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.

"I'm damn good at my job" of faking female organs so you can trick men into thinking they are having sex with the female they consented to having sex with.

I only read My Sisters Keeper and the end made me so angry I never read another one. It was such an act of authorial cowardice.

I think My Sisters Keeper was the one that tipped me over the edge. I'd read a few JP books but that one was so emotionally manipulative that I never read another one after that. She has a good formula - choose a moral/ethical issue of the day, ladle on the emotions and manipulation, voila!
However her entries into the trans debate on Twitter have been misguided. Not just because she is blatantly wrong about her facts and on 'the wrong side of history' ha! But because she had no need to jeopardise her sales by showing so much of her 'character'. <pauses to consider the double meaning of that sentence and feels smug> If I was her agent or PR, I'd be annoyed at her. Transwomen are not her main book buying audience.

I read "The Pact" and absolutely hated it. She was very good at writing characters who were manipulative, so I will give her that. My main criticism is her novels felt more sensationalist than exploratory.

@KnickerlessParsons

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.

Well.

Usual caveats that this is anecdotal and there's a possible cringe aspect.

This must be ten years ago so before things are quite as they are now. A friend's brother had a brief 'thing' [as in not a one night stand, but not many meets] with someone he eventually went to his sister to, to say he wasn't convinced he was seeing a woman and how would he know? Normal brother sister conversation? Or not.

Brother was 23 or so and probably not very experienced with relationships, or indeed much at all in life.

After some uncomfortable discussion my friend (but not necessarily her brother) came to the conclusion that on the basis of what he told her she thought the combination of boob implant scarring, not very pronounced hips, and genitalia that seemed simplified she was putting her money on XY.

I'm not sure I could have had this conversation with my brother.

Things ended before any further investigation as the other party broke things off. Fearing outing, or being freaked out by what they were suspecting was being discussed, I just don't know.

Interesting to read the Amazon comments. Lots of disgruntled fans of Picoult who felt "tricked," "misled," and saw it as "disingenuous," "preachy" and "deceptive." Apparently it's not marketed as a transgender book. All those words also describe the behavior of the transgirl in the book who does not disclose their sex to the boyfriend. People don't like deception in sex anymore than they do in fiction. When did it become ethical to fool someone into sleeping with you?

Maybe I'm just an old fashioned feminist but sex by deception is wrong in my book (pun intended).

“This is a validation.”

Is that the tagline for the entire book?

I saw a Reddit post from a man who had sex with a male who had had full GRS (in a spirit of openmindedness, he said). He noted that 1) the opening was "in the wrong place", 2) his partner's body felt and smelled different to a woman's, and the overall shape, especially around the hip area, seemed different, 3) because of the size and construction of the opening, he was unable to have at it with gusto.

I found that quite interesting.

Just to emphasise, the man knew his partner was male.

No man wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a vagina and an inverted penis manufactured 'front hole'.

Is there even a plot to this book or does it just move from TRA talking point to talking point?

Other scenes:

Dr. Powers meets the narrator at a swim meet where they are interrogating a suspect. Oh no! 4 ugly jealous TERFS are protesting outside! One of them is called Porky Porker. She is a literal white supremacist. Dr. Powers takes the megaphone and makes an amazing speech about how actually TW are weaker and at a disadvantage to cis women because of hormone therapy. Everyone claps and cries. Porky Porker runs away in shame and everyone burns her t-shirts. Then they go inside and the TW wins by 2 minutes but it’s only because cis women are lazy and don’t work hard. Everyone is shocked the TW is even a TW because she is actually way prettier and more feminine than all the butch gross lady swimmers. A genital obsessed TERF sneaks into the locker room to sexually harass the TW because TERFS secretly desire TW and know neovaginas are better than boring old birthing pouches but luckily everyone at the meet listened to Dr. Powers speech so they all arrest the TERF who begins screaming Nazi slogans. Everyone is so inspired by the bravery of the TW to be her authentic self that they immediately award her the Olympic gold medal and make her head of the IOC and now only TW qualify for the Olympics which all the cis women are grateful for because they recognize their privilege. After that they leave the swim meet and happen to walk by Drag Queen Story Hour. There are literal Nazis protesting outside! Dr. Powers beats up all the literal Nazis using her 3rd degree black belt lady skills. She throws her heel at a literal Nazi and they run away! “I always loved a killer heel” Dr. Powers quips. Everyone laughs so hard. She immediately gets a contract to be the first TW to host a late night show. All the children at Drag Queen Story Hour thank Dr. Powers for teaching them that you can be your authentic self! Then they go into a bookstore. JK Rowling happens to be giving a reading. There are only 5 TERFS and 10 literal Nazis attending because everyone knows how transphobic and violent JK Rowling is. The store is called Genital Check and they literally make you undress before you can use the bathroom because it is owned by a dried up dinosaur TERF. Dr. Powers walks up to JK Rowling. She makes a speech about how transphobic and Nazi JK Rowling is. The store spontaneously catches fire and Dr. Powers heroically saves all the TERFS because she is an amazing saintly person. She wins the Nobel Peace Prize. JK Rowling’s hair burns off and now all the TERFS tell her she must be a TW herself because she is balding.

In 2003 Boylan wrote a book about the transition called She's Not There- A Life in Two Genders which I found pretty interesting. I doubt very much it would be published today and certainly it would have resulted in a witch hunt for Rick Russo (the vastly superior writer who is a friend of Jenny's) for his remarks in the book (he wrote a super afterword to it too).It actually explores the idea and consequences of transition with some degree of nuance as in there is a discussion other than "stunning and brave" about the effects on family, friends etc. and there is even a discussion of the "fake" affect of it all. Jenny does seems to think that taking hormones gives you an idea of what it is to be a woman - rather than what it feels to be a male taking hormones and pays no attention at all to the question that if they had actually been a woman and not a man starting out their academic career, perhaps it wouldn't have unfolded as it did with mentoring by older male academics etc.

Interestingly Boylan had 2 young sons at the time of the operation - think that was 2000 or so. One of them has since transitioned and boylan has admitted that their reaction to it was not all unicorns and rainbows

I recall reading Jennifer Boylan's opinion column in the NYT, right after Texas made an earlier attempt to ban all abortions, before Roe fell.

The column mentioned that Twitter had erupted about the erasure of women as a sex class (as the Texas law proposal called us 'host bodies', and then one Democratic politician from the other side called us 'birthing bodies' or something similar). Boylan reassured us that this erasure was not happening as Jennifer's wife, a 'cisgender woman' was sitting in the same room where the writing of this column took place.

It was such a clear way of showing that the erasure of women as a sex class was (and is), indeed, central for the whole movement. I understand why Jennifer would want the female sex unmentionable, but I don't understand why feminists would as the oppression/discrimination/etc of women is based on sex.

I'm disappointed, JP was one of my fave authors, I had no idea she was a TRA. I liked the fact she seemed to have researched thoroughly; the ones I remember most are the ones with animals, Lone Wolf and Leaving Time, I also remember liking Keeping Faith. I've not read anything of hers for a few years though - I prefer non-fiction these days, next on my list is probably Transpositions. I just finished Annals of the Terf Wars - very enjoyable.

This book sounds as though she's done zero research at all. At least @Misstache has cheered me up with her version.

This.

Wasn't there an example of this in the press a whole back where a woman consented to sex with the man she thought she was with, only for it to be a woman wearing a strap on?

The matter of what exactly she thought she was consenting didn't match what event took place.

Surely that's the same here.

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?

The Gay Mens Network wrote to the CPS

DECEPTION AS TO BIOLOGICAL SEX IN CASES OF RAPE AND SERIOUS SEXUAL OFFENCES
Response to the Crown Prosecution Service consultation

November 2022
static1.squarespace.com/static/6200252604e9795287de2ada/t/636a7c64ebf018723719f151/1667923047685/CPS_Response_Branded.pdf

This is well worth reading. It must be that sometimes gay men find themselves in this position with transmen. The principle is obviously the same as in the JP book. This also writes about other related issues such as transing gay children. It us very well written.

I ha e just read this. Was full of the usual tropes about clown fish etc, and that not all women have ovaries, wombs, breasts etc because some had them removed through cancer treatments etc. And being a woman was something about spirit.

It was a waste of time, with an unsatisfactory outcome

Didn’t the documentary that brought Stella O’Malley into this discussion have a male, they were a singer in a club I think, who declared their long term partner/husband never knew they were male? They’d been together for 5-10 years in my mind.

What that person thought they were doing announcing it to the world on a documentary, I don’t know. But they were very pleased with themselves for their deception.

We also had a poster come on and tell us that they had inspected and even touched their friend’s operation site. They tried to assure us that no one would ever tell the difference.

They weren’t very convincing.