Poet and musician Ntsiki Mazwai has shared that she has deleted an offending tweet about transgender women.
This after a statement was issued by a collective of trans- and gender-diverse organisations urging her to take the tweet down and apologise.
Guys I have deleted the offending tweet …..because when someone says something you have put up, hurts their feelings…..the right thing to do, is to take it down. ❤️🏳️🌈✌🏿🌈
— MissNtsikiMazwai (@ntsikimazwai) January 18, 2023
“On the 16th of January 2023, Ntsiki Mazwai published a problematic and hurtful tweet asserting the harmful and ungrounded view that women’s rights are threatened by trans rights,” reads the statement.
The statement further stated that the post shared pervasive and problematic views about women of trans experience.
“Despite societal perceptions and attitudes that force transgender women at the margins of society, transgender women are women and we have always been part of African cultures and history, and therefore our existence will never be erased.”
Social Health and Empowerment director, Leigh Ann van der Merwe, said trans people are born into the world and do not have access to the kind of language that they can use to define and better understand themselves.
“Mazwai claims to be a feminist and yet is policing the way other women make sense of their bodies and lived experiences. To this affect, her tweet opinion is not only anti-feminist but also extremely transphobic and violent,” said Van der Merwe.
Nelly Mahloko, a young trans woman from rural Free State, said: “It’s very disappointing to see influential persons saying such hateful words that can easily increase the rate of killings of trans women.
“We need laws to prevent such hate speech that can drive us to be killed. Not only did Ntsiki impose violence on the trans community, but her post also sparked a spate of transphobic violence in the comment section of the post.”
Gender Dynamix has become aware of Ntsiki Mazwai’s posts on Twitter on 16 Jan 2023, in which she invalidates and delegitimizes transgender women. We, therefore, urge Ntsiki Mazwai to release a statement to apologize to the trans and gender-diverse community for fueling hatred. pic.twitter.com/bzlbL60Wjb
— Gender Dynamix (@GenderDynamix) January 18, 2023
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