The novelist describes helping two writers who went on to insult her online, and condemns era of ‘angels jostling to out-angel one another’ Chimam

‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony

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2021-06-16 21:30:09

The novelist describes helping two writers who went on to insult her online, and condemns era of ‘angels jostling to out-angel one another’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a detailed essay about the conduct of young people on social media “who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion”, who she says are part of a generation “so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow”.

Titled It Is Obscene, the essay was published by the Nigerian novelist and feminist on her website on Tuesday night. It attracted so much attention that her website temporarily crashed.

The essay goes into her interactions with two unnamed writers who attended Adichie’s Lagos writing workshop. Both later criticised her on social media for her comments about transgender people and feminism in a 2017 Channel 4 interview, saying “a trans woman is a trans woman”.

At the time, Adichie rejected the claim that she did not believe trans women were women, saying: “Of course they are women but in talking about feminism and gender and all of that, it’s important for us to acknowledge the differences in experience of gender.”