If you have been online these past few days you witnessed the shitstorm that Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie’s essay ‘IT IS OBSCENE’ created. I’m here to address it, because it was especially hurtful to me, these are authors whose work I deeply value. Adichie’s was some of the first work I read as a baby feminist back in 2016. I have since read most of her novels and thoroughly enjoyed them, I often still wonder what happened to Kainene.

I only started reading Akwaeke Emezi’s work this year, and what little I have read managed to completely rock my shit. Their writing makes me feel seen in such a vulnerable way. So to see this mess makes me feel deeply saddened.

In my opinion, the essay was really about personal relationships that weren’t handled well, but I’m not here to discuss that. I find that every relationship is incredibly personal and complex, and as an outsider, I simply don’t have the range.

Yes, Adichie’s writing is brilliant. Yes, she has a way with words. Let’s get that out of the way as well. 

At the crux of this, is a statement Adichie made about trans women which Akwaeke and other trans people and activists called her out over.

What did she say you ask? “A trans woman is a trans woman.” What’s wrong with that statement? Sounds harmless enough, right?

At the heart of her statement is a deliberate and political refusal to name, it’s a refusal to say that when it comes down to it, trans women are women, and it is particularly disingenuous. Adichie is a smart lady, she knows what she’s doing. Language is important. So, while she says that she is for trans rights and only wants to recognize the specific, unique experience of womanhood that trans women embody, her statement implies that she doesn’t think a trans woman is a “real” woman, and therein lies the problem.

I’m not saying that there is no difference between trans women and cisgender women, what I’m saying is that there isn’t one universal experience of womanhood, even amongst cisgender women.

Even if the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was already in place, the African Union felt it was necessary to adopt the Maputo Protocol. This was because they recognised the unique experiences of African women which the CEDAW did not reflect. An African woman’s experience of womanhood will not be the same as that of a wealthy white woman living in the global north. Yes, she is an african woman, but at the end of the day, she is still a woman.

A cursory glance at feminist history will reveal that feminists haven’t always agreed on everything, and that trend continues today. I applaud it because this disagreement is how the movement grows.

Consider Susan B. Anthony, a 19^th century feminist in America who agitated for women’s suffrage rights. In this time, the notion of women speaking publicly was so novel that mobs of men would come to heckle them, and speakers were often arrested for making public statements challenging male supremacy. It was also shortly after slavery had been abolished, and racism was still deeply embedded in the fabric of American society.

So why am I boring you with American feminist history? Because history repeats itself, and in order not to make the same mistakes as our predecessors, we must recognise it.

Susan B. Anthony was no doubt very radical for her time, and her contributions towards American women winning the vote were invaluable. However, she had one weakness; her feminism catered primarily to white, middle-class women and it left out black women and poor working-class women.  

Although Anthony had opposed slavery and joined the abolitionist movement, she later refused to support the efforts of black women who wanted to form a branch of the suffrage association. This was because she did not want anything to get in the way of bringing southern white women (who held racist sentiments) into the suffrage association.

When the fifteenth amendment prohibiting disenfranchisement on the basis of race, colour and previous condition of servitude, but not sex, was passed, she stated that “… no negro shall be enfranchised while a woman is not.”

Her companion and friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that white women were more deserving of the vote than black men. The country needed “educated suffrage,” she said, and including former slaves and immigrants as voters would bring “pauperism, ignorance, and degradation” to politics. Both demonstrated a lack of intersectionality in their politics, even if they had fought and organized side by side with black women.

Intersectionality was coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap. Intersectional feminism is the kind of feminism that seeks to include women of all walks into its embrace; black, queer, immigrant, disabled, Muslim, poor, transgender etc. while taking cognizance of the intersections of identity and the oppressive power structures that create those identities.  

Let’s apply intersectionality to our African context. In October 2020, Nigerian Youth rose up in protest against the violence, extortion, and profiling that they were experiencing at the hands of the police. The #ENDSARS movement was a cause we could all get behind, even from across the continent. However, when Queer Nigerians spoke up about the profiling they experienced for their real/perceived sexual orientation and gender identity, they were accused of “hijacking the movement”, ruining things.

Many Nigerians did not hide the fact that they believed that SARS had every right to harrass someone over their sexuality. Maybe they did not realise that as long as SARS could harrass queer Nigerians, all it would take for a Cishet Nigerian to be similarly harrassed would be the barest suspicion of queerness. Slightly too colourful hair, a few too many piercings or a baseless accusation and they would be back to square one.

Let’s bring it closer to home.

A few years ago, Ugandan feminists got together and organized a women’s march to protest the unsolved murders of women around Entebbe. Afterwards, some feminists were angry that there were queer women at the march, and that they were waving pride flags. They felt they had been “tricked,” and that “abasiyazi bonoonye ekintu.” (the gays have spoilt the thing) Ironically, this march had been organized by queer women and non-binary individuals. But even if it hadn’t been, do lesbians not count as women? Do their grievances however nuanced, not matter?

This is similar to what happened in the USA in 1969 where Betty Friedan felt that including lesbians under the umbrella of the national organisation for women would “derail” the goals of the organisation.

Does that sound familiar? Why is that?

Because history does what?

I love intersectionality as an idea because it forces us to constantly re-evaluate our politics. Oppression is a complex system of isms and phobias that work both independently and in coordination with one another. While you may be oppressed under certain systems, you may hold privilege in others.

So while a black man may suffer under a racist society, there are things that a black woman will experience that he may not, even if they are both racialised. While women may have to reckon with misogyny and patriarchal violence, white women in Western countries will not have to navigate the same struggles as women in the developing world. A cisgender queer woman who deals with homophobic prejudice will not experience certain things because she is not transgender. In the same vein, able- bodied individuals freely navigate the world without having to think about the limits to accessibility that make the world so difficult to navigate for people with disabilities.

I can’t cover all the “-isms” because our society is a mess, and we seem to have collected oppressive systems like cake, but you catch my drift. It is not uncommon for people who are oppressed under one system to be blind to the struggles of other marginalised individuals. It is a recurring pattern that we have to be conscious not to perpetuate.

Most feminists marvel at the capacity of black men to deliver a complex analysis of white supremacy and capitalist imperialism, only to turn around and vehemently defend and uphold the patriarchy. Just ask the women who fought alongside the men in the civil rights movement in the US, and the decolonization struggles in many African countries.

My issue with that essay is that Adichie is not interested in acknowledging the harm that her statements have the potential to cause. A few years ago, J. K Rowling wrote an essay in which she suggested that trans masculine people are transitioning more often due to the allure of escaping womanhood. She states that opening the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” poses a threat to “natal women.” Adichie responded to that piece by saying it was “a reasonable piece of writing.”

Both of these women display transphobia of the benevolent kind. They claim that they care about trans rights and do not in fact hate trans people, with a smattering of the typical “I have (insert minority) friends.” But similarly, at the heart of Rowling’s essay is the idea that trans women are not “real” women.

Let’s un pack that. Who is a real woman? Plenty of things come to mind, the first of course, being someone who was born with a vagina. What other things? Petite, high pitched voice, no facial hair and little body hair, someone who menstruates and can carry a child, someone with breasts.

I have written before about sex and gender and how it’s not as binary and un-complicated as we have been taught to think. We know now that there are intersex people who have vaginas but “male” internal reproductive systems and/ or chromosomal make-up.

Even if we acted like the intersex experience is an inconsequential, inconvenient, negligible anomaly (as society already likes to do). There are still “biological” women whose bodies do not fit within the ideal of womanhood for one reason or another. We know women whose voices are deep, who grow facial hair and have a lot of body hair, who have never menstruated, who cannot carry children, who have muscular builds, who don’t really have breasts; the ones they’re always asking “how are you going to feed your child?”

It sets a dangerous precedent because it opens the door to violence for cisgender women who don’t fit into the ideal image of what a woman ‘should be’. Look at the way Caster Semenya, Serena Williams and even Michelle Obama have been treated. This usually happens to black and brown women because womanhood as a category was not initially constructed to include non-white women. (Look at Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a woman?”)

When Megan Thee stallion was shot by Tory Lanez, some people suggested that he had seen her dick (implying that she is a trans woman) as if that was supposed to make it okay? And for a lot of people, if it turned out that Megan was in fact a trans woman, Tory would have had every right to shoot her.

Excusing violence against one kind of woman opens up all women to violence. As they say, “Oppression is like party jollof, e go reach everybody.” Until we are all free, none of us is.

These feelings about trans women don’t come from nowhere. We are all products of our society, and we have to actively work to unlearn biases we have subconsciously picked up on. Our views are heavily influenced by media and film depictions of trans women throughout history. Often times they are depicted as objects of ridicule, villains, or something to be laughed at or murdered. It’s only now that they are starting to be portrayed as full human beings with dignity in shows like POSE, Orange is the New Black, and Sense 8 among others. If you’d like to more insight into the history of trans representation in film please watch Disclosure on Netflix.

Meanwhile, does anyone ever wonder where trans men are in all this? It’s almost like they don’t exist. Why is that? Trans men are absent from all the discourse regarding sports and they’re almost non-existent in film. Whenever the subject of inclusive language comes up, even when it has nothing to do with trans women, they still catch all the smoke.

Take for example, “people who menstruate.” It seems to get people heated. Many women said that they felt they were being erased to accommodate trans women.  J. K Rowling tweeted:

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

I understand that it can be confusing, but such language is not meant to erase, but to include, and it has absolutely nothing to do with transgender women. Not every person who menstruates is a woman. The language is evolving to signal to trans men, intersex people and non-binary individuals who need those reproductive health services that they are welcome, even if they do not fit within the gender category of woman.

The language is only relevant in contexts where menstruation is being discussed. No one has stopped you from referring to yourself as a woman in your day to day life. In addition, not all women menstruate.  It’s so bio-essentialist and for what? I thought one of the points of feminism was to say there’s more to a woman than her ability to incubate a child and bleed every month?

J.K Rowling in her essay expresses concern that any man could just self-identify as a woman to get into women only spaces like bathrooms etc. to harm a cisgender woman. That sounds like a lot of trouble to go through when men quite literally already can and do harm women, both cisgender and transgender, without all those unnecessary steps. They do not need to run the risk of being harmed themselves by for daring to appear in public in women’s clothes.

I have a complicated relationship with the idea of cancel culture. For me, it’s about whether people can change. Can people make mistakes and learn from them? I believe that there’s no perfect person, and everyday we learn new things about the world around us and the people we share it with. What may be an acceptable and popular sentiment today may not be so ten years from now. Is there room for growth and redemption? I believe there should be.

But I have to admit that every time I hear someone complain about cancel culture, I get a bit bored. Because in most cases, it is invoked the moment they are held accountable. People want the freedom to just say or do anything regardless of whom it harms and we are supposed to just sit back and take it. Social media with all its issues has done one thing, it’s given marginalised people a voice. And if you’re a school yard bully who has been used to acting any way you want and nothing happens, when someone stands up to you, it can feel like you’re being targeted.

For one, not only are these people not “cancelled” (they continue to have large platforms) look at Kevin Hart, or J.K Rowlings and Adichie herself for example, but they also insist on prioritizing their hurt feelings over the very real consequences their words or actions have on the lives of everyday people.

Trans people are at risk for violence at up to four times the rate of their cisgender counterparts, and with the increasingly polarising ‘trans debate’ the murder and violent victimisation rates are only increasing. They are also at higher risk for unemployment, homelessness, depression, and suicide.

Chimamanda may not bash a trans woman’s head in, or even advocate for it, but she re-echoes the sentiments of those who would be more inclined to do so, especially given her platform. It serves to validate those who feel that those trans women who have the effrontery to exist in ‘women’s spaces,’ or at all, should be harmed.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that we have to put a bit more thought into how we act and the things we say, I think we all could benefit from a little more thinking, because for many marginalised communities, thoughtless comments do translate into real life harm. Take for example Kevin Hart’s tweet in which he “joked” about how he would bash his hypothetical son’s head in with a doll house if he was gay. Sure he tweeted it in 2013, when it was popular to hate gay people, it still is in Uganda, lol. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was wrong then, and it is wrong now. Given the chance to apologize, he doubled down. Do you see the harm? We know that this is something that happens every day across the world to queer children at the hands of their homophobic families.

He has since apologized and recognised why it was harmful, and his career is back on track, not that anything had even really happened to it.

Given the size of her platform and reach, the fact that Adichie would write a whole essay to speak on a lack of compassion and kindness, while simultaneously doubling down on her statements is almost hilarious. To do so at a time when trans people around the world are being brutally murdered at alarming rates is especially insidious because it is those very sentiments that foster that state of affairs.

No one likes to be held accountable, it’s painful and embarrassing but it is necessary for growth. If she truly cared about the trans community as she claims, she would listen to trans people. But she doesn’t, and she hasn’t, so how do we progress from here?

Personally, I will not be buying anymore of her books or reading any more of her work. There are plenty of other amazing African writers who are not harming marginalized communities. I am under no illusions; I don’t think my measly shillings will matter to her anyway. But it’s important to me as a non-binary person, because she is harming my community.

Trans women do not have the kind of structural power to perpetrate harm to the level that these women suggest, they’re just trying to live their lives. And honestly, transphobia is especially hurtful when it comes from other oppressed people who should understand how oppression works, but I suppose that understanding stops where their identity stops.

It would be helpful if we all took a step back to assess who is posing a genuine danger to women around the world. Take a real look at the daily struggles of the women in your community and ask yourself, “How has her life become more difficult because trans women exist?”

For the average African feminist, it is unlikely that you have ever personally interacted with a single transgender person, and perhaps that has something to do with it. You have built up a phantom in your head against which you are fighting, instead of directing your energy towards the things that really matter. Even if transgender people were to completely stop existing with the snap of a finger, it would have no material effect on the state of women’s rights, that should tell you all that you need to know.