Jodi Picoult

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

spoiler for new book Mad Honey

I've dipped in and out of JP books Iver the years - generally enjoy the court room stuff, never usually guess the ending.

I got a copy of her new book Mad Honey for Christmas which she co wrote with wnouther author.

Whilst her writing style in this is a bit hyperbole heavy, I was quite stuck into it. At exactly the halfway point, the deceased girl (I think 16/17yo) is revealed by the medic who carried out the autopsy as a trans girl.

She had a boyfriend who didn't know this about her, had clearly had full surgery already as they had sex, and was not suspected of being trans by her friends or anyone who had met her.

I didn't know the book would involve trans characters, nor those who have gone under the knife in childhood, and on pausing to look online as to how this might change the story for me going forward, learn the second author is trans and, according to online reviews, the second half of the book is very much pushing the trans suffering, brave, troubled youth thing.

I had a look at JPs Insta to see if any comments had been made on her promos of the book and she seems fully entrenched in the trans mentality.

Feel a bit robbed as I'm gender critical and the book summary on the sleeve doesn't hint at any of it, else I'd have left it for someone else to buy. But hey ho.

So JPs off the shelf for me now. I'll drop her other books in a charity shop, but this one will be pulped.

Yes, she’s been captured for quite a while. She went on a blocking spree a couple of years ago on Twitter when people dared to disagree with her. She was saying she was going to write this book at that time and told me, “And I hope you will read my book...and see what it's like to actually BE trans.”

Because obviously I will learn SO much more from her book than I will living with an adolescent daughter who identifies as trans. 🙄

I think the bit that gets me the most is that one of the two main characters has clearly undergone extensive mutilation to their developing body and everyone's just like "ok"

Also, surely it's completely wrong to present as female and have sex with a man who thinks you are female, and not disclose to that man that they are sleeping with a male person who has had surgery?

Had she written / her co writer written about adults who had chosen to have surgery (still fucking horrific but adults), or even looked at the ethics of mot disclosing this to a serial parter etc I'd be more understanding.

Sexual partner not serial.

Not certain, but I think one of her kids is trans? Which may explain it.

Can't find any info online so I may be wrong about that. Apologies.

She [sic - the male trans person] had a boyfriend who didn't know this about her, had clearly had full surgery already as they had sex, and was not suspected of being trans by her friends or anyone who had met her.

Seems convincing.

Funny old world. Just yesterday I had to advise someone that it is all well and good to put yourself in someone else's shoes but that doesn't stop her from standing up for herself. And this was for a completely different topic.

Knowing what it is like to BE trans does not eliminate biological sex and all the baggage it comes with. I welcome the knowledge but it shouldn't hold me hostage.

The co-author, Jennifer Finney Boylan, is a late transitioning transwoman.

So Jodi Picoult’s idea of writing a story of what it’s like to BE trans is to write an nonsensical portrayal of adolescent medical transition and kill that person off? Is it set in a parallel universe where WPATH’s recommendations of no age limit for hormones and surgery have been enacted?

And despite all that the person is still identified as male post mortem? Ok then….

A realistic portrayal of childhood/adolescent medical and surgical transition would include the high rates of surgical complications like Jazz Jennings suffered. It would include the infections, the lack of sensation and orgasm, the fact that any male who has experienced a real vagina would know when they we’re experiencing a constructed fake vagina. It might also include a person dying from necrotising fasciitis, like one of the people studied in the original Dutch research.

I suspect there’s none of that.

It does sound very dangerous to be feeding into the myth that it is possible to become so convincing at being the opposite sex. What we dont need is for more young people to get this false hope, then be disappointed with the reality, once they have irrevocably damaged their bodies.

Doesn't JP feel any responsibility towards them at all?

Jodi picoult was one of my favourite authors until she came out with some absolute rubbish on twitter in November last year

Didn’t Mermaids’ ex-CEO have her son operated on at 17? Assuming I’ve remembered that correctly, I guess it would be extremely rare, (and massively unethical IMO), but not absolutely out of the question for the surgery to have been performed.

Whether the surgical wounds would have healed enough to be having sex, and the results convincing enough to pass (even a naive) sexual partner’s gaze, is something else.

And most 16/17 year olds date within the small pool of people they know from school etc. What conceit has Picoult used to account for how the boyfriend doesn’t know the backstory? Is the trans character supposed to have moved and then met him?

This extract makes me laugh… also similar to real life Dr Marci Bowers.

Didn’t Mermaids’ ex-CEO have her son operated on at 17?

On the child’s 16th birthday, because in Thailand it was legal at 16, the only? place it was. They changed their law as a result, so now someone has to be 18 in Thailand.

It’s fiction of course, but not even remotely grounded in reality. There is no way a male adolescent would have surgery, and if they did, be in a healthy enough place physically and mentally to have any relationship. The complication rate from genital surgery is ridiculously high.

Of course it’s the realm of fantasy, both of older male transitioners, and the recommendations of WPATH, that a child could undergo physical transition at any young age, it all go swimmingly with no problems, and completely and utterly pass to a point that it would take a post mortem to discover the truth. I suspect that’s what at play here: living out that fantasy, contrary to Picoult’s claim of “real trans”.

She does love chestnut hair pulled back from the face, does Jodi.

I get irritated with her books. I’ve read a handful but the asides that are meant to be deep and meaningful like this - Once ... a guy threw a party ... you were gone and someone noticed you lying at the bottom of the pool ... I dove in and dragged you out ... But you were furious at me. You told me you’d been looking for mermaids and I interrupted you Huh?

She also really doesn’t like working mothers. We are the reason we don’t know our daughters are being abused.

Well that confirms it: it’s a WPATH propaganda document.

Does Dr Monica Powers advise Jordan that none of the males who attend for genital removal have ever achieved and will never achieve orgasm, like the real Dr Marci Bowers tells us?

How is FGM reversible? I know that some poor women are left in permanent agony following FGM, and that there are some surgeries that can help reduce this pain, but surely it's nonsense to call this "reversal"?

To be fair some are convinced that the story of witches and wizards transforming into other people, animals and objects, whilst retaining their truth of who they actually are is proof enough of full sex change....

@Mafelicent Female genital mutilation is not reversible. There is a procedure where the fused external labia can be re-opened but obviously you can't reattach excised labia minora or the clitoris. This separating of the labia does get called reversal but that's not accurate.

OP if I were you I'd write a book review on Amazon or wherever taking it apart and giving spoilers wherever possible.

I've just noticed the 'in Africa and other countries' that the esteemed doctor says. FGS - Africa is a continent of 50 plus countries.

Whatever we in countries which don't practise FGM think of it, I really don't think reversal of it would feature high in any FGM-practising country's list of priorities. It may even be seen as colonial.

Oh, Jennifer Finney Boylan is an insufferably dull writer who used to have a column in the NYTimes. Ivy educated, upper East Coast family, Boylan is the WASPyish of American WASPs. I was never a fan of Jodi Piccoult, but she's a tad more talented than Boylan. Boylan transitioned in middle age and is supposedly still married. I'm sure Boylan's wife has a story she won't tell. Now that would be an interesting read.

Yeah I got blocked by her when disagreeing with some TRA like comment she had made (can't remember what it was)

I find it hard to believe that the surgery is so good that a man wouldn't realise he's having sex with a trans woman.

Not very subtle, is she? I’ve skim-read a couple of her books in the past and they’re pure trash.

Pushing the T agenda and glamorising it - shameful.

It would be really interesting to talk to men who've had sex with TW. I don't think, in the five years I've been in this fight, that I've ever read anything on that. Definitely not had any actual conversations about it.

I was intrigued to read the other day that when post-vaginoplasty patients claim their neo-vagina self lubricates, it's actually prostatic fluid that is being released.

Sorry, going off track now.

I just had a look at Wiki and found out that Marci Bowers joined the Moonies as a late teen. So she was obviously attracted to delusional dogma from an early age.