Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Under Fire For “Trans Women Are Trans Women” Views

There’s a unified understanding that people from diverse walks of life have diverse experiences. Chimamanda Ngozi received some heat on Friday (Mar. 10) in trying to express the differences in feminism for transgender women and cisgender women.

The author spoke with U.K.’s Channel 4 in promotion of her book, Dear Ijeawele Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. The clip begins with Ngozi saying “transgender women are transgender women,” leaving room for interpretation, insinuating an exclusive definition of who exactly is included in the conversation of women. It was clear that this is the way black queer transgender activist Raquel Willis received it. Willis delivered a succession of tweets in response to Ngozi’s claims that “it’s difficult for me to… equate your [transgender women] experience to the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning, in the world as a woman.”

That was enough to fire up the passion in Willis to defend her own community. She suggests that Ngozi “take a lesson from herself on the danger of a single story” and compares Ngozi speaking on the behalf of trans women to Lena Dunham being asked about black women: “it doesn’t work.” In a response article that Raquel Willis released through The Root, she denotes Ngozi’s double-sided claims as the problem, stating: “She began gaslighting transgender people. On one hand, she wanted to give the appearance of inclusion and understanding, but on the other, she stripped trans women of their womanhood.”