By Mmaditaba
Author and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has found herself at the center of a twitter war and a campaign to Cancel Chimamanda.
This after a young writer who was previously a student at one of Adichie’s writing workshops revealed that the author had said “a trans woman is a trans woman” meaning they could not fully be a woman but a trans woman.
Chimamanda shared her side in a lengthy essay on her website and rubbished the author of the claims, Akwaeke Emezi. She accused the young woman of being an opportunist using Chimamanda’s famous name to get ahead.
In her essay, Adichie raises valid points about how the internet “cancel culture” can be toxic. Cancel culture is gen Z’s activism . Find a problematic person and hashtag cancelX so that support can be withdrawn from that person. So they feel it where it hurts most. But information can be skewed to fit negative narratives to go ‘viral’.
The unfortunate thing about the internet is that people rarely verify information, most take what they read as fact. Trolls and propaganda paddlers start a rumour or a lie and it catches on like a house on fire. Soon enough it gets so big that the truth doesn’t matter.
It is this collective anger even without verified reasons that can cause irreversible damage to someone’s reputation.
In her closing part three, Adichie pleads: “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”.
It is a stretch to call Adichie a transphobe, but saying that her parents dying is “karma for her transphobia” is a low even for the internet and it’s exactly why the internet is not a good place to form your opinion.
Image source: University Press of Mississippi
