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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie vs. transgender people

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author whose comments about transgender people have been criticized as transphobic.

Background

Adichie was born 15 September 1977 Enugu in Nigeria. Her father was a professor and her mother served as a college registrar. Their family is Catholic, and she has five siblings.

She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria before coming to the US and enrolling at Drexel University before transferring to Eastern Connecticut State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2001. She then earned master’s degrees and both Yale and Johns Hopkins before winning a MacArthur Fellowship that took her to Harvard.

Adichie began publishing her writing in 1997 and has since written many poems, short stories, and books that have earned her a number of awards and prizes. She gave a TED Talk in 2009 and a TEDx talk in 2012 that were well received.

Views on transgender issues

2017 comments

Although she has criticized anti-LGBT laws in Nigeria, Adichie was accused of transphobia in 2017 when asked if trans women are women. She said, “My feeling is trans women are trans women.” 

Adichie later clarified on March 13:

Perhaps I should have said trans women are trans women and cis women are cis women and all are women. Except that ‘cis’ is not an organic part of my vocabulary. And would probably not be understood by a majority of people. Because saying ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ acknowledges 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.

2020 comments

In 2020, Adichie voiced support for J.K. Rowling after Rowling complained about the “new trans activism” that had labeled her a TERF and a transphobe. After she got criticism for calling Rowling’s piece “perfectly reasonable,” Adichie complained about “cancel culture” and “the American liberal orthodoxy.“

There’s a sense in which you aren’t allowed to learn and grow. Also forgiveness is out of the question. I find it so lacking in compassion. How much of our wonderfully complex human selves are we losing?

I think in America the worst kind of censorship is self-censorship, and it is something America is exporting to every part of the world. We have to be so careful: you said the wrong word you must be crucified immediately.

[…] The orthodoxy, the idea that you are supposed to mouth the words, it is so boring. In general, human beings are emotionally intelligent enough to know when something is coming from a bad place.

2022 comments

In 2022, she expanded on her views about “this whole trans thing” in The Guardian:

This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm. “So somebody who looks like my brother – he says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’, and she’s transphobic?”

When the interview countered that if her sibling really were trans, “You’d probably think treating him with dignity and respect was more important than where he went to the toilet?”

[Adichie] “But why is that?” she asks. “Why can’t they be equal parts of the conversation?”

[reporter] “Maybe because dignity is more important?”

[Adichie] “Not if you consider women’s views to be valid. This is what baffles me. Are there no such things as objective truth and facts?”

Media

The danger of a single story (2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

We should all be feminists (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc

References

Williams, Zoe (November 19, 2022). ‘I believe literature is in peril’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes out fighting for freedom of speech. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/28/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-bbc-reith-lecture-freedom-truth-trans-rights

Allardice, Lisa (28 April 2018). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘This could be the beginning of a revolution’. The Guardian. Archived 

Crockett, Emily (15 March 2017). The controversy over Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and trans women, explained. Vox Archived 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Clarifying. Facebook Archived from the original on 26 February 2022.

Allardice, Lisa (14 November 2020). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘America under Trump felt like a personal loss’. The Guardian Archived 

Okafor, Chinedu (17 November 2020). Chimamanda Adichie comes under same fire as Rowling over transphobia. YNaija Archived 

Akhabau, Izin (18 November 2020). Akwaeke Emezi: Non-binary author shares heartbreak at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The Voice.  Archived 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozie (15 June 2021). IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Flood, Alison (16 June 2021). ‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony. The Guardian. Retrieved 30 June 2021. 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. 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.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie doubles down on anti-trans views. PinkNews. 1 December 2022.

Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Goes Anti-Trans Again. Advocate. 2 December 2022

Resources

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (chimamanda.com)

Twitter (twitter.com)

Facebook (facebook.com)