10 car pile-up at the intersection
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote an essay.
In a lengthy essay published on her website on Tuesday, Adichie accused a former student of publicly attacking her after a 2017 interview in which Adichie said, among other things, “I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about women’s issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women.” Adichie held up the personal feud as a cautionary tale about how social media has been used by “certain young people” as an ideological battering ram rather than a place to communicate and seek understanding.
Let’s read some of what she said:
After the workshop, I welcomed her into my life. I very rarely do this, because my past experiences with young Nigerians left me wary of people who are calculating and insincere and want to use me only as an opportunity. But she was a Bright Young Nigerian Feminist and I thought that was worth making an exception.
She spent time in my Lagos home. We had long conversations. I was support-giver, counsellor, comforter.
Then I gave an interview in March 2017 in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, (the larger point of which was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference.)
And you know what happened next: the former student trashed Adichie on social media.
Of course she could very well have had concerns with the interview. That is fair enough. But I had a personal relationship with her. She could have emailed or called or texted me. Instead she went on social media to put on a public performance.
It’s so much more fun that way.
Back to the Times:
The conflict escalated last year, after Adichie defended an essay by the Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling about sex and gender — a piece that her critics seized on as transphobic — as “perfectly reasonable.” Emezi posted a lengthy Twitter thread, saying that when their* former teacher “said those things and then doubled down and then mocked those of us who called her out (she called the response ‘trans-noise’), I was gutted.”
Adichie’s essay appears to be the first time she has publicly addressed the feud, tying the personal attacks to what she describes as a larger social and cultural problem of moral self-righteousness and reflexive attacks on those with differing views, and the corrosive effect those stances can have on unfettered debate and discussion. “We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow,” she wrote.
But at least they’re infinitely intersectional.
*Emezi uses customized pronouns
Not infinitely. They exclude women.
In other words, Emezi insists other people use customised pronouns when referring to her. Emezi is manipulative towards people she hasn’t even met, and probably never will, so it is no surprise that she treated Adichie so abysmally.
I read Adichie’s essay the other day when Richard linked to it (quality of silliness post, reply 5), and what struck me was not this person’s betrayal and ingratitude, but how people use social media to air out their inner nastiness. One one hand, I think we’d all be better off not seeing the worst side of human nature plastered all over the social media landscape by every angry degenerate with an internet connection, but on the other hand, Adichie found out how nasty this Emizi person is sooner than she might have otherwise.
That’s why B&W is now the only internet forum I frequent.
Me too GW, but I think discussion forums attached to individual websites are a different animal than social media proper, such as facebook, twitter, blogger, etc. When I tell people I don’t do social media, I don’t count this, or previous forums I participated in (such as the old (and much missed) TPM forum) as in that category. It’s much more of a community here than the vicious, self promoting free for all that is “social” media.
Not that I don’t do a fair amount of navel gazing here though, lol. :D
What a powerful essay by Adichie. Part Three is especially worth quoting extensively:
Now I have to find some of her novels.
@7 It’s a good piece of writing, and I think an excellent perspective on social media users. I think I’ll look for more of her writing too, that’s a good idea. Anyone read her books?
I just read another essay by her, “We Should All Be Feminists.” I liked it. Now looking for more. :)
twiliter, I have read two of her books, but not novels. One of them is We Should All be Feminists, and the other is Dear Ijawele: A Feminist Manifesto in 15 Suggestions.
I think her works are definitely worth a look.
Thanks Ikn, I will read the Manifesto next. :)
The author of the NYT piece chose to omit Emezi’s tweet calling for Adiche and J.K. Rowling to be subject to attacks by people with machetes. Emezi’s tweet was still up on Twitter as of yesterday. But perhaps this is the woke version of “locker room talk”?
@12 https://mobile.twitter.com/azemezi/status/1328167757876256768 << at the bottom of the thread.
@13 – that’s the one. Adiche references the tweet in her piece, so the person at the NYT might have mentioned it. The “Assigned Male” cartoonist spoke of Maya Forstater’s “constant HARASSMENT” of trans people, I think it would be proper for the paper of record to note the actual harassment – death threats and the like – to which women like Adiche and Rowling, and so many others with less social clout, are subject.