Orlando is a bisexual fantasy romp, nothing more. No one has or ever will literally change sex. Like all apologists for postmodern chaos, Winterson confuses the map with the territory. Destiny is of course a false concept, like the “authentic self” of the transgenderist game players. The self cannot be separate from the body, except in fantasy. This is conclusively demonstrated by death.
Alan Jackson
5 months ago
Let’s pretend! . More, let’s pretend is what makes life exciting. No boundaries! Nothing fixed -except mortality! Woolf in the end drowned herself. Alas, a serious end to all that pretence!.
Anyone who thinks they’re not pretending is either not thinking hard enough or pretending.
What is Alan Jackson? He might be the summation of a set of life experiences (quite a few judging by the picture) but the man who Alan Jackson believes himself to be has influenced his own interpretation of those life experiences.
Alan Jackson is incapable of being an objective observer of his own existence. He might have been born in a particular space, amongst a particular community, he might consider that his home. But in forming that judgment Alan Jackson will have selected and weighted certain experiences and aspects which he then internalised whilst ignoring others.
Was Alan Jackson using objective criteria when selecting and ignoring these experiences and aspects?Is he viewing them objectively when remembering now? Has Alan Jackson allowed future experiences to influence his interpretation of his part experiences?
Alan Jackson, like all of us, is an abstraction. Alan Jackson is and only ever can be what Alan Jackson pretends to be.
As Freud might have predicted, the anti-trans lot grasp their genitals as the sole objective fact in their existence. The only element of their being that has been inextricably true since birth.
Alan Jackson is confused – maybe he has been pretending? Who is the authentic Alan Jackson? He can hardly remember old friends, parents are only memories, the place of his birth is changing but he can say one thing for certain. Alan Jackson has his genitals and all else flows from there. Alan Jackson is a p*n*s.
I don’t know anything about myself but I know that I am in the wrong body and must undergo genital mutilation otherwise I will kill myself, a victim of the cis white patriarchy.
Good God, what a load of post-modern drivel. The article wasn’t any better. For too many ‘intellectuals’ no idea can be stupid as long as you dress it up in the requisite amount of solipsistic dross. For the rest of us, bullshit’s bullshit.
Martin Smith
5 months ago
Androgyny and trans are not the same. Trans women/men are women/men apparantly…
What do you mean by “trans?”
It currently means several entirely-different things including: Transexual, Transvestite, ‘Suffering from gender dysphoria,’ or ‘Trying to get a reduced sentence in a women’s prison.’
Last edited 5 months ago by Ewen Mac
J Bryant
5 months ago
I enjoyed this article at least for the quotes from Orlando. The term “genius” is bandied about too freely, but I believe Woolf was a genius. Her prose is all rhythm and cadence, breathlessly taking us from one time or place to another with no clear memory of how the transition was made. I would hate to “critique” a Woolf novel; I’d hate to rationalize the magic.
She wrote a very short story (what would now be called flash fiction) called “A Haunted House” which is one of the most original contributions to the horror genre I’ve read, and yet it is a century old and probably isn’t really a horror story. It’s easily googled if you’re interested.
Margaret Ford
5 months ago
please don’t call one of my favorite books a ‘trans-novel’. Why does this new ideology have to invade my imagination and history as well as everything else? Can’t we just accept that some sensitive writers women and men have always imagined life as the other without attaching ideological labels that impose imaginative limits?
Shrunken Genepool
5 months ago
Bla bla bla. Enough already. There is no such thing as ‘trans’. A genuine mental illness (dysphoria) and a much larger process of social contagion egged on by activist teachers. VW has nothing to offer our world. She never did. JW neither – part of the problem
I’d suggest they do have something to offer – an insight into a particular mindset – (of which i’m making no particular judgement with this comment) that is, however, something very human; and i’m very much interested in that, as we all should be. It needs to be more fully understood rather than dismissed.
Allison Barrows
5 months ago
Who gives a flying? This fad will fade away, like they all do. The huge and tragic difference is that it will have created countless permanently disfigured patients for the medical monsters to milk, and plenty if lucrative law suits for lawyers.
Theresa Guirato
5 months ago
The brain is not androgenous… it is genderless.
So NO, Orlando was NOT the first trans novel.
Benedict Waterson
5 months ago
If gender is so mutable and challenging it so transgressive then why go to all the trouble of full body plastic surgery to achieve a supposedly literal and fixed sex identity?
Carmel Shortall
5 months ago
Unherd has now reached peak Guardian. I’m off to Substack…
Instead of throwing fellow anti woke writer/journalists such as Matt Taibii, Michael Schellenberger and Bari Weiss under the bus, why not accept them as allies? Those of us who despise the far left need to hang together, otherwise we shall hang separately.
Aphrodite Rises
5 months ago
The title of the article sounds like a question addressed in a woke PhD thesis. Jeanette Winterson lectures in the Oxford English department which produced Cathy Newman who exposed the progressive Oxford mentality in the Jordan Peterson interview. I really enjoyed both of Jeanette Winterson’s autobiographies, I thought they were brilliant, but not her other writing: I got the sense she was trying too hard to be a great writer. It put me in mind of an interview with Salman Rushdie I once read. He said when he first tried to write, his writing was not well received and he was advised to write what he knew. He sat down and wrote Midnight’s Children – pure brilliance.
Are you projecting? I have read a great deal about the writer and many of her novels. I have never seen anything about her on YouTube. I was going to criticise the article in detail but I couldn’t be bothered repeating myself again.
Remember being absolutely bewildered and so sad finding out Winterson had fallen for the gender propaganda. One of my favourite authors of all times. Gut Symmetries is a masterpiece.
My first thought upon seeing who the author of this article was, was “oh no not Jeanette Winterston too”
I don’t understand how intelligent people are rewriting every unconventional women in history as trans.
And this book which was obviously a feminist book and not a trans one.
Dulle Griet
4 months ago
I admire the beauty and originality of Jeanette Winterson’s prose, and the empathy and insight with which she writes about Virginia Woolf. But no, Orlando was not the first trans novel, because Orlando literally changes sex – which transgender people don’t do because it’s biologically impossible.
No one is trans, of course.
Orlando is a bisexual fantasy romp, nothing more. No one has or ever will literally change sex. Like all apologists for postmodern chaos, Winterson confuses the map with the territory. Destiny is of course a false concept, like the “authentic self” of the transgenderist game players. The self cannot be separate from the body, except in fantasy. This is conclusively demonstrated by death.
Let’s pretend! . More, let’s pretend is what makes life exciting. No boundaries! Nothing fixed -except mortality! Woolf in the end drowned herself. Alas, a serious end to all that pretence!.
Mr Jackson wins the Internet.
Anyone who thinks they’re not pretending is either not thinking hard enough or pretending.
What is Alan Jackson? He might be the summation of a set of life experiences (quite a few judging by the picture) but the man who Alan Jackson believes himself to be has influenced his own interpretation of those life experiences.
Alan Jackson is incapable of being an objective observer of his own existence. He might have been born in a particular space, amongst a particular community, he might consider that his home. But in forming that judgment Alan Jackson will have selected and weighted certain experiences and aspects which he then internalised whilst ignoring others.
Was Alan Jackson using objective criteria when selecting and ignoring these experiences and aspects? Is he viewing them objectively when remembering now? Has Alan Jackson allowed future experiences to influence his interpretation of his part experiences?
Alan Jackson, like all of us, is an abstraction. Alan Jackson is and only ever can be what Alan Jackson pretends to be.
As Freud might have predicted, the anti-trans lot grasp their genitals as the sole objective fact in their existence. The only element of their being that has been inextricably true since birth.
Alan Jackson is confused – maybe he has been pretending? Who is the authentic Alan Jackson? He can hardly remember old friends, parents are only memories, the place of his birth is changing but he can say one thing for certain. Alan Jackson has his genitals and all else flows from there. Alan Jackson is a p*n*s.
All of that may be true, but at least he hasn’t drowned himself yet.
I don’t know anything about myself but I know that I am in the wrong body and must undergo genital mutilation otherwise I will kill myself, a victim of the cis white patriarchy.
Good God, what a load of post-modern drivel. The article wasn’t any better. For too many ‘intellectuals’ no idea can be stupid as long as you dress it up in the requisite amount of solipsistic dross. For the rest of us, bullshit’s bullshit.
Androgyny and trans are not the same. Trans women/men are women/men apparantly…
Androgyny is not a mental disorder
And ‘non-binary’ doesn’t exist.
What do you mean by “trans?”
It currently means several entirely-different things including: Transexual, Transvestite, ‘Suffering from gender dysphoria,’ or ‘Trying to get a reduced sentence in a women’s prison.’
I enjoyed this article at least for the quotes from Orlando. The term “genius” is bandied about too freely, but I believe Woolf was a genius. Her prose is all rhythm and cadence, breathlessly taking us from one time or place to another with no clear memory of how the transition was made. I would hate to “critique” a Woolf novel; I’d hate to rationalize the magic.
She wrote a very short story (what would now be called flash fiction) called “A Haunted House” which is one of the most original contributions to the horror genre I’ve read, and yet it is a century old and probably isn’t really a horror story. It’s easily googled if you’re interested.
please don’t call one of my favorite books a ‘trans-novel’. Why does this new ideology have to invade my imagination and history as well as everything else? Can’t we just accept that some sensitive writers women and men have always imagined life as the other without attaching ideological labels that impose imaginative limits?
Bla bla bla. Enough already. There is no such thing as ‘trans’. A genuine mental illness (dysphoria) and a much larger process of social contagion egged on by activist teachers. VW has nothing to offer our world. She never did. JW neither – part of the problem
I’d suggest they do have something to offer – an insight into a particular mindset – (of which i’m making no particular judgement with this comment) that is, however, something very human; and i’m very much interested in that, as we all should be. It needs to be more fully understood rather than dismissed.
Who gives a flying? This fad will fade away, like they all do. The huge and tragic difference is that it will have created countless permanently disfigured patients for the medical monsters to milk, and plenty if lucrative law suits for lawyers.
The brain is not androgenous… it is genderless.
So NO, Orlando was NOT the first trans novel.
If gender is so mutable and challenging it so transgressive then why go to all the trouble of full body plastic surgery to achieve a supposedly literal and fixed sex identity?
Unherd has now reached peak Guardian. I’m off to Substack…
You can’t be serious? It’s full of brain dead American poseurs.
Instead of throwing fellow anti woke writer/journalists such as Matt Taibii, Michael Schellenberger and Bari Weiss under the bus, why not accept them as allies? Those of us who despise the far left need to hang together, otherwise we shall hang separately.
The title of the article sounds like a question addressed in a woke PhD thesis. Jeanette Winterson lectures in the Oxford English department which produced Cathy Newman who exposed the progressive Oxford mentality in the Jordan Peterson interview. I really enjoyed both of Jeanette Winterson’s autobiographies, I thought they were brilliant, but not her other writing: I got the sense she was trying too hard to be a great writer. It put me in mind of an interview with Salman Rushdie I once read. He said when he first tried to write, his writing was not well received and he was advised to write what he knew. He sat down and wrote Midnight’s Children – pure brilliance.
Amazing. “don’t like title. saw something on youtube loosely related to writer which I didn’t like… must be bad”
Are you projecting? I have read a great deal about the writer and many of her novels. I have never seen anything about her on YouTube. I was going to criticise the article in detail but I couldn’t be bothered repeating myself again.
Agreed.
Answer: no, she did not.
Remember being absolutely bewildered and so sad finding out Winterson had fallen for the gender propaganda. One of my favourite authors of all times. Gut Symmetries is a masterpiece.
My first thought upon seeing who the author of this article was, was “oh no not Jeanette Winterston too”
I don’t understand how intelligent people are rewriting every unconventional women in history as trans.
And this book which was obviously a feminist book and not a trans one.
I admire the beauty and originality of Jeanette Winterson’s prose, and the empathy and insight with which she writes about Virginia Woolf. But no, Orlando was not the first trans novel, because Orlando literally changes sex – which transgender people don’t do because it’s biologically impossible.