Mariella Frostrup'a reading list for the parent of a trans child.

[WandaWomblesaurus]

What should I read to help me support my trans child?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bdd9f0de-2895-11ed-a4d5-afa440292fae?shareToken=8f0ac562286e2594fdae69ffd330fad4

She thinks Detransition Baby is "big hearted" and Shakespeare is "gender" confused.

The title of the piece is meaningless, too. There's no such thing as a "trans child". There may be children with gender dysphoria, but children cannot be trans.

It's actually about a 20 year old. I'd have liked her to respond with links to real life detransitioners and concerns about the impact of drugs (does Detransition Baby cover any of this?)

Your point is a bit daft - this is a reading list for parents, and you are your mother's child regardless of whether you're 2, 20 or 70.

Well, she's an adult child at 20 so title is a tad misleading. MF is walking a bit of a tightrope here and sounds like she knows it. I still hate the dismissive term of 'culture wars', which pours cold water over any discussion but it sounds like the parent has gone beyond that.

I think we all know what books we'd be recommending but they are not included in the list.

Not sure what to make of this. If you listen to her show on Times radio Mariella is staunchly GC and usually very sensible. She also doesn’t tend to say things about “culture wars” in a dismissive way and regularly comments on the importance of these issues being openly discussed.

The commenters are doing sterling work on alternative reading recommendations in the comments.

I thought Detransition Baby was grim. Full of selfish people, most of them clearly damaged or raging narcs. The baby’s needs or wants aren’t even considered. It seems an odd, disquieting read for the parent of a newly transitioned child barely out of their teens.

I highly recommend anyone read 'Detransition Baby', in the same way I recommend people look at the recent 'piss in' protest by trans people.

www.vice.com/en/article/jgpj5y/pissed-off-trannies-ehrc-protest

Aha. She was on twitter the other week, asking for recommendations of books with trans characters. This must be why.

I think it's worth mentioning that multiple GC accounts recommended Detransition, Baby, and I think they were motivated by similar reasons to Arabella.

I have only read reviews of Detransition Baby.

Is it fair to describe it as a book about how two men make plans for woman's baby?

And was longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

The baby might as well be a Mulberry handbag. It is a desirable accessory to enable one of the characters to live their best life in role. It’s awful.

Interesting. I'd recommend things like Period Piece by Gwen Raverat and Educated by Tara Westover. I think tbh the parent is going to find unexpected things resonate with them whereas knuckling down to someone else's reading list isn't likely to help.

Worth also mentioning that Mariella retweeted somebody's link to Transgender Trend, from the conversation about this column yesterday. 👌

Torrey Peters message🤔

Good stuff. Let's hope this prompts some people to 'educate themselves'.

I need an example of " gender confusion " in Shakespeare... I'm only aware of a number of instances of female characters disguising themselves as males temporarily to achieve a purpose ...am I missing something ?

that time that Bottom wore a donkey's head. That sounds like confusion to me.

There isn't any "gender confusion" in Shakespeare. Everyone knows what sex they are and the women disguise themselves as men for a reason.

Then wtaf is mariellas reference to Shakespeare all about then?

It's well-meaning (the reference to Shakespeare). It's trying to connect an ideology that makes no sense with something that might.

You can make these vague comments at a dinner party and sound like you shouldn't be cancelled ('look at gender in Shakespeare!' 'Young people are so intersectional in their thinking'.) But if you're rude enough to actually dig below the surface and ask for genuine examples of trans characters in Shakespeare as we might understand them, or to talk about what intersectionality really means and the legal context in which it was originally argued by Crenshaw, oh dear. All of a sudden you're terribly full of hate.

I have long felt English should use a term less ambiguous than 'child' when juvenility is not the point. Assuming Mariella's advice is aimed at more than one reader, the headline could have been: 'Reading list for parents with trans offspring'.

I will say... it's a good list, actually, and revealing. Middlesex is something that I feel really shaped part of the early zeitgeist with this whole issue, and is about 'intersex', ie an actual biological reality hitting a restricted sexist society. Orlando is a fantasy written by a woman excluded from her home because she was female. Detransition Baby is written from a thoroughly porn-soaked culture. Good stuff if you read it carefully.

I think Orlando is v interesting - my take, when I read it, was that it's a book that digs into sexism, and shows all the things that orlando is allowed to do once she becomes a man (which basically seems to involve having a lovely time whilst being waited on hand and foot). But I've also seen a TW YA author talk about it as if Orlando has actually changed sex and claim that's it's proof that Woolf was pro trans rights(whilst completely missing/ignoring the feminist angle, the fact that Woolf was a lesbian in a time when she couldn't openly be with her female partner, when women were restricted in so many ways on the basis of sex when men didn't have the same restrictions, again on the basis of sex, instead of a love letter to Vita describing the life she would like Vita to have).

It is of course easy to trans Orlando b/c no-one can ask Woolf about it.