I love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, so much so that when my dog had seven puppies last year I named one of them after her when I registered it with the Kennel Club.
Every single woman who does speak up makes it that little bit easier for others to speak. And now you are one of those women Anna. Thanks for this act of bravery and sisterhood 💪❤️
As a woman who fell in love with someone living a very successful life as a man for over 40 years, who told me several months into the relationship that they wanted to transition, this has hit hard, (but in a good way). I completely and whole heartedly supported them.
I was also completely shattered emotionally, and it was something I still find hard to talk about, for many reasons, but also because there is a level of aggression and silencing directed at those who try to have the conversation, that is both personal, cultural and complicated by centuries of misogyny, and male privilege.
As a small example, we do not see (or I haven’t seen) medical awareness campaigns for prostate health awareness featuring a picture of a woman, yet we have cervical screening campaigns with images of bearded men. This medical awareness is vital, but there are layers of inequality in just this one example, and anyone who tries to raise the issue is often aggressively shut down and even socially isolated.
Our brains, and who we are, our experiences and what we achieve, are shaped by many things, including our hormones, culture, colour, race and privilege's. A man (or woman) transitioning as an adult has a brain that is literally different to a trans-woman (or man), of a similar age because of their cultural, racial, educational, professional, relationship, and gendered experiences.
There are incredible trans- women who talk about how they can now view their experiences as a woman through their past experiences as a man. I was left shattered by the relationship for many reasons, and found huge comfort in Alexandra Heminsley’s book, but have felt I can’t talk opening; in part because it isn’t just my story, but also because of the impact being verbally attacked by someone who misunderstood or misinterpreted what I was saying, would have. I completely support the right of everyone to live fully, openly, and truthfully as themselves; to love who they love, but feel that my rights as a woman are being eroded in some areas, and that once again our voices are being silenced.
Wow Jaimie, what a response and thank you so much for sharing. As I have written in my piece, it is the absolute refusal to acknowledge (and then demonise anyone who raises) this conflict of interest, and this is the space that I am interested in. Every movement has its gatekeepers and to think that this is the first that should and must go so completely unchallenged is a nonsense. Humans are complex and we are both able to acknowledge and respect this grey area without wishing harm on anyone. Thank you so much for sharing, as always x
It is the silencing, and the fear associated with not staying quiet that is key. My experience was extraordinary and personally shattering, but as someone who has also been an advocate for medical equality for women for decades, it’s something I find hard not to speak about, and as you say, we should all be able to have these conversations without wishing harm on anyone.
Another fantastic piece, Anna - and one I hope also goes viral! Thank you. Silencing women or ensuring that they self censor for fear of the repercussions is a very sad state of affairs considering how long we and all the other women before us have fought to be heard.it seems that the possibility of having a robust, considerate and honest conversation on either side of the trans ‘issue’ is a long way off when the concept of another woman holding an opposing point of view is seen as reactionary and an act of persecution.
Thanks Rebecca, and as to your point of it going viral, it won’t because people won’t share it for fear of being ‘guilty by association’. I am already receiving messages in my DMs from people who ‘agree completely, would love to share, but can’t’.
I have no problem with people choosing to gender transition. It is not my business what another person’s life choices are.
But I have long felt like an outsider for being someone who just grew up as a female human, who experienced the life legacy of the genes I was born with, who experienced the journey of pregnancy and childbirth and who watched my daughter give birth and nearly die, and who is not flouncy and emotional and who doesn’t wear makeup or buy fancy clothes or wear high heels, or base my life on my gender.
I wouldn’t care if another name was made for my gender experience, but I do feel lessened by having to compromise my experience by not having my viewpoint represented.
To be clear, I am not anti-trans. I would just like a little breathing space, a little oxygen left in the room.
I love Adichie. She is one of my favourite writers. I didn't know about her comment and what she faced following it. The conversation around transgender is still fragile and new (to me anyway) and it seems that there is only two point fo views to consider, you are pro or against it but we all know it's not the case. It can't just be black or white.
It's a great and bold piece with nuances we need to read about without being silenced or labelled as anti transgender.
Dear Anna, Rather than turn me away, your resistance to transgenderism, has impelled me to subscribe to your substack earlier than I had wanted to. Having spent over half a century opposing male-pattern violence against women I've observed the extreme cruelty practiced by trans identified men and boys. Anyone not moved by this girl's tears in the clip below, has no heart
Repeat this girl's experience tens of thousands of times in various situations. It's the opposite of kindness. Its raw indifference and callousness that allows men and boys to invade girl's bathrooms, deprive them of safe sports and shelters for women and children from male violence. My niece and her school mates cannot use the school's girl's bathroom for fear of encountering boys there. They have to wait all day till they get home. So bad for their health. This is an especially sensitive age for girls going through puberty. If that's not cruel, I don't know what is. These guys know what they're doing and they relish intimidating and mocking the girls. Transgenderism is not about kindness to a few, it's about cruelty to many. Those who chose to support a few men above the interests and safety of all women and girls will eventually be held accountable for their opportunism and betrayal.
The Guardian does have form, which is why it sticks in the throat that they were goading her to say more and that they lead with that topic as their headline because, despite all their protestations, they know that it’s something people want to talk about.
Thank you for all of your thoughtful posts, and the reminder to speak our truths and risk being ‘unkind’. I will continue to follow and support you and Milli Hill.
Thank you, Anna. This topic is still so new and contentious and we haven't evolved a safe way to have a healthy conversation about it. In the absence of support and understanding, environment wins and the current environment of knee-jerk polarity and media sensationalism helps no-one. Not my trans women friends, not those questioning their gender, and certainly not women who are demonised and shut down for expressing concerns. Silencing a brilliant, inspiring woman who could help us to explore this sensitive conflict of rights is absolutely not the way forward.
Thank you Caroline for your thoughts, I hope that my piece represents a small contribution the healthy conversation that we need to have, but so many women in my DMs telling me they are afraid to comment, so they have already been silenced, like Chimamanda.
Thanks Caroline, and I know you mean brave in a complimentary way but I always feel that I need to take issue with how we use the word brave. Me talking about the conflict between women’s hard won rights and those who want to identify into womanhood and therefore share those rights is not really a brave thing. What might happen, I could lose subscribers for saying it? My life is not at risk as it is for women speaking out in other parts of the world. Now that would be brave. But if we do acknowledge that we have a movement, which in my mind is more of a (biological) male movement, in that natal males want to share space, have the same rights, as women, and that for woman to talk about this is ‘brave’ then we must surely acknowledge there is a serious problem here. I don’t remember ten or twenty years ago that it was brave for woman to talk about their rights. When did this happen in the west? It’s an interesting question.
Thanks for clarifying your viewpoint, Anna - and yes, it's an interesting and urgent question. I do think confronting potential reputational risk takes courage. Expressing concerns shouldn't have to fall into this category and it's a horrible reflection on the direction of travel that it does.
It's not just in other countries, it's in the West as well. You can lose your job, your reputation, your livelihood, be harassed and threatened with rape, violence - even lose your life, like the victims of Nikki Secondino, Dana Rivers, Marcel Harvey, Tremaine Carroll or other trans identified men who will not be challenged or denied their claim on womanhood. Untold numbers of women experience this every day - not just the JK Rowlings and Adichis.
Hi Anna, I think the misgendering in this piece is really upsetting. I also don’t think that Adichie, who is publishing her 3rd book since her 2017 comments, can really be said to have been cancelled!
Beyond that, I disagree with your points on gender identity for three main reasons (and apologies that this is so long, but I also feel I have to speak up).
First, Adichie’s definition of gender, which you seem to adopt, means that it is entirely determined by external factors, principally how a person is treated by men/under the patriarchy. But that is such a sad and limiting idea. I am not a woman because of how men have treated me. I am a woman because I believe and feel myself to be one. (I am a cis woman because the gender I was assigned at birth matches this feeling.)
Second, I fundamentally disagree that this is not about safety: trans people are four times more likely than cis people of the same gender identity to be victims of violent crime, including sexual assault (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/. These stats are from the US, as there is no equivalent data collected for the UK). We should act accordingly to promote safety for trans people – including by enabling trans women to use female only spaces. To argue that trans women have more rights than cis women is hard to sustain, given the disproportionately high levels of violence experienced by trans men and women.
The argument is not that no man will ever pretend to be a woman in order to abuse women; it is simply that they don’t need to. Men abuse women all the time – as men.
Third, the only threat that Beth Upton actually posed to Sandie Peggie is that she did not conform to Ms Peggie’s ideas of what a woman should be. Where does this line get drawn? If Dr Upton had undergone full medical/surgical transition, could she use the female changing room? What about tall women, butch/masc presenting women, women with visible facial hair or shaven heads: are they under suspicion? Who has to prove that they are truly a woman and therefore can use the female only facilities?
Shrinking the definition of acceptable womanhood does not make women safer, it only makes our options smaller, and makes those who do not meet the required standards less safe. Definitions that seek to exclude trans women cleave tightly to a feminine, and (in the UK) white, ideal that has resulted in many masculine presenting cis women and cis women of colour being challenged in, and/or excluded from, female only spaces and from safety. The stripping of femininity from black women has a long colonial history, and results in concrete harms: for example, black women are less likely to be referred to domestic violence services than white women: https://refuge.org.uk/news/refuge-better-protection-of-black-women-domestic-abuse/. The practical effect of definitions of ‘woman’ that exclude trans women is to reinforce racist and sexist ideals.
Hi Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to write so thoroughly — I do appreciate it. I would of course take issue with almost all of points you raise particularly as these are often the standard counter arguments presented to women and I believe them to be inaccurate. But my piece was not an argument on the movement itself, my piece was about the silencing of women and specifically Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Two points to raise from your comment, it was not about her cancelling, you are right that since those comments she has continued to work — as she should. But I for one would be interested to hear more of her thoughts of this topic, and now we will not because she has been made to feel too uncomfortable (and has suffered as a result of) sharing her thoughts. We are asked to be allies to these men, but they are not being allies to us, they are getting us sacked, suspended, cancelled, silenced. Secondly Chimamanda has not said that we are women based on how we are treated, but that we are treated that way BECAUSE we are women. The two are inextricably linked. It is impossible for a biological male to know how girlhood and womanhood has been experienced and therefore identify into that group — in my opinion, but not yours. I see that. So where does this leave this movement and the humans at the heart of it themselves? Firstly a recognition of the people who are defining themselves as part of this movement but are not genuine, the rapists for example who want to be housed with women in prison and referred to as women in their trials. This movement needs to accept these people are frauds. The other answer for me is rolling back from this aggressive pursuit of female spaces and female words and instead embracing the word trans and being proud of that, and of course creating third spaces. That I think all women would support.
Just to add, this piece is a really beautiful articulation of how the experience of cancer and childbirth has 'blown open' what the writer, Cameron Steele calls (and I would also call) 'the smallest possible definition of woman'. Unfortunately it is now only available to paid subscribers but I wanted to share it anyway: https://substack.com/@steelecs/p-156471026
Great piece Anna. You put it so clearly. I don’t think anyone could argue with that. These are strange and divisive times, but I agree this is not necessarily a reason to sit on the fence.
I’m looking forward to reading Adichie’s new novel and I enjoy your substack pieces, Anna. I don’t agree that Adichie is being silenced - she has a new novel coming out and is interviewed about it in a national newspaper! She chooses not to comment on certain debates which she understands are contentious, that’s all. We are all free to comment or not comment. I find the misgendering in this piece upsetting and I don’t share your views about trans women but I appreciate the honesty of your writing and I appreciate the opportunity to make my own comment. I think it’s unhelpful to close ourselves off from those who hold different opinions because this only serves those in power whose business (sic) it is to create divisions among the oppressed… let’s not argue amongst ourselves about bathrooms and changing rooms while others are busy cementing the military industrial complex xx
Thanks for sharing your views, Hannah. It looks like we differ on some issues but I’m so pleased that you shared them, as I like my pieces to be the start of a conversation and not the end x
Wonderful piece Anna, it is indeed the silencing that we should fear. I find it astonishing that there cannot be reasoned conversation on an issue that is nuanced, delicate, complex and hugely emotive. When did this debate become so forcibly binary, and therefore ensconced in hate and vitriol? I wonder who this actually serves at all.
When I read your work (or anyone’s), I personally am not looking for statements I don’t agree with or potentially offending opinions. I learned a long time ago, deep in my many years of forced silence, that I can learn far more from people who think differently. The more a person is in line with what I think, perceive and believe, the less I can learn from them. Such relationships are comforting and have purpose but that purpose is not intellectual and emotional growth.
That being said, I share your sadness and outrage at the silencing of a powerful thinker on important topics.
Thank you for this article and for always, always leading me to think differently, with more intention and more joyfully.
Renée — thank you! If I see myself and my writing as having one job to do here, it is what you have just encapsulated in this wonderful comment. THIS is why I write. My posts are never a full stop, but an ellipses, a start of a conversation. I do not proclaim to know everything, but I still want to talk about it. I wish more people thought and read like you. 🙏🏼❤️
Cancel culture has (it seems) done nothing for us except eliminate the ability to have critical conversations.
And … I also understand the difficulty in holding all these truths at once. I have a wonderful trans woman in my family. It feels disloyal somehow to acknowledge the fear or discomfort that another woman may feel whilst being in her presence, for instance in a changing room. I know how hard her life has been, the struggles she’s had to face, the rights she is denied daily. I hate to think of anyone fearing her gentle soul.
And yet, I can’t control how other people will feel around her. I can’t erase their experience in order to fit my own narrative of how things should be.
It’s so tricky.
And to your main point, Black women must fight so hard to be heard and then we silence them for having thoughts and the audacity to speak them. It’s not unexpected or surprising but it’s still shit 💩
Thank you so much for your comment, it is so true, this ‘difficulty of holding all the truths at once.’ This is the space in which we must endeavour to acclimatise ourselves. I think it’s important for humanity, though it is extremely difficult in policy. So much appreciate your thoughts. ❤️🙏🏼
Every single woman who does speak up makes it that little bit easier for others to speak. And now you are one of those women Anna. Thanks for this act of bravery and sisterhood 💪❤️
Yes yes yes 👏🏽
Well written, Anna. The silencing is a disgrace.
Thank you, Sharon x
As a woman who fell in love with someone living a very successful life as a man for over 40 years, who told me several months into the relationship that they wanted to transition, this has hit hard, (but in a good way). I completely and whole heartedly supported them.
I was also completely shattered emotionally, and it was something I still find hard to talk about, for many reasons, but also because there is a level of aggression and silencing directed at those who try to have the conversation, that is both personal, cultural and complicated by centuries of misogyny, and male privilege.
As a small example, we do not see (or I haven’t seen) medical awareness campaigns for prostate health awareness featuring a picture of a woman, yet we have cervical screening campaigns with images of bearded men. This medical awareness is vital, but there are layers of inequality in just this one example, and anyone who tries to raise the issue is often aggressively shut down and even socially isolated.
Our brains, and who we are, our experiences and what we achieve, are shaped by many things, including our hormones, culture, colour, race and privilege's. A man (or woman) transitioning as an adult has a brain that is literally different to a trans-woman (or man), of a similar age because of their cultural, racial, educational, professional, relationship, and gendered experiences.
There are incredible trans- women who talk about how they can now view their experiences as a woman through their past experiences as a man. I was left shattered by the relationship for many reasons, and found huge comfort in Alexandra Heminsley’s book, but have felt I can’t talk opening; in part because it isn’t just my story, but also because of the impact being verbally attacked by someone who misunderstood or misinterpreted what I was saying, would have. I completely support the right of everyone to live fully, openly, and truthfully as themselves; to love who they love, but feel that my rights as a woman are being eroded in some areas, and that once again our voices are being silenced.
Wow Jaimie, what a response and thank you so much for sharing. As I have written in my piece, it is the absolute refusal to acknowledge (and then demonise anyone who raises) this conflict of interest, and this is the space that I am interested in. Every movement has its gatekeepers and to think that this is the first that should and must go so completely unchallenged is a nonsense. Humans are complex and we are both able to acknowledge and respect this grey area without wishing harm on anyone. Thank you so much for sharing, as always x
It is the silencing, and the fear associated with not staying quiet that is key. My experience was extraordinary and personally shattering, but as someone who has also been an advocate for medical equality for women for decades, it’s something I find hard not to speak about, and as you say, we should all be able to have these conversations without wishing harm on anyone.
Absolutely.
Another fantastic piece, Anna - and one I hope also goes viral! Thank you. Silencing women or ensuring that they self censor for fear of the repercussions is a very sad state of affairs considering how long we and all the other women before us have fought to be heard.it seems that the possibility of having a robust, considerate and honest conversation on either side of the trans ‘issue’ is a long way off when the concept of another woman holding an opposing point of view is seen as reactionary and an act of persecution.
Thanks for reading, Rebecca
I also had no idea that this had happened, and I feel that I should have so thank you for bringing it up.
Thanks Rebecca, and as to your point of it going viral, it won’t because people won’t share it for fear of being ‘guilty by association’. I am already receiving messages in my DMs from people who ‘agree completely, would love to share, but can’t’.
I wonder if historians will look back at this point in time and wonder what on earth was going on!?
You mean how we look back at the witch trials?! 😆
I agree with you Anna. Thanks for writing this.
I have no problem with people choosing to gender transition. It is not my business what another person’s life choices are.
But I have long felt like an outsider for being someone who just grew up as a female human, who experienced the life legacy of the genes I was born with, who experienced the journey of pregnancy and childbirth and who watched my daughter give birth and nearly die, and who is not flouncy and emotional and who doesn’t wear makeup or buy fancy clothes or wear high heels, or base my life on my gender.
I wouldn’t care if another name was made for my gender experience, but I do feel lessened by having to compromise my experience by not having my viewpoint represented.
To be clear, I am not anti-trans. I would just like a little breathing space, a little oxygen left in the room.
Being pro-women doesn’t make you anti-trans. But then you know that, Sarah.
Exactly! 👍🏼
I love Adichie. She is one of my favourite writers. I didn't know about her comment and what she faced following it. The conversation around transgender is still fragile and new (to me anyway) and it seems that there is only two point fo views to consider, you are pro or against it but we all know it's not the case. It can't just be black or white.
It's a great and bold piece with nuances we need to read about without being silenced or labelled as anti transgender.
Completely agree with you, Claire. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. 🙏🏼❤️
Dear Anna, Rather than turn me away, your resistance to transgenderism, has impelled me to subscribe to your substack earlier than I had wanted to. Having spent over half a century opposing male-pattern violence against women I've observed the extreme cruelty practiced by trans identified men and boys. Anyone not moved by this girl's tears in the clip below, has no heart
https://youtu.be/3rFfuG2Exyg
Repeat this girl's experience tens of thousands of times in various situations. It's the opposite of kindness. Its raw indifference and callousness that allows men and boys to invade girl's bathrooms, deprive them of safe sports and shelters for women and children from male violence. My niece and her school mates cannot use the school's girl's bathroom for fear of encountering boys there. They have to wait all day till they get home. So bad for their health. This is an especially sensitive age for girls going through puberty. If that's not cruel, I don't know what is. These guys know what they're doing and they relish intimidating and mocking the girls. Transgenderism is not about kindness to a few, it's about cruelty to many. Those who chose to support a few men above the interests and safety of all women and girls will eventually be held accountable for their opportunism and betrayal.
This is brilliant! I couldn't agree more with you. The Guardian has form here; viz, Hadley Freeman.
The Guardian does have form, which is why it sticks in the throat that they were goading her to say more and that they lead with that topic as their headline because, despite all their protestations, they know that it’s something people want to talk about.
It’s the current stick used to beat these Women.
Thank you for all of your thoughtful posts, and the reminder to speak our truths and risk being ‘unkind’. I will continue to follow and support you and Milli Hill.
😘
🙏🏼❤️
Thank you, Anna. This topic is still so new and contentious and we haven't evolved a safe way to have a healthy conversation about it. In the absence of support and understanding, environment wins and the current environment of knee-jerk polarity and media sensationalism helps no-one. Not my trans women friends, not those questioning their gender, and certainly not women who are demonised and shut down for expressing concerns. Silencing a brilliant, inspiring woman who could help us to explore this sensitive conflict of rights is absolutely not the way forward.
Thank you Caroline for your thoughts, I hope that my piece represents a small contribution the healthy conversation that we need to have, but so many women in my DMs telling me they are afraid to comment, so they have already been silenced, like Chimamanda.
Your post is a brave contribution. We need to be able to express and hear all points of view. Thank you, Anna.
Thanks Caroline, and I know you mean brave in a complimentary way but I always feel that I need to take issue with how we use the word brave. Me talking about the conflict between women’s hard won rights and those who want to identify into womanhood and therefore share those rights is not really a brave thing. What might happen, I could lose subscribers for saying it? My life is not at risk as it is for women speaking out in other parts of the world. Now that would be brave. But if we do acknowledge that we have a movement, which in my mind is more of a (biological) male movement, in that natal males want to share space, have the same rights, as women, and that for woman to talk about this is ‘brave’ then we must surely acknowledge there is a serious problem here. I don’t remember ten or twenty years ago that it was brave for woman to talk about their rights. When did this happen in the west? It’s an interesting question.
Thanks for clarifying your viewpoint, Anna - and yes, it's an interesting and urgent question. I do think confronting potential reputational risk takes courage. Expressing concerns shouldn't have to fall into this category and it's a horrible reflection on the direction of travel that it does.
yes, it is, Caroline. It's a very interesting area in itself -- especially if you saw my DMs right now!
I can imagine...
It's not just in other countries, it's in the West as well. You can lose your job, your reputation, your livelihood, be harassed and threatened with rape, violence - even lose your life, like the victims of Nikki Secondino, Dana Rivers, Marcel Harvey, Tremaine Carroll or other trans identified men who will not be challenged or denied their claim on womanhood. Untold numbers of women experience this every day - not just the JK Rowlings and Adichis.
https://youtu.be/3rFfuG2Exyg
Hi Anna, I think the misgendering in this piece is really upsetting. I also don’t think that Adichie, who is publishing her 3rd book since her 2017 comments, can really be said to have been cancelled!
Beyond that, I disagree with your points on gender identity for three main reasons (and apologies that this is so long, but I also feel I have to speak up).
First, Adichie’s definition of gender, which you seem to adopt, means that it is entirely determined by external factors, principally how a person is treated by men/under the patriarchy. But that is such a sad and limiting idea. I am not a woman because of how men have treated me. I am a woman because I believe and feel myself to be one. (I am a cis woman because the gender I was assigned at birth matches this feeling.)
Second, I fundamentally disagree that this is not about safety: trans people are four times more likely than cis people of the same gender identity to be victims of violent crime, including sexual assault (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/. These stats are from the US, as there is no equivalent data collected for the UK). We should act accordingly to promote safety for trans people – including by enabling trans women to use female only spaces. To argue that trans women have more rights than cis women is hard to sustain, given the disproportionately high levels of violence experienced by trans men and women.
The argument is not that no man will ever pretend to be a woman in order to abuse women; it is simply that they don’t need to. Men abuse women all the time – as men.
Third, the only threat that Beth Upton actually posed to Sandie Peggie is that she did not conform to Ms Peggie’s ideas of what a woman should be. Where does this line get drawn? If Dr Upton had undergone full medical/surgical transition, could she use the female changing room? What about tall women, butch/masc presenting women, women with visible facial hair or shaven heads: are they under suspicion? Who has to prove that they are truly a woman and therefore can use the female only facilities?
Shrinking the definition of acceptable womanhood does not make women safer, it only makes our options smaller, and makes those who do not meet the required standards less safe. Definitions that seek to exclude trans women cleave tightly to a feminine, and (in the UK) white, ideal that has resulted in many masculine presenting cis women and cis women of colour being challenged in, and/or excluded from, female only spaces and from safety. The stripping of femininity from black women has a long colonial history, and results in concrete harms: for example, black women are less likely to be referred to domestic violence services than white women: https://refuge.org.uk/news/refuge-better-protection-of-black-women-domestic-abuse/. The practical effect of definitions of ‘woman’ that exclude trans women is to reinforce racist and sexist ideals.
Hi Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to write so thoroughly — I do appreciate it. I would of course take issue with almost all of points you raise particularly as these are often the standard counter arguments presented to women and I believe them to be inaccurate. But my piece was not an argument on the movement itself, my piece was about the silencing of women and specifically Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Two points to raise from your comment, it was not about her cancelling, you are right that since those comments she has continued to work — as she should. But I for one would be interested to hear more of her thoughts of this topic, and now we will not because she has been made to feel too uncomfortable (and has suffered as a result of) sharing her thoughts. We are asked to be allies to these men, but they are not being allies to us, they are getting us sacked, suspended, cancelled, silenced. Secondly Chimamanda has not said that we are women based on how we are treated, but that we are treated that way BECAUSE we are women. The two are inextricably linked. It is impossible for a biological male to know how girlhood and womanhood has been experienced and therefore identify into that group — in my opinion, but not yours. I see that. So where does this leave this movement and the humans at the heart of it themselves? Firstly a recognition of the people who are defining themselves as part of this movement but are not genuine, the rapists for example who want to be housed with women in prison and referred to as women in their trials. This movement needs to accept these people are frauds. The other answer for me is rolling back from this aggressive pursuit of female spaces and female words and instead embracing the word trans and being proud of that, and of course creating third spaces. That I think all women would support.
Just to add, this piece is a really beautiful articulation of how the experience of cancer and childbirth has 'blown open' what the writer, Cameron Steele calls (and I would also call) 'the smallest possible definition of woman'. Unfortunately it is now only available to paid subscribers but I wanted to share it anyway: https://substack.com/@steelecs/p-156471026
Great piece Anna. You put it so clearly. I don’t think anyone could argue with that. These are strange and divisive times, but I agree this is not necessarily a reason to sit on the fence.
Thank you for reading, Lily. And for your comment.
I’m looking forward to reading Adichie’s new novel and I enjoy your substack pieces, Anna. I don’t agree that Adichie is being silenced - she has a new novel coming out and is interviewed about it in a national newspaper! She chooses not to comment on certain debates which she understands are contentious, that’s all. We are all free to comment or not comment. I find the misgendering in this piece upsetting and I don’t share your views about trans women but I appreciate the honesty of your writing and I appreciate the opportunity to make my own comment. I think it’s unhelpful to close ourselves off from those who hold different opinions because this only serves those in power whose business (sic) it is to create divisions among the oppressed… let’s not argue amongst ourselves about bathrooms and changing rooms while others are busy cementing the military industrial complex xx
Thanks for sharing your views, Hannah. It looks like we differ on some issues but I’m so pleased that you shared them, as I like my pieces to be the start of a conversation and not the end x
Cruelty, not kindness is the problem here.
https://youtu.be/3rFfuG2Exyg
Please see my comment below.
If I wasn’t already a subscriber (of course I am), I would be after reading this. Well done Anna.
Thanks Rebecca!
Wonderful piece Anna, it is indeed the silencing that we should fear. I find it astonishing that there cannot be reasoned conversation on an issue that is nuanced, delicate, complex and hugely emotive. When did this debate become so forcibly binary, and therefore ensconced in hate and vitriol? I wonder who this actually serves at all.
It feels like very masculine energy, Emma. Which is ironic! Thank you for reading ❤️🙏🏼
When I read your work (or anyone’s), I personally am not looking for statements I don’t agree with or potentially offending opinions. I learned a long time ago, deep in my many years of forced silence, that I can learn far more from people who think differently. The more a person is in line with what I think, perceive and believe, the less I can learn from them. Such relationships are comforting and have purpose but that purpose is not intellectual and emotional growth.
That being said, I share your sadness and outrage at the silencing of a powerful thinker on important topics.
Thank you for this article and for always, always leading me to think differently, with more intention and more joyfully.
Renée — thank you! If I see myself and my writing as having one job to do here, it is what you have just encapsulated in this wonderful comment. THIS is why I write. My posts are never a full stop, but an ellipses, a start of a conversation. I do not proclaim to know everything, but I still want to talk about it. I wish more people thought and read like you. 🙏🏼❤️
This—> “I still want to talk about it”!! 💯 🙌🏼
Cancel culture has (it seems) done nothing for us except eliminate the ability to have critical conversations.
And … I also understand the difficulty in holding all these truths at once. I have a wonderful trans woman in my family. It feels disloyal somehow to acknowledge the fear or discomfort that another woman may feel whilst being in her presence, for instance in a changing room. I know how hard her life has been, the struggles she’s had to face, the rights she is denied daily. I hate to think of anyone fearing her gentle soul.
And yet, I can’t control how other people will feel around her. I can’t erase their experience in order to fit my own narrative of how things should be.
It’s so tricky.
And to your main point, Black women must fight so hard to be heard and then we silence them for having thoughts and the audacity to speak them. It’s not unexpected or surprising but it’s still shit 💩
Thanks for writing this.
Thank you so much for your comment, it is so true, this ‘difficulty of holding all the truths at once.’ This is the space in which we must endeavour to acclimatise ourselves. I think it’s important for humanity, though it is extremely difficult in policy. So much appreciate your thoughts. ❤️🙏🏼