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.

Neither book is out yet.

Juno's book for world book day 'spot the difference ' made me cross. It's about a teenage girl who has spots. She's unpopular at school. Magic spot cream. some sort of campaign involving vulnerable students and the library as a refuge. Bingo - clear skin, popularity. They all realise she was always pretty cool. Yuck. Good authors have always written about people unlike themselves, but this was so soaked in tired and infuriating stereotypes it made me gag. And that was even before I started lurking here and began getting really infuriated about sterotypes .
Hi, nice to meet you all.

After hearing 10,000 dresses being read to young children by the book's author,
I began to realise there is a lot more dodgy reading material being pushed onto kids than I had previously realised.
Hardly surprising that young adult fiction has gone all explicit by stealth.

Yep. My son is 10 and picking up YA stuff.

This book (these books) are specifically being sold to, marketed to, and targeted at YA, which is, generally speaking for kids aged 12-18.

I'm not especially anti-drugs, I'm not prudish, I believe in openness around sex. Kids aged 12 shouldn't be reading about drug-fuelled sex parties.

I have the feeling that Dawson had a very troubled adolescence, and is now perhaps working that out through fiction using teen protagonists. That would be okay if the books weren't aimed at children.

I'm not especially anti-drugs, I'm not prudish, I believe in openness around sex. Kids aged 12 shouldn't be reading about drug-fuelled sex parties

I agree, although it appears we are not allowed to pursue this subject in any great depth without being monitored.

What’s that award for badly written sex scenes, the one Alan Titchmarsh won a few years ago? Sounds like this one would be worth a nomination.

If some bearded celeb like the one pictured claimed to understand teenage girls, discussed their 'perky little breasts' or speak for them in any way, people would be most disturbed.

I feel exactly this way when 'Juno Dawson' does it. Disturbed. I think that's a highly appropriate reaction.

But then, I live on the right side of the looking glass.

Sorry, my mistake: Titchmarsh came 2nd.

James Dawson looks like a confident man and a successful author.

To be honest the whole genre of books designed for teenage girls is worrying. Is this any worse than twilight? Which includes an near adult Male imprinting on a baby to later be its mate.

I suspect someone is watching this thread and mass-reporting it...

r/menwritingwomen on Reddit is an amusing/depressing read (depending on what mood you’re in).

r/writingcirclejerk is also quite funny about characterless female characters.

To be honest the standard of much of kids' fiction and YA fiction is worrying! Sturgeon's law applies.

I'm not sure how mass reporting this thread helps them, to be honest. The article is what people are talking about - it's still there, people are still reading it.

Speaking hypothetically rather than about any particular individual (plz don’t smite me, Mumsnet) Blanchard’s typology of MtF transsexuals is often mischaracterised by over simplicity. It’s important to note that gay males can be indeed transition due to AGP, despite the majority of late transitioners being heterosexual (or gynandromorphophilic )

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Dawson is the worst of all the high profile British TRAs, IMO, because Dawson erroneously claims to speak FOR women (rather than just blatantly speaking over us, al la Bergdorf et al)

The article in the screenshot (Dawson proudly claiming to be an ‘older woman’ despite having been giving interviews as a youngish gay man less than three years previously) has thankfully been wiped from history by the new owners of The-Pool url.

I’m about the same age as Dawson and I recognise fuck all From Dawson’s teenage cultural references. The only people my age listening to the Spice Girls or Steps etc were young gay men - straight girls were mostly listening to Brit Pop...

You're probably right BadLady:

twitter.com/junodawson/status/1259815435735875584

The book Wonderland is being published by Hachette.

Hachette dropped plans to publish Woody Allen’s memoir.

Fascinating world, the book publishing industry.

Guide to being a (British) teenage girl in the mid 90s

Republica

Garbage

Catalonia

Lush

Portishead:

Don't forget Kenickie, Elastica and Skunk Anansie...

Surely one of the reasons young girls mutilate themselves, starve themselves and binge eat is the very real terror of men who are suddenly interested in those emerging breasts.

Hurting themselves may be the only control women have their bodies, in a world where their youth, appearance and physicality is so highly commodified.

To have an adult transwoman and ex-teacher write about the body of a young girl in such a way, is very unpleasant. Women and girls seem to exist only as a product of a sexualised fantasy, not as real people experiencing their own, individual lives. A real Alice possibly would be appalled by those breasts and spend the rest of her school life wearing over-sized jumpers or starving them out of existence.

A real Alice possibly would be appalled by those breasts and spend the rest of her school life wearing over-sized jumpers or starving them out of existence

So true. I did this. But men do not understand that at all.

Dawson is the worst of all the high profile British TRAs, IMO, because Dawson erroneously claims to speak FOR women (rather than just blatantly speaking over us, al la Bergdorf et al)

One of Dawson's books is "The Gender Games: The Problem With Men and Women, From Someone Who Has Been Both".

Deluded.

A real Alice possibly would be appalled by those breasts and spend the rest of her school life wearing over-sized jumpers or starving them out of existence.

I think the Alice in Dawson's book is actually a boy taking cross sex hormones. The book is written from a male point of view (which, of course, Dawson would know about).

A real Alice possibly would be appalled by those breasts and spend the rest of her school life wearing over-sized jumpers or starving them out of existence.

So true. Part of the appeal of someone like Justine Frischmann was her androgyny. I would rather have looked like her (or Brett Anderson, actually) when I was 19 than some perky-breasted male fantasy.

There were amazing US bands around, too, when I was a teenager - Hole, L7, Throwing Muses, style icons like Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth - all really cool and much more aspirational than Lolita for heaven’s sake