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.

Have emailed the guardian to complain

The Queen of teen award was awarded to James, not Juno. It's interesting how dead-naming is so painful for those who were nonentities before transition but not at all for those who have a body of work prior to transition that they rely on.

It was not OK for a boy to like the Spice Girls as much as I did, but I couldn’t keep it in. In fact, the day I first told anyone I thought I was gay was the day I bought the single Stop in 1998.” At Bingley Grammar School (“a grammar school in name only”) she was bullied into conforming to male stereotypes with the result that, while compensating by overperforming academically, “by the time I was a teenager, I felt almost entirely like I’d failed at being human”.

It's always the same isn't it? I feel incredibly sad for those who have suffered this kind of start but it bemuses me that anyone think this qualifies them to advise others on gender issues.

Reading TRA stuff on Twitter, it really struck me the other day how they don't understand women - neither our anatomy nor our experiences. A couple were telling stories about things 'girls' had apparently confided in them once they'd been accepted as 'one of the girls'. It just sounded like fantasy.

You can roll around in the garden pretending to be Lolita

Whoa!

6 messages deleted on here so far.

Can I assume some women have used the word "he", or has there been a breakout of personal attacks today?

Grrr, my quote now doesn't make sense. It's from here, Dawson's chosen words:

www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/aug/05/summer-holiday-plans-writers-djs-broadcasters-celebrities-lorraine-kelly

The post of mine which was deleted was one which I made made in error having misread someone else's post, but I corrected myself in the next post to confirm that it was Dawson who wanted to be "fucked like a woman".

That is a direct quote from the Independent article from 2017 if anyone's tempted to report this post.

Super creepy.

I don't agree that male writers never write women, even young women, well (or vice versa, many women can write good male characters as well.)

And I'm not sure I'd agree that teenage women aren't ever interested in middle aged men who are relatively normal (ie not rich or famous.)

But this it just like the sort of thing that used to be in Penthouse letters.

I wonder how old Alice is supposed to be in the book - the character is transitioning from male to female and is old enough to take hormones. So it suggests at least 16. Anybody have any idea?

Woah! My first deletion.

I wrote something about red flags. Teenage girl fantasy. Creepy. playboy bunnyesque book cover. 38 year old female author would not ever write about these things for the YA genre. And I posted the summer holiday plans article from the Guardian with the Lolita quote. I see who you are.

You can roll around in the garden pretending to be Lolita

I'm always a bit chilled, frankly, when people think of Lolita as some kind of erotic epic. It's a horror book, and part of Nabakov's brilliance was encouraging the reader to feel sympathy, if not empathy, for the deranged pedophile antihero.

Lolita was an abused 12 year old child. Humbert abducted her, drugged her and sexually abused her. Not someone to aspire to.

The article also says "For seven years she lived a double life, teaching by day and pursuing a wild, app-based sex life by night" which is misleading as it refers to the person who was James, a male primary school teacher, at the time.
Also, it is surely significant that Dawson was very keen on fame for its own sake, having "auditioned for Pop Idol, The X Factor and Big Brother (twice)". Interesting how fame never really came along until the transition...

I believe the novel's protag is supposed to be 17.

It's obscene. Dawson pornifies the teenage experience and the Guardian fawns. If Dawson was doing so as James, there'd be a very diferent reaction.

Perky little boobs my arse.

None of those deletions stood out as breaking guidelines to me, when I read them earlier. Presumably pointing out the unpleasent nature of the quotes from a book aimed at kids is 'not kind'.

I would just encourage everyone to read the linked article- it speaks for itself.

None of those deletions stood out as breaking guidelines to me

Nor me.

Yes, donquixote, we don't need to comment on this, just try and boost it to make sure as many people as possible read it. Let's give the book and author publicity.

Exactly. People can read, digest and conclude, all by themself.

It's interesting to see how James Dawson viewed himself less than 5 years ago (I'm not misgendering, this article uses male pronouns and says that's how he wanted to be referred to at that time).

www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/internationally-bestselling-author-comes-out-as-transgender

Also, look how Dawson has the same same back story as many other gay male transitioners. Homophobic father who insists on reinforcing sexist stereotypes.

He collected dolls. “Around that time the adults around me started to worry about why I had those things,” he says. “Eventually my dad took all my Barbies away.”

From LoveReading4Kids author page
www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/author/4569/Juno-Dawson.html?page=1

Juno Dawson Twitter comment:

"I'll have to be off Twitter today because as a trans woman doing LITERALLY ANYTHING in the world means you have to suffer name-calling and - on @ MumsnetTowers - accusations of being a paedophile apparently.

Welcome to my online reality, folks! "