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 wasn't abused but I was having sex by 14. It was definitely about worth tied into attraction from males.

"Perky little boobs" is such a fundamentally male way to view women's bodies, and so many males are unaware that that isn't how we see ourselves, and they get so belligerent when we point that out. Really kills the buzz, I guess.

I suppose the belligerence comes from the realisation that their concept of womanhood really is male fantasy, and the first part of that must "sting" and it just reinforces reality

It's a description based on looking at someone else's body from the outside and has absolutely nothing to do with the experience of living in the body being looked at. Which probably tells us multiple interesting things about any males using phrasing like that.

Re the Spice Girls reference, I'm of the right generation but only know one Spice Girls song, and that one only because it became sort of a meme. Was the intended audience not always small children, with a secondary audience of gay men? No teenage girl with any desire to be seen as cool by her peers would have been caught dead listening to them, and there was so much actually cool female lead stuff around at the time too.

Again, "they were all mad about the SpiceGirls" is a from the outside looking in view of what being a girl or woman is like.

"Perky little boobs" is such a fundamentally male way to view women's bodies

Its a male way of viewing girls & young women.

(And an additional target audience of randy blokes who weren't even pretending to care about the music.)

Dawson's living out the fantasy, not just writing it. I saw JD at a book event last year, plugging that year's wet-dream fantasy about a young girl who was discovered as a model. I had no idea who JD was at that time. It was a panel event and various sensibly-dressed women appeared on the raised stage, all in longer skirts or trousers. And then there was JD in a micro-mini, giving us all a clear view of JD's underwear. Lots of leg crossing and uncrossing.

Was the intended audience not always small children, with a secondary audience of gay men?

That goes some way in explaining things...

SirVix

Slightly off topic, but any suggestions for non-pornified, wonderful novels for dds 15, and just 13 ? Especially for the 15 year old?

Jessica Cocks and Heather Morgan’s duo Spoiled, and Messy are wonderfully funny and kind books about growing up and fitting in. They’d be fun for your your 15 year old. If she likes fantasy, Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series. Joanna Baker’s Devastation Road is a wonderful YA mystery. Jane Gardam’s Bilgewater is a beautiful coming of age novel, it’s one of my favourite books. But there are lots of adult books which would suit a 15 year old, but which are not porny. If she likes mystery novels, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky are terrific. Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, or even the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

For your 13 year old. One of my favourite YA books is Libby Hathorn’s Thunderwith. If she likes fantasy, Tamora Pierce, Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone books and anything by Diana Wynne Jones will get you good female characters and strong writing.

"Perky little boobs" is such a fundamentally male way to view women's bodies, and so many males are unaware that that isn't how we see ourselves, and they get so belligerent when we point that out. Really kills the buzz, I guess.

But since the character who describes their breasts in this way is a boy who is taking oestrogen because he wants to be a girl, this may well be the way such a boy would view his breasts, and Dawson may well be speaking from experience here.

Perhaps Dawson is really trying to show us just how misogynistic the trans agenda is. And also, from Dawson's own derogatory comments about gay men in various interviews, as well as Dawson's insistence that Dawson's male partner is not gay, just how homophobic the trans agenda is as well.

"Perky little boobs" is such a fundamentally male way to view women's bodies,

That's an interesting point.

For women breasts are an integrated part of our body, so on the whole we tend not to ascribe personalities to them. Our awareness of our female bodies is from the inside, as part of the mapped nervous system. Proprioception.

It would be a bit like calling our elbow 'boisterous' or something, just doesn't really make sense.

Men writing women do this a lot - gives the tell that the body part is being objectified, seen as not an essential, integral, integrated part of the body but a separate, separated part that is being fetishised. What was the wonderful description a man gave from a female pov of her breasts descending the staircase, unintentionally separate to the character?

A strong disconnect with embodied reality, says my obstreporous left nostril.

The one girl I know who was overtly sexual at 16, was being raped by her father all through her teens. I think many girls who are highly sexual early, have experienced either abuse or have been given the impression that their worth lies in how attractive they are to males.

Oh yes, very much so. Girls being 'precocious sexually is massive red flag that there's something going on.
Also that bit about the book having a scene where the main character is raped by teen girls, I mean really?
There are no words for the incredible lack of understanding of teenage girl reality. None. Its bloody creepy. And that's putting a generous spin on it.

"She breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards"? Is that the one?

Shedbuilder my friend went to an event where JD was appearing, with other authors (I wonder if it was the same one you went to?) Afterwards I asked if she'd enjoyed it and she enthused about some of the writers she'd heard, but said that one of them was just awful, and spoke in a really little girly voice and did lots of silly hair flicking and hand gesturing and just seemed completely out of place at an event focused on women's writing.

She had never heard of JD (and was sitting near the back) and it was only when I raised an eyebrow and said 'she?' that the penny dropped and the performance femininity made sense. Fwiw, she's quite a woke person and probably wouldn't have dreamed of criticising if she'd realised, but it was interesting that she detected the inauthenticity and the parading of regressive female stereotypes a mile off and reacted instinctively.

Ha, I think that's it, Scapa! In my dim memory I'd recalled it as an actual excerpt. I expect there are plenty of examples of boobily breasting perkibobs surrounding us in literature - mentioning no names, of course.

Here is the full thing in all its glory:

“Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”

Not sure of attribution, unfortunately.

She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards

Oh my good Gaia! That’s so cringeworthy that it’s hilarious. I’m away to breast boobily down the stairs as I have to do some paperwork. I’m just wondering if I should stretch so my tits lift first? 🤔

That is a piss take of course.

That is a piss take of course
The quote above? No its actually a written piece. In a news paper last year. Very real. Not even trying to be funny

DanceLikeEmmaGoldman
Thanks so much for that list , really kind of you.
Scrimpshaw yes ! That is so true.

Where is the "breasted boobily" quite from?

"Perky little boobs" is such a fundamentally male way to view women's bodies,

Didn't D. Thomas also say something very similar in The telegraph? Or was it 'budding' breasts?

What's the obsession with pubescence?

There was a quite hilarious thing on Twitter a year or so back, where women either quoted men writing about women, or made up their own.

Lots of alabaster breasts and one, memorable, 'when she spoke, she was unpleasantly audible'.

Dawson on puberty:

“I just never did my puberty. And as I transition I’m finally going to get to do the puberty I should have had. I’m obsessed with the idea of transformation –chrysalis periods – because I’ve never got out of the chrysalis.”

From here