Guardian interview with Juno Dawson

[RoyalCorgi]

The Guardian is once more peddling male fantasies of what a teenage girl is:

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/11/juno-dawson-trans-alice-wonderland-interview-spice-girls

Dawson has written a novel based on Alice in Wonderland, but with a trans lead character:

'Wonderland is also a wake-up call to anyone who believes gender reassignment might be a happy-ever-after. Alice has recently returned to school after three months in hospital following a suicide attempt. “While I’m delighted with my perky little boobs,” she says, “I was profoundly disappointed that my urge to cut myself didn’t vanish with the first milligram of oestrogen to pass my lips.” Her problems, Dawson points out, are those of all too many young women. “When I’m at the Hay book festival or at Yale, these teenagers come into my signing queues and they are scarred. It must be talked about because it permanently affects girls.”'

Yes, teenage girls are really delighted with their perky little boobs, you misogynist little creep.

I find it uncomfortable to know that an ex-teacher is writing these kind of stories about teenage girls.

Uncomfortable doesn't even begin to touch it, BadLady.

How old is Dawson?

How many other adult writers write teenagers' sexual fantasies and get lauded in the press?

I'll tell you - none. NONE. Because it has always, ALWAYS been completely beyond the pale to cross that line.

Ex-teacher? Oh my word.

I'd not been that interested in Dawson, I'd seen some very carefully created photos and assumed they'd be a 20-something, so a young transitioner. They're around 40 and seem to have transitioned in their mid-30s.

It's not just the porny, male centric content. Juno them self comes across as fairly damaged, at least to me. There's a lot about how straight men fancy them. At least twice in that one interview alone, heterosexual and straight is applied to the men attracted to Juno. How Juno had an affair with an unnamed Premier League footballer, etc. Despite Juno themself saying that being a gay man is a consolation prize.

The WhatsAp she’s on that consists of a group of young transwomen who were lucky enough to transition before they went through a Male puberty ie. they were young boys put on puberty blockers at 12? 13? 14? or 15? That Juno admits to being envious of? That made me feel uncomfortable. I’m sure they’re all in their late teens/early 20s now but Juno is 38! Are all these young transwomen fantasising over their own hypersexualised bodies like Juno appears to be. Did they begin their own transitions so they could be fucked like a woman? Juno sounds like they want to be a Julie Burchill writing Sugar Rush. I wonder if they’ve ever met?

Oh god 🤢

The journalist who wrote the piece, Claire Armitstead, is a very experienced journalist. She's not some woke 22-year old. So she should know better than to be complicit in some serious gaslighting. Because what the article is inviting you to believe is that Juno Dawson was once a teenage girl and that now as an adult woman she therefore understands what it's like to be a teenage girl. And I suppose all over the country there will be Guardian readers too frightened to say - or perhaps even to think - about what's going on here, which is a middle-aged male fantasy about the sexual behaviour and attitudes of teenage girls. It suddenly becomes a lot less woke when you look at it like that, doesn't it?

What is a middle-aged late transitioner (5 years ago apparently) doing writing porny novels for teenage girls? Seriously.

What is a middle-aged late transitioner (5 years ago apparently) doing in a whatsapp/'social circle' with boys who have been prescribed 'puberty blockers' ?

extract
"[Juno Dawson's] social circle ranges from her “straight, white fiance”, with whom she bought a house in West Sussex last year, to a WhatsApp group of young trans women who – like Alice – were able to transition before going through a male puberty. “Do I envy them? Of course. I was absolutely a product of Section 28, which became law the year I went to primary school and was revoked the year I went to university.” Introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1988, Section 28 barred the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools “so there was nobody talking about what it was like to be a queer person”.

There’s a telling scene in Wonderland when Alice finds herself in the bathroom with a gaggle of coke-sniffing flower girls." (continues)

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/11/juno-dawson-trans-alice-wonderland-interview-spice-girls?CMP=share_btn_tw

Sheerahah Cross posted with you & I share your concerns.

it immediately follows an interview by Hadley Freeman with Tony Slattery, which is an outstanding piece of journalism, in my view, and the kind of content that keeps me buying the paper

I wrote on the “what other issues has this opened your eyes to” thread that I now appreciate that all newspaper publications have good journalists and bad journalists, good articles and bad articles, and that’s what you look for. The publication itself isn’t “good” or “bad”; there’s an editorial slant which can be good or bad depending on your point of view but that doesn’t mean everything in that publication is good/bad. So that’s why I still read the Guardian - for people like Hadley Freeman, Suzanne Moore, and even to read muppet articles like this, to see what shite they’re peddling - and it’s why I don’t buy the “Daily Fail” hate trope when they have journalists who are prepared to publish articles pointing out the madness of certain ideologies. If more people read publications that they currently deem “hateful” or “left wing” maybe there could be better discussion.

Only exception is Pink News of course, which is a pure propaganda shitrag .

Sorry, slight derail.

Sorry. Misread your post. It's Dawson that did that.

I would love for the Guardian to open the comments on an article like this, even just the once... nobody is buying this.

Dawson goes into secondary schools to give talks on their books. Last year they gave a talk at my daughters school to year 10 and then held a discussion with six formers.
I complained - to no avai,l but I know I wasn't the only one to complain.

My experience of being a teenage girl was having to deal with predatory male behaviour well before I was mature enough to understand why it made me feel so disgusting or how to deal with it.
It's quite clear from that interview where Dawson's beliefs about teen girls come from. It's just plain gross and very creepy. Pornhub has a lot to answer for.

Dawson goes into secondary schools to give talks on their books. Last year they gave a talk at my daughters school to year 10 and then held a discussion with six formers.

Dear god I hope it wasn't about the breast and nipple fantasies Juno writes about.

Just imagine if it was a 38 year old man detailing school-girl sexual fantasies in a national newspaper.

Once upon a time Juno Dawson was called James Dawson and wrote a book called Being a Boy. Which ironically was probably within their knowledge base, unlike pretending to have any understanding of what it's like to be a young woman, having never experienced being a teenage girl. However it is undoubtedly the case that Juno's profile is much higher than that of James so a niche was spotted and exploited. Win win.

From the OP article Dawson seems to think all teenage girls behave as if they’re in Rita, Sue and Bob Too.

The journalist who wrote the piece, Claire Armitstead, is a very experienced journalist. She's not some woke 22-year old. So she should know better than to be complicit in some serious gaslighting

I found watching Jess Phillips MP interview by Juno Dawson during the Labour leadership competition difficult to watch.
People's academic & professional expertise are not in necessarily sufficient protective factors.

(Strangely I havent been able to find the video of the full interview yet)

clip here:
twitter.com/pinknews/status/1218183191405592576

17 January 2020 Juno Dawson for Pink News
'Labour’s Jess Phillips on transgender rights and why she’ll never throw minorities ‘under the bus’
(extract)
"My name is Juno Dawson and I’m an author, journalist – and I’m a transgender woman. I’d admired Jess Phillips MP from afar for a couple of years on Twitter.

She was staunchly feminist, outspoken and unguarded. She was rare – a normal, working-class, human who’d somehow wound up in the rarified world of politics.

Only then, on November 16, 2017, she let me down.

She retweeted a notoriously anti-trans organisation who seek to bar women like me from single-sex spaces and revoke the hard earned rights of transgender people.

In her tweet, Phillips stated she found the group’s demands reasonable and that we needed a solution that suited both trans people and women.

You can guess what happened next: in typical Twitter style, trans allies piled on, bombarding Phillips with the phrase: ‘Trans women are women.’

It’s true, but I went one better and added a hugely patronising ‘Hun’ to the end of the sentence. Perhaps I was drunk or something.

Politicians on the liberal left are, without question, scrutinised more than those on the right: we expect Conservative politicians to be, well, conservative. Phillip’s tweet stung. It felt like a betrayal. The tweet was heralded by transphobic groups who seek to divide and foster suspicion around the trans community. Again, as has become customary, I mentally ‘cancelled’ Phillips and I wasn’t the only one." (continues with interview)

www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/01/17/jess-phillips-labour-leadership-transgender-rights-juno-dawson-pinknews-interview/]]