A new young adult book about the trans experience

[RoyalCorgi]

According to the Bookseller, Faber has won a five-way auction to publish a book by Dee Stevens called A Girl’s Guide to Being a Boy. The Faber blurb reads:

“But in her head, and in a very specific, password-protected folder on her laptop, Leo is Leonora. Throw into the mix one school play, a major crush on her best friend Sam, and an anonymous YouTube account and, even with Leonora’s self-enforced rules for passing as one of the boys, the scaffolding of her life is threatening to come crashing down. Can Leonora summon the courage to be herself?”

I'm amazed at Faber, let alone four othter publishers, wanting to publish something like this after all the bad publicity about puberty blockers and the transing of children. Apart from the ethics of it, isn't the evidence now that the trans craze is dying out amongst young people?

Article here - behind a paywall, but if you sign up, you can get three free articles:

www.thebookseller.com/rights/faber-wins-five-way-auction-for-knights-of-co-founder-dee-stevens-ya-debut

Whatever my views, I object to books being policed, and the blurb does appear that it’s fiction and not a suggested manual to live by

Apparently David (“Dee”) Stevens was one of Rachel Rooney’s chief hounders:

https://x.com/RooneyRachel/status/2105585207776547295

Yes great let’s encourage children to have secret password protected folders on their computers 🙄

Because no children’s book has ever had a secret society, codes, secret languages, lockable diaries etc.

What do you mean by "books being policed"?

No, because:

a) young trans people are in need of support, and this book will resonate with them, their friends, and young people who want to learn about difference

b) no one is 'transing' kids, it's a ridiculous myth propagated by people who don't want to be held accountable for the violence they've enabled against trans children

c) being trans is not a 'craze'. My kid was the only trans boy in a school of thousands, for 4 years. He has a couple of nb friends. It's not roller-skating, some people are just trans & being out at school isn't fun. It's a life of violence and pain to be a trans child, alleviated solely by the easing of dysphoria.

Big audience for a book which reflects the reality of most young people, more of whom identify as LGBT+ than ever before. The idea that learning about difference is somehow unethical is just bigotry.

Many people who buy it will want to learn and understand. Maybe you could give it a try.

There's a significant difference between a tin-plate pretend lock on a hand-written diary and an uncrackable encrypted hard drive.

I doubt a child's security ever depended on a parent having to sit there with a magic decoder ring going letter by letter, either.

In an era where online grooming of vulnerable children (of all identities) by adults is a real thing, any book where the hero(ine) keeps an encrypted folder on their computer secret from their parents should raise the eyebrows of absolutely anyone on the right side of any safeguarding discussion.

So a trans identifying man who has fundraised for a charity that supports medicalisation of vulnerable children has written a novel about a child keeping secrets from her parents?

That’s not remotely concerning then 🤨.

Let me guess the plot now: this girl's parents will be difficult at first then come around and she’ll find “trans joy” in going to a charity who will help fund her getting her breasts cut off.

Joy!

It's a boy not a girl by the sound of it.

Ah, I see. The secret file is where he’s secretly a girl. So it will be a helpful charity that will fund a trip to Thailand then.

The reason this was interesting to me was that it demonstrates that the publishing sector is as captured as it's ever been - it hasn't moved on at all. As the rest of the society, including even the government, is starting to question the wisdom of transitioning children, publishers are still fully on board with it. This book isn't due to be published till 2028, and by then, one hopes, the direction of travel will be even further away from supporting gender ideology.

It's as if publishers haven't had the memo - about the Supreme Court judgement, about the Cass Review, about the new guidelines for schools on social transition.

I could almost understand it if it was just about the money, ie if the view of these five publishers bidding in an auction for this book was "We don't take a stance on the morality of child transition, we just want to make money out of it." But, let's face it, almost no one's going to buy it. This book is only likely to be of interest to boys who think they are girls, a pretty small fraction of the teenage population. Apart from which, as we all know, boys don't read. (Girls don't read much either, but boys even less.)

So the only reason they can have thought buying this book was a good idea must be because they are still fully - and insanely - captured by this ludicrous ideology. The mind boggles. Mine does, at least.

Agree pretty much no one will buy it. Schools and libraries will be more careful now (I hope) so likely just parent buying for their child.

Blurb doesn't sound aimed at young adults though, more older primary?

It’s odd that some industries end up much more captured than others. Publishing appears to be a complete poster child for all this madness and I wonder why that’s the case

My DD and her friends all loved the Murder Most Unladylike books by Robin Stevens, what a shame that she's married to a man like this, riding on her coat tails.

I don't know, though - is there a sector that isn't captured? Look at the trade unions: captured. Look at the charity sector: captured. Look at the police: captured. Look at the judiciary: captured. Look at universities: captured. Can you think of a sector which isn't wholly on board with gender ideology?

It’s difficult to say as those who are not captured are probably just quietly going on as normal, perhaps because they’re barely aware of the general madness, or perhaps because they don’t want to do more than quiet eye rolling, lest they come under attack.

In the OP, it said, “I'm amazed at Faber, let alone four othter publishers, wanting to publish something like this”. Sadly, I’m not. The publishing industry is determined to go down with the transactivist ship, publishing books that don’t sell, so long as their favourite theme is in the ascendant. Same with other sectors of the arts. Look at Dr Who. One of the most popular TV shows of recent times, wholly throwing itself under the bus in the name of inclusivity.

There are some that stand out as tolerating no dissent. The arts is one, publishing another.

Whereas the legal profession is not entirely captured (thank god). Neither is sport and it’s started to fight back properly. Aspects of the media are not.

The public sector seems much more open to capture than the private sector.

I just find it interesting. Is it the people, the structures, the political context, the unwritten rules? Im not sure.

I’ve been convinced for quite a while that a not insignificant chunk of the YA book market is just weird adults.

Yeah good point.

I had a horrifying revelation a while ago when someone who worked in teen girl magazines let it slip that they know a proportion of their market is creepy men.

It makes total sense 🤦‍♀️

The public sector is vulnerable to bees in bonnets higher up the chain where funding is decided (with conditions attached). The private sector is "funded" by customers, who have varied tastes and opinions, and so is not such a monolith and less skewable by individual activists in key positions. Firms that don't "go woke" will still have a customer base, and ones that go too woke may find they noticeably lose custom, so there's an incentive to adjust.

Publishing is an odd one because its product is very varied in terms of appeal to different demographics - I suppose if you're raking it in from chick lit and gritty thrillers, you can afford to indulge a few ideological prejudices elsewhere in your range, and the odds are that the buyers of chick lit and thrillers will neither know nor care. Also, it may attract job applicants who are interested in ideas, and the spreading of ideas, so you will end up with activist employees making life difficult.

Also, despite the cliche that the public sector is full of underemployed people, my own experience in education suggests that for a long time it's been the reverse - people leave, their post is cut, and fewer people end up with more and more responsibilities and being a jack of all trades and master of none. So things like outside organisations that offer to come in and do training in specific areas feel like a godsend. So (when the budget allows for it) do posts created to oversee legal compliance and staff awareness; and if the person in that post is pushing ( for example) "Stonewall law" instead of the real thing, very few people will have the knowledge to refute them or the time and energy to get that knowledge.

An "uncrackable encrypted hard drive" - please pull yourself together. It's a fictional password protected folder.

"isn't the evidence now that the trans craze is dying out"

Not sure which raises an eyebrow more; comments like this or the suggestion in your post that you believe in policing access to books.

Do you have a lot of experience breaking file encryption on modern computers?