Louise O'Neill: How can someone’s humanity ever be up for discussion?
Louise O'Neill, author. Photograph Moya Nolan
The Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published what can only be described as a blistering essay titled, It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts. In it, she discusses the dehumanising nature of fame, how erstwhile protegees sought to take advantage of her celebrity, and her disgust with social media sanctimony.
I’ve been a fan of Adichie’s work for years and as I read her piece, I marvelled at how beautifully written it was. It felt invigorating to watch someone who is in complete control of her language, who can bend words to her will with such grace. I didn’t agree with everything — her thoughts on The Problems With Young People felt like she was yelling at those pesky kids to get off her lawn — but it’s been a week since I read her essay and I cannot stop thinking about it.
“There are many social-media-savvy people…” she wrote. “Who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness… People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anyone genuinely curious or concerned. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence.”
I considered the two most recent referendums in this country, for marriage equality and repealing the eighth amendment, and how afterwards, Yes campaigners said it was won on the back of conversations.
Talking at the dinner table with your grandfather or aunt, and allowing them space to ask what they called ‘stupid’ questions. On the doors, listening to people, trying to correct misinformation, if necessary, but again, giving them enough room to wrestle with their own belief systems, even if you vehemently disagreed.
This was not always easy. As a woman, it was tough to have to make a case for my right to bodily autonomy, and I know for many queer friends, it was certainly not easy to ask for the same rights to which straight people do not give a second thought.
It seems as if much of Adichie’s essay was inspired by the backlash she faced after a 2017 interview in which she was asked if trans women were women. She replied, “my feeling is, trans women are trans women.”
Re-watching the clip, I was surprised by how clumsy her answer was, saying trans people, “then sort of changed, switched gender”. It lacked the precision for which Adichie is renowned, shown to dazzling effect in her essay.
As she wrote there, she is “a person who reads and thinks and forms my opinions in a carefully considered way.” I would have loved for her to talk more about how a trans woman’s experiences may differ from a cis woman, but they overlap in a myriad of ways too. (In the same way that two cis women can have very different experiences of their bodies and gender but that does not make one any ‘less’ of a woman than the other).
And I certainly do not think we can say that trans women enjoyed male privilege before transitioning — if anything, I would imagine it would be traumatic, not to mention dangerous. In a patriarchy, to present as male but not conform to stereotypes of masculinity, is to have a target on your back.
When we talk about the idea of ‘orthodoxy’ around the fight for trans rights, we are failing to take into consideration one vital piece of information — transgender people are fighting for their survival. This is, quite literally, a life-or-death situation.
The murder and suicide rates amongst trans people, particularly trans women of colour, are breath-taking, and the more time we spend insisting on a ‘civil debate’, the more trans people we lose.
I would agree that there can be multiple sides to a story and there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, (life is complex and nuanced, as are we) but how can we look for the grey area when people’s lives are at stake? How can someone’s humanity ever be up for discussion? It is not a childish desire to enforce group-think that breaks our hearts when our heroes disappoint us, it is also a fear they may use the tools at their disposal — their ability to persuade through the power of their prose, their platforms, an assumption of ‘rightness’ they are afforded because of their intellect – to cause harm to an already marginalised community of people, inadvertently or not.
Over the last few years, I have lost faith in a number of columnists I previously admired, most of whom work in the British media for liberal papers and outlets.
Whether it’s been blatant transphobia or a full-throated defence of Woody Allen, even in the face of Dylan Farrow’s testimony that her father abused her, I’ve been startled by some of the hot takes.
Now, I wonder if I am being too simplistic. They do not owe me anything, and history will decide their legacy, not me. Perhaps the real problem lies in our need to crown famous people as ‘icons’ in the first place.
When we make idols out of golden calves, we can only blame ourselves when they fail us.
