (as everybody here has mentioned many times) it’s infuriating that the questions can’t even be asked without stupid reflexive charges of anti-trans bigotry.
Sackbut, I don’t think your previous comments were clumsy and poorly worded!
It would have been kind of funny if the masculine-presenting girl and the trans boy had gotten into a big verbal fight over who is allowed to masculine-present and who isn’t.
I was very much hoping to hear them discuss that point. She did try to challenge him a little, but she never brought up her personal situation. I’m really curious how she felt.
I wonder how the political purists would respond to accusations that transwomen are appropriating their gender from an oppressed people,? As we know, for the purists appropriation is the absolute shittiest thing one can do to a minority, so how would they cope with the cognitive dissonance that must set in after having this looping in their heads for a while? “We must defend the oppressed transwomen at all costs…….we must stop appropriation from the oppressed……..”
Nah, just kidding. The response will be ‘fuck the privileged cis-women’!
This has just occured to me; how ironic is it that a lot of the purists telling feminists to shut up about their problems because trans issues are the ones who screamed loudly at Dawkins over Dear Muslima? And you would not get a single one of them to acknowledge that there are double standards in play, not in a million years. You’d also be a bigot for noticing the double standards, of course.
Acolyte of Sagan, as you say, they will deny that appropriation is going on and judge you for raising the possibility. But that’s not all. Look at, for example, the Pharyngula Horde, and consider:
2 years or more ago: they were schooling everybody about Schrodinger’s Rapist. Anyone who argued with the concept was a bigot.
Now: Women don’t like the idea that they must accept any male-bodied person who “identifies” as not-a-man into women’s bathrooms, changing rooms, and the like? BIGOTS. BIGOTS WITH NO RATIONAL REASON FOR CONCERN.
2 years ago: people who dogpiled Ophelia, Rebecca Watson, and other women online were sexist scum, especially if those who used threats of violence or sexist slurs.
Now: On Facebook, a trans woman wishes death on Ophelia, and a number of Ophelia’s former friends, good little SJWs all, “like” the post. Dogpiling is fine if it’s in defense of trans people. And a famous bearded “trans woman” tells women everywhere who question whether or not his penis is a woman’a penis, “Suck my dick!” On International Women’s Day.
Not to mention the weird amnesia regarding feminist theory that recognized the centrality of women’s bodies to women’s oppression.
The mental gymnastics involved must be quite impressive.
Lady M, I would say that in their enthusiasm to support and defend minorities everywhere, they are operating with the best intentions. But then, one has to remember their very own dismissal technique regarding intent!
One of the problems they have is that they tend to accept anything that a member of their cause du jour has to say, as though any minority group has to be exempt from any scrutiny. This was brought home to me a couple of years ago on one of the Thunderdome threads, where a commenter questioned whether something that had been said was a racist comment (I can’t recall the comment in question but I do remember that to call it racist was redefining the definition of racism beyond recognition). The response was that a person of colour had called it racist, and when a minority tells you something you do not argue, you shut up, listen, and learn, and you must do so irrespective of whether or not you agree. It doesn’t matter what words or actions are being called out; if a minority member tells you that it’s wrong, it’s wrong.
One final thought on this; PZ has said before that if one is white, one is racist. No matter what any individual person’s views on race equality might be, to be white is to be racist. So, PZ will openly mock the idea that all people are born in a state of sin, but sees no contradiction in stating that all white people are born racist. Of course, anybody questioning this dubious notion was simply proving the point.
I was so tempted to ask whether a person born of one black parent and one white was 50% less racist than one born to two white parents, and if one parent was mixed race and the other white, was the inherent racism further reduced?