John Boyne's new book 'My brother's name is Jessica'.

[Helmetbymidnight]

John Boyne (author of boy in the striped pajamas) is bringing out a book called My brother's name is Jessica, and this is simply not acceptable, apparently.

He's written an article here:

www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/john-boyne-why-i-support-trans-rights-but-reject-the-word-cis-1.3843005?fbclid=IwAR0WqWp2a3dIu-4pxDKS7k9XQO5lZR4PCKh_AFhAeTRoZMm0TmuiCBvoUjQ

Doc and co are going nuts at him. Not as nuts as they would if it was written by a straight woman, I imagine, but even so.

It's about time the world of books got stuck into this debate. They've been very slow on this one.

There's always a massive irony when listening to the ravings of transgender activists who have appropriated / colonised the identity of women without hesitation roaring at someone for daring to speak / write about said transgender people - "he's not transgender so knows nothing, how dare he" and on and on.....

He's a sympathetic ally.

HE SAID THE WRONG WORDS ATTACK HIM

It's really rather sad.

I wonder if he knew the outrage would happen or if he considered himself an ally and therefore 'safe'.

What every ally will eventually learn is that TRAs will, one day, turn on them.

He strikes me as an honest man. I think he didn't understand the insanity that stalks this.

There's always a massive irony when listening to the ravings of transgender activists who have appropriated / colonised the identity of women without hesitation roaring at someone for daring to speak / write about said transgender people - "he's not transgender so knows nothing, how dare he" and on and on....

Absolutely.

And that argument doesn't usually win writer friends, that's for sure.

Most people think it's about treating trans people with kindness and respect.

They don't realise they're supposed to renounce all belief in biological sex and material reality.

He strikes me as an honest man.

Yeah, I follow him on Goodreads and he is unfailingly kind.

But actually, slagging off Glinner was a bit unnecessary. The whole thing looks a bit ill-thought out.

Reminds me of Scarlett Johansson
That film would have been a sympathetic portrayal of trans people.

Fools
www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/entertainment-arts-44829766

YES to what he says about both sides of the debate not having nuance/shades of grey. My DD is recently identifying as male. Trying to get support and referred to either Mermaids or Transgender Trend - neither of which seem happy talking to one another sensibly and having a respectful discussion.

Meanwhile our poor kids are in the middle

Ah yeah, on the one hand biological sex isn't real, on the other, you'd better use trans actors to portray trans people, or else!

Recent Twitter thread:

twitter.com/PublishingTrans/status/1112371105350574082

Including:

What scares me is that we won't be able to cancel this one. John Boyne is too big a name.

(Bearing in mind social media has managed to get a couple of YA books cancelled recently due to failures of Wokeness.)

It's a book about empathy and understanding for trans people.

And some crazies want it cancelled. Smh

And his closing comment regarding lack of nuance on both sides
No, I think he will find that name calling and ‘die in a grease fire’ comes entirely from the TRA side. This is not a tit for tat style scenario.

I recently wrote a book about a tap-dancing penguin. It’s our job to tell stories beyond our own experience. We do it because we’re good at writing, not because we can lay claim to all worldly experiences.

Second time in as many days I've heard high profile people lament the lack of nuance on both sides.

It's like lamenting Gallileo's intransigence in insisting the earth rotates around the sun.
Couldn't he just have come up with a compromise, really, would that be so hard?

There is no nuance. Nuance in this particular situation means "Lie. A little bit. At considerable cost to women which we'll just disregard. Because be nice. Truth is just so unnecessary."

There IS no nuance with regards biological sex.
I belong to the female sex, men belong to the male sex, and the sooner everyone stops 'nuancing' to spare men's feelings at the expense of women's integrity the sooner this absurd era in history will draw to a close.

Can't help feeling a bit of schadenfreude- he's another man who doesn't give a crap about what women have been saying for years on the subject and had a casual pop at Glinner for some woke cookies. I can understand ignorance from the person on the street but this guy has supposedly researched the topic and has written a book!

I've just read the piece linked in the OP.
Here's a lack of nuance for him; what a wanker.

People who write such cobblers are one thought away from confronting their own sexism, but that last thought really is just a bridge too far.

The mind-blowing arrogance of a man casually observing the female half of humanity from his pedestal and then declaring that what we all are is some ethereal type of brainfeeling in one of his friends and how dare females not accept this male-declared new reality of what females are?

Whatever men feel and believe themselves to be, it is nothing to do with me, my sex and any female that has ever lived or ever will.
Kindly stop using our name, that describes our bodies, to clothe your repressed mates, and fuck the fuck off with your bullshit about how the real measure of being female is how hard a man feels he is one.

I hope he gets the full on TRA treatment and consequently engages his brain more.
But I'll not hold my ladybreath.

He jumped feet first into that bonfire of raging TRA fury, didn't he? He is a big name in YA publishing so it's unlikely this will affect him as drastically as the TRAs would like though.

I would guess he thought he automatically gets bonus points as an LGBT ally given that he is a gay man but he clearly forgot to check his cis privilege on this one. Only one thing makes the TRAs lose their shit more than a cis male thought crime and that's a cis female thought crime. He's lucky he is not female or the rape and death threats would be fast filling up his Twitter DMs by now.

What Barracker said. I read the article linked above with an increasing sense of ‘You cheeky bastard’.

Then again, one could hardly expect much more from the person who wrote that mawkish, inaccurate drivel, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.’

I can understand ignorance from the person on the street but this guy has supposedly researched the topic and has written a book!

By sheer coincidence, I watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas two nights ago and thought it was ridiculous -- it simply couldn't have happened that way, which I'd thought at the book as well. I forgave the book as it was apparently written as a kid's book and we do simplify things for kids so OK.

One of the one-star reviewers of ... Striped Pajamas on Goodreads is a man who was himself an Auschwitz survivor and he says it's the worst book he's ever read, utter shite and the research non existent.

There's a very long comment thread to the review with the reviewer chatting with other people, and at one point Boyle himself joins in the discussion. As others have said, he is very polite and does not get into a hissy fit at the bad review (and TONS of authors throw hissy fits at bad reviews, so that it worth commending him for!)

But it seems to me that this is an author who jumps on literary band-wagons (WW2 literature, transgender) just to be part of the dialogue and trend, and if possible make a small fortune (which he did).

He doesn't do thorough research. Just enough to get him through a novel with a very shallow understanding of his subject. I this case, very one-sided, especially the way he slags off Glinner. So he thinks women's objections only concerns women, which is not true. It would be great if lots more men, especially public figures, would b allied with us and speak up.

Mr Boyne is getting an object lesson in how nothing but full capitulation is enough. He has already stated that he believes TWAW and TMAM but even that radical suspension of reality isn't cutting it on twitter.

The interesting thing will be whether he repents his sins, promises to educate himself and claims the cis mantle or whether this pushes him to peak
trans.

He says he is a gay man. Mr Boyne, if you are reading this, please ask yourself whether you'd accept a pre-op transman as a sexual partner because if the answer is no then you do not really believe TWAW or TMAM and you are just doing it for the woke cookies. Which TBH is not going down well right now.

...to the antics of Graham Linehan...who spends an inordinate amount of time tweeting on the subject...at worst he comes across as someone masking intolerance by promoting himself as a champion of women...one thing I know for sure is that women can look after themselves just fine and they don’t need a man to do the job for them.

In what political campaign do we only want the people affected by it to speak? Women could look after themselves if men weren't deliberately putting women down the whole time. The current way of doing this is be redefining the word woman to include men.

'The interesting thing will be whether he repents his sins, promises to educate himself and claims the cis mantle or whether this pushes him to peak
trans. '

Easy. He will capitulate.
Based on his authorship of that God-awful striped pyjamas book which exploits real life suffering for cheap sentiment, I don't think he has much integrity.