This book, “My Trans Teen Misadventure for Children. WTF???

[TheWorldisGoingMad]

I know this post may offend and I'm sorry if it does. But I feel children need to be protected. If parents don't know what books may be in their school libraries, how do they counteract the information?

This book, “My Trans Teen Misadventure,” has been nominated for UK bookseller Waterstones Children’s Book Prize of 2023.

AIBU to think this is a dangerous book for children's mental health and body image. I find it seriously worrying that children have access to books like this from an early age. I feel sends a message to vulnerable girls that the answer to dis-ease in their bodies is irreversible medication and surgery.

She's self conscious in a way all 12 year olds that are larger than average in the chest department are, she doesn't hate her body or think it's the wrong one.

I mentioned it only to highlight that this is the type of abuse girls are subject to every day for being different, my daughter is a stroppy single minded individual who wouldn't usually hesitate to give as good as she gets with everyone, and even she was affected by stupid thoughtless comments from idiots.

Being transgender must multiply that by 100x it is more than feeling uncomfortable or self conscious it's about feeling wrong.

Maybe all a book like this needs to do is exist for one child to not feel alone, you might not need to read it but maybe they do.

Please don't. I'm not sure if you've read this whole thread but there's a cartoon in which a young girl views her breasts as 'bags of fat' and proceeds to have them amputated. Please keep it well away form her.

I agree that puberty is so, so hard for teen girls especially now.

What if, for the majority of gender questioning children, 'being transgender' is the exact kind of normal self consciousness you describe though? Just seen through the lens of 'if I'm not 100% on board with puberty and the stereotypes of my sex don't 100% fit me, I must not truly be my sex'?

Most if left alone will not persist in identifying as trans post puberty. And neither GIDS nor any other gender service has ever claimed to be able to tell which will persist and which won't. So books suggesting that the way to be happy/be your true self is via irreversible medical treatments, is irresponsible at best.

Think you missed the part where I said I have read this book.

The page you are referencing is about them listing all the ways they viewed themselves and why they were not comfortable with being touched. It was at a point after the author had hated themselves into an eating disorder, frequent binge drinking and had stopped having periods and if I remember correctly before they developed an addiction to exercise in an attempt to develop a more masculine body.

They looked in the mirror and saw a distorted view of themselves, and they hated who they were. It's not a typical "I hate my body" it's a deep loathing.

Do you know what else the author does, talks to their teenage self from the other side, tells them that they understand better now than they did then. It's hindsight of an awful time with an understanding that only comes from getting out the other side. They also include other people's points of views something their teenage self would never have been capable of. The language is harsh because that was the degree of the authors feeling at the time. Just the same as most teenagers end up being mortified when they are in their 20s that they used to scream that they hated their parents.

If you want some other recommendations that might help you understand try Nothing Ever Happens Here by Sarah Haggar Holt, And Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker

This book is a work of fiction for 14+ – it is not on a curriculum, presenting as non fiction, educational, informative or being 'pushed' on children.

Book publishing is a business. They will follow the trends to make profit. The end.

The author might be happy having persisted, but most young people who are gender questioning don't persist. So this book isn't appropriate for the majority of gender questioning young people, because the authors 'happy ever after' won't be theirs.

Oh and also pointing out this author doesn't advocate for transitioning, they mention it only right at the end when they said that they got an appointment for a gender clinic with I think one brief mention about looking forward to being given access to "the key". I think there was two brief references to not liking a binder and their Mum adapting something and not feeling the need to use a "packer".

They looked in the mirror and saw a distorted view of themselves, and they hated who they were. It's not a typical "I hate my body" it's a deep loathing

Yes that's what I felt aged 14 when i was teetering on the brink of anorexia. I loathed my body. My breasts especially.

i fell all the way in and the next ten years were hellish. Both my 18th and 21st birthdays were spent in hospital due to anorexia. I don't have the happy memories of my 18th and 21st like others do, I missed out on all that.

At least I was eventually able to recover and thank god my delusions of my body being 'all wrong' were not affirmed by weight loss drugs and surgery.

Teen girls are so vulnerable to all types of body dysmorphia and I think we as parents really need to protect them from that and try to keep them away from material that could affirm their dislike of their bodies.

Fine for adults to read such a book but not girls.

Thank you for this post

Having a character describe puberty blockers, an off label drug regimen which has no evidence of helping gender questioning children and some evidence of harming them, as 'best thing I ever did', and describing breasts as 'fatty lumps that need to be gone' if not advocacy for transition, is pretty irresponsible.

But this author didn't take puberty blockers, they were leaving college when they got their appointment to a gender clinic.

I have already mentioned their language choices above.

I don't have body dysmorphia I am a fat middle aged mum of three with mental and physical health issues and I own that.

But if my current self was writing about my teenage self, that teenager was a sad mess, she would have quite liked lots of "fatty lumps" to be gone. She would have understood hatred of periods when she started them at 9 and bled threw everything multiple times a day for half the month. She understood feeling different or weird and judged but she never got past severe dislike for her body, never hated it or felt it wasn't hers. But she wouldn't have understood at all a level of hatred that took a bottle/pills to drown it out, that sparked an eating disorder, or prompted self harm. Most people don't.

Having character say that is advocating for it though, even if the author didn't do it?

And your teenage self sounds like a lot of our teenage selves, luckily for us we didn't have comic books telling us that our normal adolescent feelings were a sign of needing to medicate or surgically modify our bodies, or that doing so would make us happy or make us our true selves.

Most gender questioning teens grow out of it, if left alone to complete puberty. If you read desisters and detransitioners stories they didn't have the extreme level of body hatred you seem to think is normal for gender questioning children, they felt like you did. For that matter, stories of those who persisted in their trans identity, such as those in Hannah Barnes' Time To Think, also don't describe extreme body hatred. Children were funnelled down a path that damaged them, and books like this, that suggests that adolescent unhappiness can be solved with drugs and surgery, are part of the jigsaw of how that happened and is happening. Children with normal struggles and feelings having unnecessary unevidenced medical interventions which harmed them.

I don't think it's normal to have that level of hatred I think this author had that level of hatred. Which is why they chose the language and images they did for this book.

Online it says the age rating is 14 - 18 years. As long as it doesn’t reach your kid before that age and before a conversation with them about identity and the power of media in a person’s psyche, it’s not that awful in a sea of social media showing equally as graphic things