Where Chimamanda Got It Wrong
On March 2017 Chimamanda was interviewed by BBC. Asked whether she felt that trans women are women, she replied “When people talk about, ‘are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women. I think the whole problem of gender in the world is about our experiences,” she added, “it’s not about how we wear our hair or whether we have a vagina or a penis. It’s about the way the world treats us, and I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man with the privileges that the world accords to men and then sort of change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning as a woman and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.”
Is Chimamanda Right? Do trans women have male privilege? Are trans women socialized as men?
I’m going to spend some time telling you how and why what Chimamanda asserts is not true.
So let me first start by saying, what Chimamanda says is true. (…)
