Author, MacArthur Genius grant winner, and feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie detonated a social media landmine in recent weeks after saying, that trans women are essentially trans women who, based on their male socialization from birth, have a different set of experiences than cisgender women. In an interview while on the promo circuit for her new book, Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, she said, "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.”
Despite the controversy that was generated by her statement, during an event held at Politics and Prose Bookstore on early this week, the author did not back down when addressing the issue for the second time. "I didn't apologize because I don't think I have anything to apologize for," she said.
Photo: Giphy
"From the very beginning, I think it's been quite clear that there's no way I could possibly say that trans women are not women. It's the sort of thing to me that's obvious, so I start from that obvious premise. Of course, they are women but in talking about feminism and gender and all of that, it's important to acknowledge the difference in the experience of gender. That's really what my point is."
"This is fundamentally about language orthodoxy," Adichie explains. "There's a part of me that resists this sort of thing because I don't think it's helpful to insist that unless you want to use the exact language I want to use, I will not listen to what you're saying." She went on to say, "I think it also illustrates the less pleasant aspects of the American left, that there sometimes is a kind of language orthodoxy that you're supposed to participate in, and when you don't there's a kind of backlash that gets very personal and very hostile and very closed to debate."
"Had I said, 'a cis woman is a cis woman, and a trans woman is a trans woman', I don't think I would get all the crap that I'm getting, but that's actually really what I was saying," she stated. "But because 'cis' is not part of my vocabulary – it just isn't – it really becomes about language and the reason I find that troubling is to insist that you have to speak in a certain way and use certain expressions, otherwise we cannot have a conversation, can close up a debate. And if we can't have conversations, we can't have progress."
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