Now Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s daring to say that she thinks trans women are trans women has become a news item. I guess it’s shocking when women say things like “trans women are trans women.”

The LA Times tendentiously headlines:

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie angers transgender community

And the Motoons “provoked the Muslim community” and Charlie Hebdo “sparked outrage” and on and on it goes.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and outspoken feminist, drew criticism from transgender activists after suggesting that the experiences of transgender women are different from women whose gender was assigned female at birth.

Which is ridiculous, because of course the two sets of experiences are different. In other contexts that’s seen as the whole point.… Read the rest

Emma Brockes interviewed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a week ago for the Guardian.

Last year, at a writing workshop she was teaching in Lagos,

a young man rose to ask the famous novelist a question. “I used to love you,” she recalls him saying. “I’ve read all your books. But since you started this whole feminism thing, and since you started to talk about this gay thing, I’m just not sure about you any more. How do you intend to keep the love of people like me?”

Of people who are not sure about this whole feminism thing and this gay thing? Perhaps she has no such intention.

Adichie and I are in a coffee shop near her home in the