For some context, in case, like me, you don't recognize the author by name:
> Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. [1]
From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely:
> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.
> The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness.
Hallelujah!! Can't say enough about how much I agree with this, and given that the author is well-known I hope it gets a lot of press. One of the most bizarre effects of this in the past ~5 years is there are now certain words (and actually not even certain words, certain phonemes) that are simply deemed un-utterable. Never mind the context, never mind if your sentence is actually "<word> is incredibly offensive and should never be directed at another person", never mind if you're actually quoting from a legal document [1], the actual meaning doesn't matter, intent doesn't matter, all that matters is if the sound coming out of your mouth matches the list of forbidden sounds. 10 years ago I would have laughed it off if someone had suggested we would have gone this collectively nuts.
No, certain words and phonemes are not unutterable. Their utterance can be used as excuse to hurt you, or they can be celebrated, depending on whether you are in the good graces of the thuggish management class that has taken over so many of our institutions. So if you are Donald McNeil and these thugs decide they don’t like you, and quote someone else using a forbidden word, that can be used to fire you¹. The fact that other people are allowed to use the same word dozens of times in a single article shows that it is not the word itself that is prohibited.
> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything
This is the proper response. I'm not sure why anyone is on Twitter. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't be using your real name.
The upside is de minimis, and the downside of a misconstrued opinion or a bad joke is "your life is basically ruined." Maybe not today or tomorrow -- maybe it'll happen 10 years from now when the Overton window shifts again.
But if there is danger in a Twitter mob, that mob can savage you just as easily if you are not on the platform. It’ll just take you a little longer to find out about it.
Interestingly, this empowers people who hold beliefs so deviant that they're universally subject to sanction.
They've already paid the reputation tax, and are now free to use the technology to its maximum benefit, when in earlier times they'd have been outsiders in their community struggling to find like minded allies through creepy newsletters or pamphlets
This might not be relevant to you, but in case my braindump may spark a serious conversation: //mere// virtue signaling is closer (but still not quite right). Part of the problem is that signaling (and, the more I look at this word, the more problematic it becomes, as I'm not sure what doesn't count in at least one's lightcone), virtuous or otherwise, need not be intended; agents can accidentally give away information. The virtuous agent may signal, and their signals may be both virtuous and appear otherwise to the vicious and virtuous alike. Part of the problem with the phrase "virtue signaling" is that there's a positivistic definition of the concept, but there are also justified manners in which to engage in that practice. Virtue signaling need not be fake or reduced to appearance (assuming we set aside the problem of representing a thing-in-itself). The virtuous agent may also perform or signal knowing they are signaling, and they may do so in virtue of performance. Maybe "Vicious Virtue-Signaling" is more appropriate. There are likely many attempts to label this thing we're worried about. This strikes me as the closest answer: when one aims to signal one's goodness in a deceptive manner that treats the other (including one's future self) as mere means, one has engaged in immoral or vicious virtue-signaling.
This. Basically half of LinkedIn posts these days. "Here's this guy who spent 16 hours a day selling watermelon at a traffic light. I came in and helped him find a job and now he's a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and can feed his 12 kids. #bekind"
> Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist.
When dealing with voracious liars that gaslight and try to muddy the water through verbosity and the cloak of victimhood it's really useful to have these kinds of small but immutable points. Same thing with people stuck in cults, a small discongruous fact that draws a line in the sand makes all the difference for cutting out people acting in bad faith.
I had a co-founder develop a cocaine and eventually meth addiction (and eventually spent time in jail) and the massive amount of content he spewed was undone by a few simple and undeniable facts like these.
People, _who shockingly to me_ were able to ignore the linear facts and timelines of events that showed causation.. were moved by a small inconsistency that lodged in their minds.
I don't know what the implications of this are but I personally find it both powerful and disheartening.
I want to believe that it's a combination of (a) the sheer volume of tweets that makes it impossible to catch all the stuff and (b) that there's probably a lot of overlap (at least initially) between people who read the tweet and people who agreed with it (so a relatively small number of people flagging it as a TOS violation).
I don’t understand a single word of what you wrote. How does one defend against naughty words using a machete, unless the machete is wielded against the speaker of the heresy?
The argument is that normal people (not Adichie, not celebrities) see the bigotry of celebrities in the media, and see it as justifying their own bigotry. Some of those non-celebrities might be violent.
I'm confused. Are you saying the text you quoted is literally the text of the tweet I linked to? That is not the case on my internet.
Edit: The text I quoted is from the tweet at the end of the thread that starts with the text you quoted. For me, the text I quoted is what's initially displayed (also a few more words I didn't include as they didn't seem relevant).
I really don’t like how discussions on issues like this always seem to devolve into an argument over the underlying “culture war” issues, and I’d like to try and disambiguate this issue and others like it as I see them.
I’m a trans woman. Two things can be true here:
1. Adichie is transphobic.
2. Whatever the harms of her transphobia, the other person referenced in this post behaved egregiously outside of professional and personal norms in attacking Adichie, and this behavior is not appropriate in any circumstance.
Too often I think people complain about how they are treated on social media, or about “ideological orthodoxy,” as a proxy for defending opinions that they understand to be offensive. But it’s perfectly reasonable to think both that Adichie’s opinions on trans people are offensive, and that the offense does not justify the aggression she received here.
I think the point is that I haven't seen anything to imply that Adichie is transphobic. This is taken from her Wikipedia page:
> In 2017, Adichie was criticized by some as transphobic, initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans women."[44][9] Adichie later further clarified her statement, writing "that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition, without elevating one or the other, which was my point. I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people."
Now granted, there may be more to the story that I am not aware of, but stating that there actually are differences between "women born female and women who transition" shouldn't be considered transphobic, it should be considered acknowledging reality.
I mean, I think what you are saying is the very thing so many people have an issue with, that if I try to say something that is definitely true, "trans women are trans women, and are in some ways different from cis women", automatically implies your second statement, "we should be allowed to discriminate against trans women because they are different." I mean, sure, some people may mean that, but one of Adichie's main beefs is that we always assume the worst in a very "if you're not with us it every way then you're against us", and that given Adichie's other actions and support for the LGBT community (no small feat in Nigeria) that she is at least somewhat deserving of the benefit of the doubt.
Otherwise what you're left with is people feeling that their only option to not be considered transphobic is if they say "trans women are women and are the same as cis women", which gets at the heart of why people are so concerned about public discourse today.
Have you read the Rowling essay? She advocates many discriminatory positions in it. Among them, she doesn't think trans women should be allowed in women's bathrooms, or other "single sex spaces." I don't think everyone who agrees with that statement is transphobic, but it's become a bit of a shibboleth amongst people who are, as it's often posed against the statement "trans women are women."
> she doesn't think trans women should be allowed in women's bathrooms, ... a shibboleth amongst people who are, as it's often posed against the statement "trans women are women.
Because the right to call yourself "trans woman" has been widened to the point of including people who didn't undergo any gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy. And yes, I don't think that those "trans women" are, or should be considered, women. Actually, not even "trans".
> And yes, I don't think that those "trans women" are, or should be considered, women. Actually, not even "trans".
You say this very lightly but it's obvious to me that you haven't really considered the consequences.
For example, you say "people who didn't undergo any gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy". But you don't seem to consider that those are medical interventions. I think if you thought of them in that light, you would be a little more thoughtful about demanding that people undergo medical interventions for any reason, no less as the price of being recognised as their claimed, or lived gender.
Such requirements are common. In some countries in Europe until very recently transwomen were not allowed to change their papers to identify them as women and to declare the female names they used everyday unless they could demonstrate that they had been rendered surgically sterile, by castration. Germany was one such case.
I wonder also if you have a slightly romantic idea of surgery and hormone
therapy. The truth is that surgery doesn't magically transform a man into a
woman, no matter what some surgeons want us to believe. Some transwomen will
always look like men, no matter how much they cut off and throw away. Others,
will look like women without having taken any hormones in their entire lives. I
know that's hard to believe, but it's how it is. The human species is only very
lightly sexually dimorphic and some males can pass for women, and some females
for men, with very little intervention. In the case of transwomen, for many it
is enough to remove their beard (by electrolysis or photolysis) and take care of
their hair, to be immediately identified as women by everyone that sees them. On
the other side, history is full of females who cut their hair short, wore pants
and lived the rest of their lives as men.
But, I know the above is hard to believe so OK. Just please try to keep an open
mind and remember that you don't automatically know everything there is to know
about transwomen (and transmen).
Transitioning is centered around the needs of each individual - many choose not to or are outright unable to receive surgery or medical transitioning, yet that doesn't make them any less trans.
At the end of the day, it's their decision what to do with their body, not yours. All that is asked of you is to respect their decisions and treat them with the same amount of respect as you'd treat any other non-trans individual.
It's their decision what to do with their bodies, absolutely, but then why should everyone be forced to accept their view of themselves as an objective fact? I don't doubt that in the vast majority of cases their view is sincere and sound- but shouldn't this judgement be left to those who know them rather than being imposed?
It is an objective fact. Each individual is free to express themselves as they see fit. Nobody is responsible for proving that they're a -real trans- and we really shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping that anyways, because we already did that decades ago and the APA and AMA now move in line with WPATH guidelines which are far more reasonable.
If we meet in public and you say "Hi, my name is Michael" I can only assume that that's objective fact. If I then say "You know, you don't really seem like a Michael. I think you're more of a Denise based on what I've seen." You would be right to take offense for disregarding your own right to self expression based on my own interpretation of your person from the limited information gathered in a first impression.
This is a very similar thing, except by the time someone is out as trans you can best believe they've spent years agonizing about whether it's even a good idea to do so knowing they'll face this kind of a conversation every time the topic comes up around people who they aren't close with / are not sympathetic.
An attribute that can change based on someone's feelings is definitely not objective. And all of the genders that are neither male nor female were invented in the last few decades, so membership in one can't be factual. Likewise, membership in a construct called "gender" which is divorced from biological sex was also invented within the last century, so that can't be said to be factual either.
Objective [1]:
1. Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality.
2. Not influenced by the emotions or prejudices.
3. Based on observed facts; without subjective assessment.
Non-binary gender identity and roles have been present in human societies dating as far back as 4500 years ago[1]. The only thing relatively new in the last 100 years is the moral panic about it.
Furthermore, from a scientific standpoint, there's not really any such thing as a clean binary division between male and female. Chromosomes get messy, and even absent issues with the X and Y chromosomes themselves [2] there's some fun stuff with the SRY gene [3] and hormonal receptors in utero that can affect gender identity and presentation [4].
Meh... what you're describing is rarely where the actual conflict is. What about situations where it does affect other people (and unfortunately those situations tend to be ones where merely articulating your concerns is enough to earn you all sorts of labels and hate)?
I see your motte-and-bailey and I raise you a straw man.
I don't think there is much to read into “trans women are trans women, and are in some ways different from cis women” from this author. I certainly don't read “we should be allowed to discriminate against trans women because they are different.” out of it and thus I'd consider the interpretation to be a strawman: its easier to attack the author for it but I don't think its what she meant.
I think this gets at her point in the last paragraph, "the assumption of good faith is dead." If we interpret what the author said as the latter statement we are assuming it was said in bad faith.
Okay - you've shown us the motte, but where is the bailey?
Where does Chimamanda advocate for discrimination against trans women? Because there is nothing in your source that implies that.
Also, that is only a motte in liberal circles. Saying "I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people" is not necessarily a no-brainer moral stance for the general population.
The bailey is in the othering of trans women as a separate class which opens opportunities for discrimination by separating them from women-at-large. And since we still have binary gender norms to contend heavily with in the US and beyond, this ends up playing out as bills banning trans women from playing in a league in accordance their gender, bathroom bills, etc. [1]
There's a fantastic book about this written by Julia Serrano called 'Whipping Girl' [2] that goes over these things and more and describes these phenomena as 'Transmisogyny' - trans individuals being subject to both misogyny and misandry depending on the situation, and sometimes both when it's convenient.
Why is speaking of "trans women" othering them into a separate class, but the same isn't true when speaking about "black women" - which is something that is celebrated in modern intersectionality theory? Don't trans women face unique challenges relating to their womanhood - just the same way that black women do?
If you're interested in an intersectional discussion, then sure. But too often this framing of 'trans women are trans women, not Women' is used in bad faith to open the dialog of "What should we do about them in women's spaces then, since they aren't?'
Isn't it bad faith to assume that someone who says something like "I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people" is actually arguing against the rights of transgender people without any evidence otherwise?
Saying that you support the rights of transgender people is great, but it's possible to say that and still get it fundamentally wrong so much as to actively harm people. So if someone says that but then says "But I have concerns about women's safety" now you see how quickly trans women become removed from the conversation.
Chimamanda, as far as I can tell, never argued about women's safety, or really anything like that. What I do know she said that got pushback was that transgender and cisgendered people have different histories and experiences. That doesn't seem particularly controversial, but then again I am not a twitter justice warrior.
To be clear, Adichie has said she finds J.K. Rowling's opinions on trans people reasonable, so it's not just an assumption. There's evidence backing it.
She said that Rowling's article was "a perfectly reasonable piece", relative to "all the noise" it was generating online. Are we talking about Rowling's actual words, or what they were morphed into on twitter?
Have you ever characterized something which you don't necessarily agree with, but appears genuine and well argued, as "reasonable"?
> Are we talking about Rowling's actual words, or what they were morphed into on twitter?
Her words. I read it. In the essay Rowling says explicitly that she doesn't think trans women should be allowed to use women's bathrooms or women's shelters, dismisses concerns about suicide rates in the trans community, and lumps in advocates for trans rights with Donald Trump and incels as part of a new wave of anti-feminist sentiment sweeping the liberal west.
I didn't find it well argued or reasonable, it's a rehashing of tired arguments that transphobic people have been making on Mumsnet and Fox News in the US for years.
I'm a man and my neighbor is a man. I don't think we're the same. But thinking a born-woman and a trans-woman are different is wrong and oppressive? Transphobic is an easy word to flaunt to target people who have different opinions. I find it unbelieveable that someone could think impossible to make a difference while not having any problem with trans people. To label people transphobic for having this single opinion is itself bigotry.
I mean this as a genuine question - do you think it offensive to say that “a trans woman is a trans woman?”, meaning that their life experience is not identical to a cis-woman?
> I have said "I am a trans woman" many times in my life.
Me too!
> Can you please explain to me how "trans women are women" is transphobic?
The relevant statement is "trans women are trans women," which is how Adichie responded when asked if trans women are women. Of itself that statement is of course not transphobic, it's a tautology.
The problem is that in this case "trans women are trans women" and "trans women are women" are shibboleths for a set of beliefs about whether trans women should be seen as women (like lesbian women) in the eyes of society and the law. When people say "trans women are trans women," and go on to say that because we're trans we shouldn't be allowed in women's bathrooms, and other spaces for women, with the unspoken implication being that we aren't "real" women, I think that's transphobic. I don't know all of what Adichie believes. I know she finds JK Rowling's views reasonable, and that she has hinted at agreeing with them before (such as in this instance.)
Maybe we can start by growing up and not caring how people define the insult of the day, even less whether they spit it at us, and less still about whether they are offended by our opinions.
If you are confused as to how the statement "trans women are trans women" could be transphobic, it might help to imagine the question was "do you think black people are people" and the reply was "black people are black people." It's a true statement, and also one that many would call racist as a response to that question. You may not agree that these are equivalent, but that is the position you are arguing against, not morons who don't understand that there are differences.
Others have gotten very rich creating a world in which poor pedestrians can now expect to be threatened by SUVs. But what exactly was your point with regard to the story?
Tried to find out what OP actually said in the interview she references, and it seems her point was about nuance, that the experiences of a trans woman are not the same as someone who was assigned female at birth.[0]
Which... I think should be a "well duh" sort of thing, but of course in our outrage-fueled chase-engagement-at-all-costs social media environment, that means that we have to twist things to assume the OP was actually saying "trans women are not women" (when she didn't say that and denies she was implying that). But I don't know; I'd never heard of her before this post, so maybe she has a history of saying shitty things and this is just the latest.[1] Or maybe it's what it looks like on its face, a few jealous, opportunistic people trying to smear her.
(I think it's telling that one of these people called out to their "followers" to attack OP with machetes. You've lost the moral high ground once you do that, if you hadn't already. I don't care how pissed you are, direct calls to violence toward another person, because of some words, automatically invalidates your viewpoint in my book.)
All this stuff just makes me sad and tired. And I know I'm privileged that I (being a straight, cis, white man) generally don't have to worry about any of this in my daily life. But I wish people could just listen to each other, and not immediately assume ill intent, or especially manufacture ill intent in order to bring someone down and elevate themselves. It's all just so counter-productive, and pushes people away who could otherwise be allies. Not saying that there aren't people out there who dog-whistle and say bad things just ambiguously enough for plausible deniability. But it feels like the default is to assume that of everyone who says anything, and that's gross.
> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own.
And all this just reminds me that I still need to get around to downloading my FB and Twitter history before deleting it all. (I'd really like to close my FB account, but outside of the pandemic use it heavily for event invitations. I might close my Twitter account, though.)
What is not great about saying that "Trans women are trans women"? I thought modern feminist theory was about intersectionality, and isn't trying to rewrite a trans persons history to be equivalent to a cisgendered person's history the exact opposite of intersectionality?
For those who have not read the piece yet, the starting paragraphs of Part 3 are especially good:
> In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.
> I find it obscene.
> There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.
We have all met those people.
It reminds me of something that PG said: fanboys become your worst haters. That is, it's a small step from intense love to intense hate.
He also said somewhere that there is a higher incidence of bad actors/sociopaths among founders of non-profits than for-profits among the teams he's met.
The way I think about it is: ideology is dual use. The two uses are collective good and individual gain. Those are often hopelessly entangled, because a good way to get ahead is by presenting oneself as selflessly working toward the common good. Cue Ayn Rand...
What that means here is we can criticize both Chimananda and her critic as "playing the game". It's possible to see their actions as selfish or selfless or most likely both at once.
The lesson I draw from Chimananda's story, though, is that people who are out to fight dragons (i.e. defeat the forces of evil in society) are liable to turn you into their next dragon. The revolution eats its own. It happened to Basecamp, too.
That is one reason why startups that want to thrive should not hire activists for whom being woke is central to their identity. They will outwoke you, too, no matter how woke you thought you were.
There is if you have somehow decided that “the woke” is the enemy. But this behaviour is general and can be seen left and right. Stupid tribalism, manufactured outrage, and overreaction. People are regularly killed as a consequence of this. It’s a disease of our times, and it does not give any hope in our future.
> The lesson I draw from Chimananda's story, though, is that people who are out to fight dragons (i.e. defeat the forces of evil in society) are liable to turn you into their next dragon. The revolution eats its own. It happened to Basecamp, too.
History is full of oppressed turned oppressors, but we are very determined not to learn from it.
Just shows it’s not possible to ever actually say the right thing with regard to trans discourse, regardless of how “inclusive” one is attempting to be. There is always, always, always an angle of attack available.
I’m sorry this happened to her but it’s also an object lesson in what that discourse ultimately leads to. It’s not acceptance.
I am absolutely fascinated that someone can read that entire essay and come about with this conclusion. There is so much nuance, so many well articulated points that transcend politics, and your conclusion is "my side of the culture war is correct". It's just fucking sad man.
I’m a trans woman and the fact that saying “the experience of a trans woman is not the same as that of a cis woman” can be turned into evidence of transphobia, for which one must be hung out to dry on social media, is fucking horrific to me. There are people for whom it is impossible to say anything correct about trans issues if they are looking for someone to tar and feather. Or about any other issue. The American Left has a terrible tendency to turn into a circular firing squad.
There is a certain style of essentialist thinking that Twitter encourages. No apologies will be accepted. You are a bad person forever, your transgressions will be screenshotted and saved on whatever this era’s repository of Drama is (I think right now it’s Kiwifarms?) to be brought up whenever you’re seen, let us create outrage around you that we may feed upon to boost our own profile, and that Twitter may feed upon to keep everyone glued to the news about whatever poor bastard is today’s Main Character on there and jam more ads in front of Engaged Eyeballs.
The missing backstory here is that the author _played the game_. This is the end state. You play with fire, you get burned.
If you want to use graduate student/CIA-recruitment language, reduce individuals down to their demographic components, and rely on stereotypes to build a hierarchy of piety, this is what you can expect. There is a lot of incentive to play the game, for a brief time you can be king of the hill, and have NPR, the BBC, Vox and Twitter fawning over you, and maybe get a good book deal out of it. However, whenever the slightest crack appears in your facade, which it inevitably will, there will be dozens of people rushing in to knock you down and take your place. That's what you chose.
You don't have to play the game. You can establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker and become "uncancelable", because your ideas will stand on their own merit. It is not the easiest path.
Do you have citations for this backstory you are referring to of the author "playing the game"? If you do, I'm genuinely interested in what you are referring to. If you don't, you are just casting aspersions without providing any info that would let someone evaluate your position.
adichie is a prominent feminist author. it reads to me as if the person you are replying to is sneering at her for that reason, framing her feminism as a comparable manipulation (aka "the game") and reveling in that.
I haven't read the author. Is it necessary to establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker to be a novelist? Tolstoy's ideas were often silly, but he was a tremendous novelist.
As for uncancelable, what does that even mean? That the idle and excitable will quit barking at you on Twitter? If it just means you won't care, why bother with the establishment bit.
If you read the essay, the anecdote is just an anchor for some lucid thoughts on today's culture and how people treat each other on and off the internet. It's worth a read.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. [...] If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
> Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. [1]
From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely:
> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie