Trigger warning – mention of sexual assault, alleged (but not actual) transphobia.
On every issue there are some positions that are so far beyond the pale that to debate them, to allow them into the discussion is to normalise them (and even denouncing them helps to normalise them).
It’s not a question of the existence lines, so much as where they get drawn, by who, and if they are redrawable.
I’ll get to the case of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but first this –
I remember that case of the the Australian Tom Stranger, who raped his Icelandic girlfriend, Thordis Elva. Years later she contacted him and he apologised, was contrite. As per this BBC article in 2017 the two of them tried to do a speaking tour to get discussion going about male entitlement (and the violence implicit and explicit, sadly, too often (i.e. ever) in it). It would have been great, I think, forcing men to think about themselves, or at least give women better tools for understanding that (not that it is women’s responsibility to fix male violence). But the tour didn’t happen as broadly as it could have because venues came under pressure for “platforming a rapist.” Never mind that he wasn’t advocating it (!) he – and the woman he had raped – were trying to help others be less likely to be perps and survivors of rape. I think about that every so often, and think about how the demands for ‘safety and purity get in the way of safety for today’s young (and old). So it goes.
Then again, maybe the problem isn’t quite so much the “no-platformers” but, erm, us men. This from the foot of the article.
But the small number currently engaging in the debate soon came in sharp focus. It emerged that a separate men-only discussion after Elva and Strange’s event only attracted two participants.
“It seems men here weren’t ready to have the conversation with themselves,” one of them said.
Anyway, back to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The full quote below with context below, but this is the key bit.
“It’s a cannibalistic ethos,” she told her friend the writer Dave Eggers about sections of the progressive left at the time. “It swiftly, gleefully, brutally eats its own. There is such a quick assumption of ill will and an increasing sanctimony and humourlessness that can often seem inhumane.”
And the full quote here.
In a different way, arguments that raged around identity and women’s biology put Adichie in the headlines in 2017. In an interview with Channel 4 News to highlight the treatment of women, she was asked whether a transgender woman was “any less of a real woman”. She replied, “a trans woman is a trans woman”. She went on: “I think the whole problem of gender in the world is about our experiences. 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.”
In the consequent backlash, Adichie wrote a blogpost expressing horror at the accusations of transphobia and reiterating her support for trans rights. But her desire for openness and frank debate (including with Zoe Williams of this paper, who interviewed her after her Reith Lecture on freedom of speech in 2022) put her at odds with those whose bottom line is: no debate.
There is no doubt her career was damaged. Interviews, prizes and talks were cancelled. And she cancelled interviews, too – those that suggested she might want to take the opportunity to apologise. It seemed for a while as if there were only two headlines available: “Chimamanda apologises” or “Chimamanda refuses to apologise”. “It’s a cannibalistic ethos,” she told her friend the writer Dave Eggers about sections of the progressive left at the time. “It swiftly, gleefully, brutally eats its own. There is such a quick assumption of ill will and an increasing sanctimony and humourlessness that can often seem inhumane.”
From here.
marchudson.net 
Leave a comment