Remove this inappropriate and unsafe book from the Waterstones Children's book award

[Vebrithien]

Waterstones have shortlisted a cartoon book that encourages pubescent girls to hate on their bodies, describing breasts as 'fatty lumps that need removing' onto to their prestigious 2023 Children's book award.

The book is called 'my trans teen misadventure' and as well as validating teen anxiety, the book also openly promotes the use of puberty blockers for children, even though they have been banned in several countries on the grounds of safety. The book even has an adult content advisory warning discreetly tucked away on the back, so it's anyone's guess why Waterstones think this is suitable for children.

What gets me about this is that because Waterstones have put it on their shortlist, the book will feature on sales displays that will be placed in areas with a high footfall of children and is likely to be picked up and browsed by them, especially because the story is in cartoon form.

It raises massive safeguarding concerns, as is promoting lifelong medical treatment to young and vunerable children.

Please sign, to ask Waterstones to remove this from their shortlist and stop pushing gender ideology at children:

SIGN HERE citizengo.org/en-gb/fm/210382-waterstones-stop-pushing-dangerous-gender-ideology-children?utm_source=wa&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=EN_GB-2023-03-13-Local-NA-CFA-210382-Waterstones_childrens_book.06_AA_RL_2_Retargeting&utm_content=typage

Has anyone actually read this book? I won't sign against any book I have not read.

Kids cannot become superheroes or wizards - but they can, apparently, become the opposite sex. So I can't agree that no child reading this would be influenced by it to think think that, maybe, they too could solve the problems of puberty with some medication and a name change.

Ah well. As somebody who's actually read it, I think it was worth a shot.

I don't think kids are as easily influenced about gender identity or sexual identity as this thread suggests. I certainly don't think this book is trying to 'turn people trans', or would be capable of doing that if the child wasn't already thinking about it.

I think the book was pretty interesting, really. It's told in a fun and engaging way. I think it's designed as something inclusive and encouraging of tolerance. It's not evil.

If children aren't so easily influenced then I'd like an explanation in the explosion in referrals to GIDs and the like as well as the huge increase in children self ID'ing as trans or non-binary at school.

Body hated is not a good message for a child's book

Never a truer word said @GromblesofGrimbledon . It's grooming & brainwashing. Trying to convince children to hate their bodies, pump themselves up with hormones & then get self mutilating surgery.

Thank you. I see loud voices here on mumsnet - SO MANY anti-trans and I had wondered if anyone who felt differently would ever dare speak up.

kids aren’t going to want to change gender because of a comic book ffs.

Thank you again. This site is riddled with loud, reactionary minds - and I’m glad there will be another voice.

i think sometimes If a trans person stumbled across this site, they might be driven to despair, because it pushes only one view so VERY stridently.

Argh. I am going to leave this thread- because I don't want to get into arguments at all. I meant to be respectful to you all and just try and reassure you that the book is fine.

But I recognise I'm not managing that.

However, the rise in GID referrals will be for two reasons:

1. Some are genuine from people who wouldn't have felt comfortable with it before. I see this as being the same thing as the complaints about ASD diagnoses rising. Just because it wasn't recognised before doesn't mean it didn't exist.
2. Yes, some of the rise will come from body dysmorphia or projection of misery onto something tangible. It is really complicated, and I don't want to trivialise either your views, or those of trans people. Your concerns are absolutely valid in some instances. But I don't think it's a right or wrong situation. I think it's complicated, and each case is very very different.

This book is really not going to sway anybody anywhere. It's like a light Jaqueline Wilson.

Gawd a mighty! How the hell has it come to this! What a mess we have created for our children to navigate.

I am grandma age and have seen so many fads come and go - sadly this crazy fad will leave so much damage in its wake.

@17Degrees Thank you for the link. Very glad to sign.

WTF?

This site is riddled with loud, reactionary minds - and I’m glad there will be another voice.

I don't think that is true.

It is possible to have respect and concern for those who have gender dysphoria and to recognise the challenges that this presents whilst at the same time having concerns for the protection of children. Many go through a gender-confused phase and this needs gentle, sensitive handling to help them come out the other side with the right decisions for them as individuals having been taken.

My concern is that this book in a home is open for reading by all the children there, and could get into the hands of younger children who would find it confusing and disturbing. The over 14 recommendation is not enforceable in practice. I remember Lady Chatterley's Lover being passed around outside the school gates, and I can see this book doing the rounds too with potential disturbing results.

I speak as the GM of a much-loved trans gender GC.

Thank you. I see loud voices here on mumsnet - SO MANY anti-trans and I had wondered if anyone who felt differently would ever dare speak up.

Women wanting to protect sex based spaces, sports and places like prisons and rape crisis centres aren't anti-trans 🙄 If you see any anti-trans posts report them.

Dear God, where are the grown ups?

Children do not have the capacity to consent to permanent medication, fertility and sexual pleasure loss and the likelihood of a reduced lifespan. There is also good evidence to show that taking cross sex hormones leads to a much higher risk of stroke and heart attack.

We do not promote anorexia by positive affirmation. Neither self harming.

The interim Cass report has highlighted that the Tavistock GIDS clinic OWN RECORDS show that over one third of their patients had ASD or were neurodiverse. A similar proportion also held for Looked After checking children. The normal occurrence of ASD in the populace is 2%.

This book paints a picture of being trans that is not held up by the scientific evidence.

Even the Dutch are now calling into question the Dutch Protocol.

Puberty blockers are not being currently provided to the under 16's on the NHS.

How is teaching children a lie (you can change your sex) kind?

How about, we teach children that their natural bodies are their own, and that they do not have to conform to harmful sexist stereotypes?

Dress how you please, but you cannot change sex, and children should not be encouraged to permanently alter and harm their bodies.

But surely teens read a whole range of books which adults wouldn't necessarily want them to emulate? Catcher in the Rye, the Bell Jar, Wuthering Heights - I don't quite see what's so harmful about this one. I wouldn't give this to a 10 year old, but for the 14/15 age group it doesn't seem unreasonable.

This is like whack-a-mole!

Agents, publisher, printers, booksellers etc must have read this book and thought "yeah, pumping a teen with puberty blockers with minimal research and cutting off the breasts" is absolutely fine.

They are up there with the parents, aunties and uncles who send their kids back to the
mother-country for FGM in my book.

You're putting this cartoon trash in the same league as Wuthering Heights?

Young children are clearly susceptible to the social contagion of the trans and non-binary trend. That is evident in the numbers of kids pissing about changing pronouns. It is a slippery slope to a medicalised route to transition culminating in hormone treatment and surgeries.

Anyone who thinks the increase in children identifying this way is at all analogous to increased acceptance of homosexuality in society or increased awareness of ASD is deluding themselves.

Signed

I have read a little of the book - picked it up on Amazon and viewed the kindle version. It supports a girl with body dysphoria amputating her breasts and presumably getting a pretend penis - certainly acquires a beard. For some reason boys call her a boy in a dress - doesn't shave her legs so must be a boy is the trope - and I daresay boys can be this nasty. Part of the problem not just with the book but with the current sexualization of young people and the expectations that girls especially will conform to gender stereotypes of pornography (shaved legs, long hair, lots of make-up, hair-flicking as the 'feminine' girl does in the story) and look like barbie dolls. There is no place here for the girl who likes wearing trousers, reads sci-fi, wants to climb Everest and do a course in car mechanics (just to list a few 'male' stereotypes, some of which I conform to). It's a book likely to tell a girl going through puberty that her discomfort with gender stereotypes and the physical changes in her body that she is in the wrong body. Whether it should be prevented from winning a prize I am not sure. I dislike cancelling people. But the book is pernicious and dangerous. And extremely misogynistic, too, in its depiction of what a 'real' girl is (the TiF's best friend is stereotypical - why would these two be friends?)

Signed btw.

There is no place here for the girl who likes wearing trousers, reads sci-fi, wants to climb Everest and do a course in car mechanics (just to list a few 'male' stereotypes, some of which I conform to).

Me too. I was that girl.

Out of every 100 'gender non conforming' girls of this generation (now in their mid thirties if starting secondary school in 2000), likely 99 would now be adult women who have no wish to take cross sex hormones or have gender reassignment surgery. The view now seems to be if you are not into feminine things and don't particularly like your changing body then you must be trans.

I have two friends who were pure tomboys in their early teens. They are now both two of the most glamorous & feminine women I know. They shudder to think what irreversible changes they would have undertaken if they were growing up in the trans era..