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.

Welcome John!

I’m glad you rejected the “cis” label. I came of age when gay sex (for men) was illegal, and there was a lot of shame and stigma.

Many current-day transwomen spent those year’s presenting (and being treated) as hetero men... it was never illegal for them to have sex. It was always legal for them to marry.

For them to now say that gay and lesbian people have “cis privilege” over them is bizarre.

I saw you on Twitter when you were completely vile to Glinner. The bit where you said that you didn't agree with him about 'ONE SINGLE THING'.
Glinner has been a great support to women, at huge cost to himself. He has stuck up for women's rights to our safe spaces, sports, shortlists and even the right to our own words, all in the face of violent threats from trans activists.
I see you on here now trying to promote your book. Hope it fails. This is a cynical attempt to boost your sales and - if you don't agree with Glinner about ANYTHING - you couldn't give a shit about women.
Hope no one else falls for this.
I'd be ruder, but I don't want to be banned.

I doubt he came here to promote his book. He doesn't need MN for that. He's already a famous author and the book has been out for ages and the brouhaha surrounding it is pretty old and was promotion in itself.
I think he came here to discuss the issues. The dust has settled and hopefully he's had time to digest it all and perhaps is just a little less woke and a little wiser by now? Many of us made similar mistakes in the early days of learning about transgenderism. I'd love to hear what he has to say now, after his trial by public fire.

@JohnBoyne did you know that an important message in the latest rollout of the trans agenda is the elimination of homosexuality?
It started with lesbians, who are now expected to sleep with intact transwomen, ie, those who have not had surgery. In other words, have heterosexual sex. This is the latest demand. After all, Transwomen are women, and so to sleep with a transwoman with a penis is lesbian sex.

Transmen, ie women with vaginas, are confident that, because they are really men (ie identify as), gay men will be happy to sleep with them. In other words, gay men should have heterosexual sex with women with vaginas, because transmen are men.

Any gay person who refuses to sleep with a transperson is denounced as transphobic.

How do you feel about this?

There's a recent thread on mumsnet about the difficulty transpeople have in finding partners, the rejection they face by ordinary people (like you, I refuse to use the c-word) and having relationships.

Because most non-trans people won't consider transpeople in their dating pool, we are apparently contributing to their suicide rate. We need to be more inclusive, and that's what society has to strive for.

I'd love to hear your opinions on this.

Hi John, in the hope you're reading the comments - I'm pretty sure you wrote your book as a way of exploring something you didn't quite understand, because that's what nice people do, we try to understand each other.
I would really like you to read this post and see if you can understand this woman, a lesbian who feels her community has turned on her.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3621239-Being-a-homosexual-female-in-a-community-of-queer-people-transbians-and-penis-inclusionary-lesbians
And if you understand her and you feel that she also deserves protection and respect, I hope you speak up.

Wading into shark infested waters there John and you've thrown the lifeguard under the bus

Oof, you didn't just come here and call us all terfs. They'll have you for that.

To be clear - his remark to Glinner was after he had been roasted by the tras. He has learnt nothing. Also - I can't think what motive he would have in coming on her apart from promoting his book. Here's the screen shot of the exchange:

To be fair MsMcWibble he wasn't rude or offensive to Glinner, he just clearly stated his view (at that time). Also he did later apologise to Glinner which led to another massive pile on and him deleting his Twitter account for a while.

I’m reading the boy in the striped pyjamas with dc just now and we all think it’s awful. Glad it’s not just me. I Feel free to bin it now!

@JohnBoyne Thanks for joining us and commenting. The one thing that disappointed many of us most about your original Irish Times article was your dismissive comment about Graham Linehan's support for women's rights and how women could fight their own battles.

It only needs a cursory knowledge of history to realise how important it is, when the rights of a particular group come under attack, for people who aren't in that group to stand up for them. As Martin Niemoller wrote: "First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist." You know how it goes from there.

Women's rights are under attack as never before from extreme trans activists. It's a frightening time to be a woman - this isn't some small, insignificant dispute between feminists and trans people, this is a full-scale onslaught on women's rights by people who actively wish to harm us. Many of us are shocked by how few men have spoken up for us, particularly left-wing men, gay men - the people we would assume are our natural allies. Amongst this deafening silence, we have one man, Graham Linehan, who has been brave enough to speak up for women and has received enormous amounts of abuse for doing so. He didn't have to stand up for us, but he has continued to do so.

One day, I hope, when this particular battle is over, people will look back and say: What were other men doing to support women? Why did they remain silent? You will have to think yourself about the answer you're going to give to that.

Why is everyone being nice to a misogynist who's clearly done a drive by and clearly neither RTFT nor made any substantive response to critique (which is 99.9% of the thread)?

Dear John

I think you've behaved like an arse through the whole thing.

Lang

I guess, LangCleg, it's because we live in hope. John has received a lot of very nasty and spiteful abuse from trans activists. I think some of us imagine that if we are nice and reasonable in our criticisms, it will at least lead John to think about who's more likely to be right here.

Why would I be nice and reasonable to a man who has received abuse from extremist transactivists and reacted by apologising to them and genuflecting to their misogynist ideology?

Why would I be nice and reasonable to a man whose single contribution to this thread is a drive-by comment that completely mischaracterises the majority opinion it contains and shows that he probably hasn't read it at all?

Why would I, posting on a feminist forum, perform female socialisation for this man?

I guess, LangCleg, it's because we live in hope.
Yep. I think John's comment about Glinner's support of women was ignorant. But we've all been arses some time. Have you read Alicia Hendley's article for Feminist Current? She was a full-on TRA, until she stopped and thought about it a bit. I think social media, the general atmosphere in politics these days - it can really bring out the worst in us. Most people are pretty decent enough, when they're not caught up in Twitter.
www.feministcurrent.com/2019/04/10/i-supported-trans-ideology-until-i-couldnt-anymore/

After reading @MrsMcWibble's 10:28:27 post I withdrew my benefit-of-the-doubt attitude towards John Boyle.

I think he has learnt nothing. H's still drinking the Kool Aid and he still thinks the Emperor is in his finest clothes.

Hmm perhaps agreeing with Graham on “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!” was a tad harsh. Surely those two must agree on something... Guinness over Bulmers? Irish writers over English? That Aidan bloke is an annoying git?

I think many men (and some women) genuinely do not understand why we mind losing female spaces etc. Which can be frustrating when it feels dire to us. But criticising them just makes them disengage. They feel defensive and want nowt to do with it.

yes, I'm a bit about why john posted

he evidently doesn't want a conversation as he hasn't been back

if all you want to do is read and digest the comments without a conversation, no posting is required

it kind of reads like a fuck you to people who were mean about him, i'll be honest....

John, you say you don't agree with Glinner on a single thing. These are a few examples of things Glinner believes:

Male-bodied people shouldn't compete in women't sports.

Male-bodied people shouldn't automatically be sent to women's prisons if they claim to be female.

A transwoman is not 'biologically female'.

The concept of 'cis' underpins gender ideology (the idea that biology is irrelevant, and a male-bodied person can be female) and therefore it's okay to reject it.

Affirming and encouraging the belief of some gender non-conforming kids, including those with autism or histories of abuse, that they were 'assigned the wrong gender' and should go on a course of puberty blockers, is wrong.

Is there anything there you find you agree with, John? I know you didn't want to be called 'cis'.

@JohnBoyne

Would recommend you read this thread which many new to the wider issues find useful

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

It should inform any future posting you might decide to make here

Why would I, posting on a feminist forum, perform female socialisation for this man?

I take your point. But I also think that if you look at, say, Twitter, and the difference between what GC feminists posts and what TRAs post, then it's really clear that the TRAs are mostly deranged, abusive and aggressive, often to the point of threatening violence. Look at GC posts and, OK, they're occasionally robust but for the most part they are polite, reasonable and often humorous. Any sane person should be able to work out who's got right on their side. As Michelle Obama said, they go low, we go high.

they go low, we go high

Mate, we've been there, seen that, got the t-shirt.

It got us this sorry saga with John Boyne.

I won't be performing female socialisation for any XY - particularly one who makes a drive-by comment purposefully mischaracterising the content of a thread. That's called gaslighting and I, for one, will not be pandering to it.

Of course, we don't know it's actually John Boyne.

JohnBoyne just so we know you're really John Boyne, tell us - what form does your Patronus take?

I read some of his book It was written like many books about trans life in the 80s with little to no insight into being trans sort of like the mirror lipstick shit you get in most films or documentaries. the idea around the premise of the book is interesting but it's exicution was poor. John got a huff on when people said this to him on twitter.

TRAs complaints started before they read the book Bespin

I don't think it's him... Probably a wind up.

He didn't return did he?