I want to be clear here: the issue of transphobia in feminist spaces is bigger than Chimamanda Adichie. This specific conversation may start with Chimamanda, but it definitely doesn’t end with her. The bigger issue is that cis-feminists have to come to terms with the fact that transphobia is a modern feminist issue because, in 2020, you can’t talk about sexism without talking about classism, without talking about racism, without talking about homophobia and transphobia.
But before we get into all that, a little context: what sparked this current conversation about Transphobia as it relates to Chimamanda Adichie? Well, it really goes back to 2018, when Adichie made some comments about trans womxnhood. When asked if trans womxn were womxn, she replied that “trans womxn are trans womxn”. She later clarified that she wasn’t saying that trans womxn weren’t womxn, just that there are “real differences between transgender womxn and womxn who are not transgender”. However, following some (objectively transphobic) comments that author J.K. Rowling made about the trans experience (the Rowling situation is A Lot to unpack, but here’s a quick breakdown), Chimamanda is once again facing scrutiny from trans activists and other LGBT writers for referring to a 3,600 essay Rowling penned about gender (an essay that is packed with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist talking points) as “perfectly reasonable”. To Chimamanda, “JK Rowling is a womxn who is progressive, who clearly stands for and believes in diversity”.
You may be saying to yourself, “well, she’s entitled to her opinion”, and I don’t disagree with you on that. I think Chimamanda is well within her right to hold whatever views she wants to. In fact, I want to be very clear about this: I’m not cancelling anyone. But this can’t be boiled down to just “having an opinion” because the views expressed by Rowling and Chimamanda are often used to minimize the trans experience or to invalidate it. Some men may hold the view that womxn are inferior, that a womxn’s role is to serve. And they’re technically “entitled” to this opinion, but this view is obviously harmful and should be challenged. I know that Chimamanda is an important feminist figure to many young Nigerian womxn, but even those we look up to can hold harmful views, and we have to be able to hold them accountable.
It is better for us, as people who are dedicated to a feminist cause, to have a conversation that is long overdue: cis Nigerian feminists are (generally) not doing the work to dismantle transphobia. Dismantling transphobia is not a goal that exists outside of our work as feminists. It’s vital to that work because feminism is a global movement that deals with dismantling the oppressive system of patriarchy, which is a system that cannot be untangled from other forms of systemic oppression: racism, classism, and queerphobia. At this point in time, they are all tied so deeply together that to try and tackle one without attempting to tackle the others is…misguided at best.
I think one of the biggest issues is that the trans experience isn’t really discussed in Nigeria. It’s either seen as taboo, or an import of Western culture, but the fact remains that there are trans people in our country, and they are oppressed under the same patriarchal system that cis people are, albeit in ways that relate specifically to their trans identity.
We are all aware that in a patriarchal system, womxnhood is viewed as lesser, and womxn are viewed as objects, rather than full human beings. And because femininity is tied to womxnhood, it is also viewed as lesser. So a person who is socialized as male, who is seen as a boy, would be punished for expressing any kind of femininity because they are not performing masculinity in the way they are expected to. Basically, strict gender roles are destructive to all of us. They teach cis men to view womxn as beneath them, they teach womxn to be in competition with one another/to police each other, and any deviation from those gender roles (such as being a gay man or a lesbian or transgender or gender non-conforming) is met with violence, with isolation, with disgust…and as feminists, we must work to tear down the WHOLE thing.
Obviously, there are differences in the experiences of trans womxn and cis womxn, and there is definitely space to discuss those differences. But if we’re going to insist on having those specific conversations, then we should be just as open to making space for all of the different ways our specific identities can affect our everyday lives. That means talking about class too. Middle-class feminists should aim to take into account the specific struggles and experiences of poor womxn, cis-feminists should take into account the specific struggles and experiences of trans womxn.
In movements where the end-goal is to tear down an oppressive structure, there will be many of us who want the same things and have wildly different experiences. That can be our greatest strength, only if we can do the work of admitting where there are gaps in our knowledge, giving each other the space to share our specific backgrounds and experiences, and supporting each other through all that. We live in a time where we can learn about experiences that we may not have known existed, and it is in our best interest to take advantage of all of that knowledge available to us, and to pass it on and make it accessible to others. There is space for all of us, if we choose to make it.
