21 ms·

It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts

102 points by wellpast 5y ago

draw_down 5y ago
Just shows it’s not possible to ever actually say the right thing with regard to trans discourse, regardless of how “inclusive” one is attempting to be. There is always, always, always an angle of attack available. I’m sorry this happened to her but it’s also an object lesson in what that discourse ultimately leads to. It’s not acceptance.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- NationalPark 5y ago
  I am absolutely fascinated that someone can read that entire essay and come about with this conclusion. There is so much nuance, so many well articulated points that transcend politics, and your conclusion is "my side of the culture war is correct". It's just fucking sad man.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    I’m a trans woman and the fact that saying “the experience of a trans woman is not the same as that of a cis woman” can be turned into evidence of transphobia, for which one must be hung out to dry on social media, is fucking horrific to me. There are people for whom it is impossible to say anything correct about trans issues if they are looking for someone to tar and feather. Or about any other issue. The American Left has a terrible tendency to turn into a circular firing squad. There is a certain style of essentialist thinking that Twitter encourages. No apologies will be accepted. You are a bad person forever, your transgressions will be screenshotted and saved on whatever this era’s repository of Drama is (I think right now it’s Kiwifarms?) to be brought up whenever you’re seen, let us create outrage around you that we may feed upon to boost our own profile, and that Twitter may feed upon to keep everyone glued to the news about whatever poor bastard is today’s Main Character on there and jam more ads in front of Engaged Eyeballs.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Circular firing squad is a fantastic (and sadly apt) phrase.
pjc50 5y ago
Let's not bring one side of a social media dispute that has nothing to do with tech to HN, please.
- beaner 5y ago
  If you read the essay, the anecdote is just an anchor for some lucid thoughts on today's culture and how people treat each other on and off the internet. It's worth a read.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. [...] If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. (From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
- throwkeep 5y ago
  It does have to do with tech. Social media, and Twitter in particular, enables and encourages the behavior the author is talking about.
scythe 5y ago
Why is it that whenever a story involves "followers", you know something like this is coming? >This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack me. Some people have gotten very rich creating a world in which unpopular people can now expect to be threatened with machetes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jlg23 5y ago
  Others have gotten very rich creating a world in which poor pedestrians can now expect to be threatened by SUVs. But what exactly was your point with regard to the story?
grahamburger 5y ago
For some context, in case, like me, you don't recognize the author by name: > Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. [1] From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely: > 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie
- nostromo 5y ago
  > I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything This is the proper response. I'm not sure why anyone is on Twitter. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't be using your real name. The upside is de minimis, and the downside of a misconstrued opinion or a bad joke is "your life is basically ruined." Maybe not today or tomorrow -- maybe it'll happen 10 years from now when the Overton window shifts again. People should be afraid of these platforms.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    But if there is danger in a Twitter mob, that mob can savage you just as easily if you are not on the platform. It’ll just take you a little longer to find out about it.
    - wsinks 5y ago
      But the metaphor still applies. If the mob doesn't necessarily know that you exist, can they attack you?
kelnos 5y ago
Tried to find out what OP actually said in the interview she references, and it seems her point was about nuance, that the experiences of a trans woman are not the same as someone who was assigned female at birth.[0] Which... I think should be a "well duh" sort of thing, but of course in our outrage-fueled chase-engagement-at-all-costs social media environment, that means that we have to twist things to assume the OP was actually saying "trans women are not women" (when she didn't say that and denies she was implying that). But I don't know; I'd never heard of her before this post, so maybe she has a history of saying shitty things and this is just the latest.[1] Or maybe it's what it looks like on its face, a few jealous, opportunistic people trying to smear her. (I think it's telling that one of these people called out to their "followers" to attack OP with machetes. You've lost the moral high ground once you do that, if you hadn't already. I don't care how pissed you are, direct calls to violence toward another person, because of some words, automatically invalidates your viewpoint in my book.) All this stuff just makes me sad and tired. And I know I'm privileged that I (being a straight, cis, white man) generally don't have to worry about any of this in my daily life. But I wish people could just listen to each other, and not immediately assume ill intent, or especially manufacture ill intent in order to bring someone down and elevate themselves. It's all just so counter-productive, and pushes people away who could otherwise be allies. Not saying that there aren't people out there who dog-whistle and say bad things just ambiguously enough for plausible deniability. But it feels like the default is to assume that of everyone who says anything, and that's gross. > 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. And all this just reminds me that I still need to get around to downloading my FB and Twitter history before deleting it all. (I'd really like to close my FB account, but outside of the pandemic use it heavily for event invitations. I might close my Twitter account, though.) [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/21/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-nothing-to-apologise-for-transgender-women https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/21/chimamanda-ngo... [1] Edit: ugh, seems like she's not great, at the very least: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-jk-rowling-transgender-essay-reasonable-twitter-backlash/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-adich...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
fellowniusmonk 5y ago
> Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist. When dealing with voracious liars that gaslight and try to muddy the water through verbosity and the cloak of victimhood it's really useful to have these kinds of small but immutable points. Same thing with people stuck in cults, a small discongruous fact that draws a line in the sand makes all the difference for cutting out people acting in bad faith. I had a co-founder develop a cocaine and eventually meth addiction (and eventually spent time in jail) and the massive amount of content he spewed was undone by a few simple and undeniable facts like these. People, _who shockingly to me_ were able to ignore the linear facts and timelines of events that showed causation.. were moved by a small inconsistency that lodged in their minds. I don't know what the implications of this are but I personally find it both powerful and disheartening.
Joeboy 5y ago
The most glaring question this raises for me is, why is somebody allowed to say something like this on twitter? > I trust that there are other people who will pick up machetes to protect us from the harm transphobes like Adichie & Rowling seek to perpetuate. https://twitter.com/azemezi/status/1346268453221658624 https://twitter.com/azemezi/status/1346268453221658624 I mean, I think I'm not generally that pro-censorship, but I'd expect it to be pretty uncontroversial that that crosses the line.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  I want to believe that it's a combination of (a) the sheer volume of tweets that makes it impossible to catch all the stuff and (b) that there's probably a lot of overlap (at least initially) between people who read the tweet and people who agreed with it (so a relatively small number of people flagging it as a TOS violation).
- jolux 5y ago
  This doesn’t seem plainly like a request to attack people, if that’s what you mean? The language used suggests defending from harm caused by people, not attacking the people themselves. People who tweet things like this often believe that celebrities being publicly bigoted (assume that they believe this, even if you don’t) enables physically violent bigotry from other people (non-celebrities) through elite consensus. In that view, I think this tweet is more understandable, though it’s still not something I would say.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I don’t understand a single word of what you wrote. How does one defend against naughty words using a machete, unless the machete is wielded against the speaker of the heresy?
    - jolux 5y ago
      I’m not sure what the person intended, but in my experience it’s not against the words directly, but against the violence that trans people face, which the tweeter likely sees as perpetuated by elite support of transphobia.
Mizza 5y ago
The missing backstory here is that the author _played the game_. This is the end state. You play with fire, you get burned. If you want to use graduate student/CIA-recruitment language, reduce individuals down to their demographic components, and rely on stereotypes to build a hierarchy of piety, this is what you can expect. There is a lot of incentive to play the game, for a brief time you can be king of the hill, and have NPR, the BBC, Vox and Twitter fawning over you, and maybe get a good book deal out of it. However, whenever the slightest crack appears in your facade, which it inevitably will, there will be dozens of people rushing in to knock you down and take your place. That's what you chose. You don't have to play the game. You can establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker and become "uncancelable", because your ideas will stand on their own merit. It is not the easiest path.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Do you have citations for this backstory you are referring to of the author "playing the game"? If you do, I'm genuinely interested in what you are referring to. If you don't, you are just casting aspersions without providing any info that would let someone evaluate your position.
  - lucretian 5y ago
    adichie is a prominent feminist author. it reads to me as if the person you are replying to is sneering at her for that reason, framing her feminism as a comparable manipulation (aka "the game") and reveling in that.
  - Mizza 5y ago
    Here's her talking on stage with Hilary Clinton: https://pen.org/press-clip/hillary-clinton-and-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-talk-censorship-feminism-and-pizzagate/ https://pen.org/press-clip/hillary-clinton-and-chimamanda-ng... - which I think is the best example of "playing the game" as you can get. As a counter example, you will not find a similar talk with Camille Paglia.
- cafard 5y ago
  I haven't read the author. Is it necessary to establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker to be a novelist? Tolstoy's ideas were often silly, but he was a tremendous novelist. As for uncancelable, what does that even mean? That the idle and excitable will quit barking at you on Twitter? If it just means you won't care, why bother with the establishment bit.
jolux 5y ago
I really don’t like how discussions on issues like this always seem to devolve into an argument over the underlying “culture war” issues, and I’d like to try and disambiguate this issue and others like it as I see them. I’m a trans woman. Two things can be true here: 1. Adichie is transphobic. 2. Whatever the harms of her transphobia, the other person referenced in this post behaved egregiously outside of professional and personal norms in attacking Adichie, and this behavior is not appropriate in any circumstance. Too often I think people complain about how they are treated on social media, or about “ideological orthodoxy,” as a proxy for defending opinions that they understand to be offensive. But it’s perfectly reasonable to think both that Adichie’s opinions on trans people are offensive, and that the offense does not justify the aggression she received here.
- pierrebai 5y ago
  I'm a man and my neighbor is a man. I don't think we're the same. But thinking a born-woman and a trans-woman are different is wrong and oppressive? Transphobic is an easy word to flaunt to target people who have different opinions. I find it unbelieveable that someone could think impossible to make a difference while not having any problem with trans people. To label people transphobic for having this single opinion is itself bigotry.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I think the point is that I haven't seen anything to imply that Adichie is transphobic. This is taken from her Wikipedia page: > In 2017, Adichie was criticized by some as transphobic, initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans women."[44][9] Adichie later further clarified her statement, writing "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." Now granted, there may be more to the story that I am not aware of, but stating that there actually are differences between "women born female and women who transition" shouldn't be considered transphobic, it should be considered acknowledging reality.
  - leephillips 5y ago
throwaway789256 5y ago
For those who have not read the piece yet, the starting paragraphs of Part 3 are especially good: > In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship. > I find it obscene. > There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class. We have all met those people. It reminds me of something that PG said: fanboys become your worst haters. That is, it's a small step from intense love to intense hate. He also said somewhere that there is a higher incidence of bad actors/sociopaths among founders of non-profits than for-profits among the teams he's met. The way I think about it is: ideology is dual use. The two uses are collective good and individual gain. Those are often hopelessly entangled, because a good way to get ahead is by presenting oneself as selflessly working toward the common good. Cue Ayn Rand... What that means here is we can criticize both Chimananda and her critic as "playing the game". It's possible to see their actions as selfish or selfless or most likely both at once. The lesson I draw from Chimananda's story, though, is that people who are out to fight dragons (i.e. defeat the forces of evil in society) are liable to turn you into their next dragon. The revolution eats its own. It happened to Basecamp, too. That is one reason why startups that want to thrive should not hire activists for whom being woke is central to their identity. They will outwoke you, too, no matter how woke you thought you were.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
Oh, good, HN finds another crown witness confirming their believe that most of them are terrible, and that this sugar mommy relationship's dirty laundry is somehow relevant to HN, while racism or misogyny in the tech sector are regularly flagged as off-topic.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Despite editing your comment to change "sugar daddy" to "sugar mommy", it still comes off as a smidgen less than breathtakingly full of insight.
- rendang 5y ago
  Most of who are terrible?
praestigiare 5y ago
If you are confused as to how the statement "trans women are trans women" could be transphobic, it might help to imagine the question was "do you think black people are people" and the reply was "black people are black people." It's a true statement, and also one that many would call racist as a response to that question. You may not agree that these are equivalent, but that is the position you are arguing against, not morons who don't understand that there are differences.

102 points by wellpast 5y ago

Just shows it’s not possible to ever actually say the right thing with regard to trans discourse, regardless of how “inclusive” one is attempting to be. There is always, always, always an angle of attack available. I’m sorry this happened to her but it’s also an object lesson in what that discourse ultimately leads to. It’s not acceptance.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NationalPark 5y ago
I am absolutely fascinated that someone can read that entire essay and come about with this conclusion. There is so much nuance, so many well articulated points that transcend politics, and your conclusion is "my side of the culture war is correct". It's just fucking sad man.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  I’m a trans woman and the fact that saying “the experience of a trans woman is not the same as that of a cis woman” can be turned into evidence of transphobia, for which one must be hung out to dry on social media, is fucking horrific to me. There are people for whom it is impossible to say anything correct about trans issues if they are looking for someone to tar and feather. Or about any other issue. The American Left has a terrible tendency to turn into a circular firing squad. There is a certain style of essentialist thinking that Twitter encourages. No apologies will be accepted. You are a bad person forever, your transgressions will be screenshotted and saved on whatever this era’s repository of Drama is (I think right now it’s Kiwifarms?) to be brought up whenever you’re seen, let us create outrage around you that we may feed upon to boost our own profile, and that Twitter may feed upon to keep everyone glued to the news about whatever poor bastard is today’s Main Character on there and jam more ads in front of Engaged Eyeballs.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Circular firing squad is a fantastic (and sadly apt) phrase.

pjc50 5y ago

Let's not bring one side of a social media dispute that has nothing to do with tech to HN, please.

beaner 5y ago
If you read the essay, the anecdote is just an anchor for some lucid thoughts on today's culture and how people treat each other on and off the internet. It's worth a read.
kelnos 5y ago
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. [...] If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. (From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
throwkeep 5y ago
It does have to do with tech. Social media, and Twitter in particular, enables and encourages the behavior the author is talking about.

scythe 5y ago

Why is it that whenever a story involves "followers", you know something like this is coming? >This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack me. Some people have gotten very rich creating a world in which unpopular people can now expect to be threatened with machetes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jlg23 5y ago
Others have gotten very rich creating a world in which poor pedestrians can now expect to be threatened by SUVs. But what exactly was your point with regard to the story?

grahamburger 5y ago

For some context, in case, like me, you don't recognize the author by name: > Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. [1] From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely: > 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie

nostromo 5y ago
> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything This is the proper response. I'm not sure why anyone is on Twitter. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't be using your real name. The upside is de minimis, and the downside of a misconstrued opinion or a bad joke is "your life is basically ruined." Maybe not today or tomorrow -- maybe it'll happen 10 years from now when the Overton window shifts again. People should be afraid of these platforms.
- leephillips 5y ago
  But if there is danger in a Twitter mob, that mob can savage you just as easily if you are not on the platform. It’ll just take you a little longer to find out about it.
  - wsinks 5y ago
    But the metaphor still applies. If the mob doesn't necessarily know that you exist, can they attack you?

kelnos 5y ago

Tried to find out what OP actually said in the interview she references, and it seems her point was about nuance, that the experiences of a trans woman are not the same as someone who was assigned female at birth.[0] Which... I think should be a "well duh" sort of thing, but of course in our outrage-fueled chase-engagement-at-all-costs social media environment, that means that we have to twist things to assume the OP was actually saying "trans women are not women" (when she didn't say that and denies she was implying that). But I don't know; I'd never heard of her before this post, so maybe she has a history of saying shitty things and this is just the latest.[1] Or maybe it's what it looks like on its face, a few jealous, opportunistic people trying to smear her. (I think it's telling that one of these people called out to their "followers" to attack OP with machetes. You've lost the moral high ground once you do that, if you hadn't already. I don't care how pissed you are, direct calls to violence toward another person, because of some words, automatically invalidates your viewpoint in my book.) All this stuff just makes me sad and tired. And I know I'm privileged that I (being a straight, cis, white man) generally don't have to worry about any of this in my daily life. But I wish people could just listen to each other, and not immediately assume ill intent, or especially manufacture ill intent in order to bring someone down and elevate themselves. It's all just so counter-productive, and pushes people away who could otherwise be allies. Not saying that there aren't people out there who dog-whistle and say bad things just ambiguously enough for plausible deniability. But it feels like the default is to assume that of everyone who says anything, and that's gross. > 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. And all this just reminds me that I still need to get around to downloading my FB and Twitter history before deleting it all. (I'd really like to close my FB account, but outside of the pandemic use it heavily for event invitations. I might close my Twitter account, though.) [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/21/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-nothing-to-apologise-for-transgender-women https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/21/chimamanda-ngo... [1] Edit: ugh, seems like she's not great, at the very least: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-jk-rowling-transgender-essay-reasonable-twitter-backlash/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-adich...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

fellowniusmonk 5y ago

> Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist. When dealing with voracious liars that gaslight and try to muddy the water through verbosity and the cloak of victimhood it's really useful to have these kinds of small but immutable points. Same thing with people stuck in cults, a small discongruous fact that draws a line in the sand makes all the difference for cutting out people acting in bad faith. I had a co-founder develop a cocaine and eventually meth addiction (and eventually spent time in jail) and the massive amount of content he spewed was undone by a few simple and undeniable facts like these. People, _who shockingly to me_ were able to ignore the linear facts and timelines of events that showed causation.. were moved by a small inconsistency that lodged in their minds. I don't know what the implications of this are but I personally find it both powerful and disheartening.

Joeboy 5y ago

The most glaring question this raises for me is, why is somebody allowed to say something like this on twitter? > I trust that there are other people who will pick up machetes to protect us from the harm transphobes like Adichie & Rowling seek to perpetuate. https://twitter.com/azemezi/status/1346268453221658624 https://twitter.com/azemezi/status/1346268453221658624 I mean, I think I'm not generally that pro-censorship, but I'd expect it to be pretty uncontroversial that that crosses the line.

dbrueck 5y ago
I want to believe that it's a combination of (a) the sheer volume of tweets that makes it impossible to catch all the stuff and (b) that there's probably a lot of overlap (at least initially) between people who read the tweet and people who agreed with it (so a relatively small number of people flagging it as a TOS violation).
jolux 5y ago
This doesn’t seem plainly like a request to attack people, if that’s what you mean? The language used suggests defending from harm caused by people, not attacking the people themselves. People who tweet things like this often believe that celebrities being publicly bigoted (assume that they believe this, even if you don’t) enables physically violent bigotry from other people (non-celebrities) through elite consensus. In that view, I think this tweet is more understandable, though it’s still not something I would say.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I don’t understand a single word of what you wrote. How does one defend against naughty words using a machete, unless the machete is wielded against the speaker of the heresy?
  - jolux 5y ago
    I’m not sure what the person intended, but in my experience it’s not against the words directly, but against the violence that trans people face, which the tweeter likely sees as perpetuated by elite support of transphobia.

Mizza 5y ago

The missing backstory here is that the author _played the game_. This is the end state. You play with fire, you get burned. If you want to use graduate student/CIA-recruitment language, reduce individuals down to their demographic components, and rely on stereotypes to build a hierarchy of piety, this is what you can expect. There is a lot of incentive to play the game, for a brief time you can be king of the hill, and have NPR, the BBC, Vox and Twitter fawning over you, and maybe get a good book deal out of it. However, whenever the slightest crack appears in your facade, which it inevitably will, there will be dozens of people rushing in to knock you down and take your place. That's what you chose. You don't have to play the game. You can establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker and become "uncancelable", because your ideas will stand on their own merit. It is not the easiest path.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Do you have citations for this backstory you are referring to of the author "playing the game"? If you do, I'm genuinely interested in what you are referring to. If you don't, you are just casting aspersions without providing any info that would let someone evaluate your position.
- lucretian 5y ago
  adichie is a prominent feminist author. it reads to me as if the person you are replying to is sneering at her for that reason, framing her feminism as a comparable manipulation (aka "the game") and reveling in that.
- Mizza 5y ago
  Here's her talking on stage with Hilary Clinton: https://pen.org/press-clip/hillary-clinton-and-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-talk-censorship-feminism-and-pizzagate/ https://pen.org/press-clip/hillary-clinton-and-chimamanda-ng... - which I think is the best example of "playing the game" as you can get. As a counter example, you will not find a similar talk with Camille Paglia.
cafard 5y ago
I haven't read the author. Is it necessary to establish yourself as a critical, independent thinker to be a novelist? Tolstoy's ideas were often silly, but he was a tremendous novelist. As for uncancelable, what does that even mean? That the idle and excitable will quit barking at you on Twitter? If it just means you won't care, why bother with the establishment bit.

jolux 5y ago

I really don’t like how discussions on issues like this always seem to devolve into an argument over the underlying “culture war” issues, and I’d like to try and disambiguate this issue and others like it as I see them. I’m a trans woman. Two things can be true here: 1. Adichie is transphobic. 2. Whatever the harms of her transphobia, the other person referenced in this post behaved egregiously outside of professional and personal norms in attacking Adichie, and this behavior is not appropriate in any circumstance. Too often I think people complain about how they are treated on social media, or about “ideological orthodoxy,” as a proxy for defending opinions that they understand to be offensive. But it’s perfectly reasonable to think both that Adichie’s opinions on trans people are offensive, and that the offense does not justify the aggression she received here.

pierrebai 5y ago
I'm a man and my neighbor is a man. I don't think we're the same. But thinking a born-woman and a trans-woman are different is wrong and oppressive? Transphobic is an easy word to flaunt to target people who have different opinions. I find it unbelieveable that someone could think impossible to make a difference while not having any problem with trans people. To label people transphobic for having this single opinion is itself bigotry.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I think the point is that I haven't seen anything to imply that Adichie is transphobic. This is taken from her Wikipedia page: > In 2017, Adichie was criticized by some as transphobic, initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans women."[44][9] Adichie later further clarified her statement, writing "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." Now granted, there may be more to the story that I am not aware of, but stating that there actually are differences between "women born female and women who transition" shouldn't be considered transphobic, it should be considered acknowledging reality.
- leephillips 5y ago

throwaway789256 5y ago

For those who have not read the piece yet, the starting paragraphs of Part 3 are especially good: > In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship. > I find it obscene. > There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class. We have all met those people. It reminds me of something that PG said: fanboys become your worst haters. That is, it's a small step from intense love to intense hate. He also said somewhere that there is a higher incidence of bad actors/sociopaths among founders of non-profits than for-profits among the teams he's met. The way I think about it is: ideology is dual use. The two uses are collective good and individual gain. Those are often hopelessly entangled, because a good way to get ahead is by presenting oneself as selflessly working toward the common good. Cue Ayn Rand... What that means here is we can criticize both Chimananda and her critic as "playing the game". It's possible to see their actions as selfish or selfless or most likely both at once. The lesson I draw from Chimananda's story, though, is that people who are out to fight dragons (i.e. defeat the forces of evil in society) are liable to turn you into their next dragon. The revolution eats its own. It happened to Basecamp, too. That is one reason why startups that want to thrive should not hire activists for whom being woke is central to their identity. They will outwoke you, too, no matter how woke you thought you were.

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

Oh, good, HN finds another crown witness confirming their believe that most of them are terrible, and that this sugar mommy relationship's dirty laundry is somehow relevant to HN, while racism or misogyny in the tech sector are regularly flagged as off-topic.

leephillips 5y ago
Despite editing your comment to change "sugar daddy" to "sugar mommy", it still comes off as a smidgen less than breathtakingly full of insight.
rendang 5y ago
Most of who are terrible?

praestigiare 5y ago

If you are confused as to how the statement "trans women are trans women" could be transphobic, it might help to imagine the question was "do you think black people are people" and the reply was "black people are black people." It's a true statement, and also one that many would call racist as a response to that question. You may not agree that these are equivalent, but that is the position you are arguing against, not morons who don't understand that there are differences.