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

Probably about as much as you have in not overreacting to a fictional plot point. Is it only because this is a trans author that it's become an issue for you? Because there's quite a few books where children keep secrets in the history of literature.

It's actually not particularly about a trans issue.

Because there's quite a few books where children keep secrets in the history of literature.

During most of the history of literature, adults with ill-intent across the Internet didn't have access directly into children's bedrooms, and children didn't have easy access to harmful adult material to store in those places where they kept their secrets, in ways that not even GCHQ can decode.

Times are different, now. I can't comment in detail on, condemn, or praise the book because I haven't read it, but the details described should raise eyebrows.

I’d lay any amount of money that David (“Dee”) Stevens has written this book as some sort of competition with his much more successful wife. Men have come up with all kinds of ways to control women over the millennia and appropriating womanhood is just another iteration, the latest twist, of same old same old where men cannot stand women to be successful.

Now fiction is a safeguarding issue. Goodness me.

This is the most extraordinary tell.

Encrypted folders on vulnerable children's Internet-connected computers are a safeguarding issue, and encouraging them should raise an eyebrow.

Why? What is going on with Dr. Who?

I wonder if part of the issue with tv shows is that they are made about a year to two years before going on air. If things have changed in the meantime they could be very out of step. Same with theatre I suppose. I think radio and podcasts would have a quicker turn around.

Is this his first book? They do say a lot of first books are heavily autobiographical.