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

On this thread and on a couple of other threads simultaneously

Quite a skill!

Well quite 😭

I haven't claimed the author is a safeguarding risk, nor does anything I've said have anything to do with the author (or for that matter the protagonist character) being trans, or not.

There is no fire here that needs your help to be put out.

What did you mean by this? "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."

any book

That the book is a safeguarding concern. Like that book Beyond Magenta that had a normalised, explicit account of child sex abuse in it and anyone on the right side of safeguarding discussions could see it wasn’t appropriate to have it available for children to read.

You really aren’t having a clear thinking day today, are you?

I meant exactly and nothing more than what I said. That a book with that theme should raise a concern about safeguarding. I don't think in the real world it's healthy for vulnerable children to have folders on internet-connected computers that the adults responsible for them can't access. So I'd want to see how the theme of online safety in a modern world is handled in the fictional world of the book.

How disappointing. alcovecupboards apparently replied to me yesterday night, according to my notifications, but the reply had been deleted before I even logged on today.

I do so enjoy watching twerps trying for gotchas when there really isn't one. Now I am all put out.

To say it’s a dying craze, question why policing of books ‘what do I mean by that?’ basically says everything about why books still hold power. Whether a person chooses to purchase a book, or read a well read paper version on a subject, and the subject is completely irrelevant for any purpose or intention. It comes to the basic fact that books, the written word, irrelevant of the subject shouldn’t be censored because of market trends, others views. We at base should live in a world of the minimum of having a choice on what we choose to read. Have a right on what one wishes to read or become, as an example like the highly educated women of Kabul in the 70’s who now aren’t authorised to speak in public, have to cover themselves and have no access to education. I don’t quite understand your post and the pretty lazy argument. What exactly is your post about?

so taking issue with something a trans person does is transphobia now? Wowzer, I’ve heard a lot of hyperbolic stuff from TRA but that might be the worst!

I don't believe we can take a "we shouldn't police books" moral high ground here. Books for children should be policed to a limited level. You wouldn't sell a book to kids with a positive portrayal of a 12-year-old sexually groomed by an adult, or of someone who decides to become a prostitute or a drug runner, suggesting these are laudable life choices. I can't personally get worked up about the encrypted folder, but I am very aware from personal experience that this sort of thing, read by the right child, absolutely might encourage them on a highly dangerous route.

I think the objection to an encrypted folder which is being kept secret from the child's parents is because the notion that it's ok keeping secrets from your parents at some other adult's behest is the antithesis of safeguarding, really. We all absolutely know that a classic child-abuser line is something to the effect "and it can be our little secret, you don't want to go telling anyone else" about the abuse, and at that point the child is meant to be unaware it is being abused at all. I'm sure children who are being encouraged to think that just changing their gender (and getting into all sorts of medical minefields in the process) will solve all their problems are unaware that inculcation of that idea could possibly be abuse of them.

I too suspect that this is (thank heavens) out of time. When this social contagion was at its height I heard of schools where 25% of the year group was trans and many many others where whole friendship groups were. The prevailing Zeitgeist made affirmation compulsory and school libraries spent a fortune on some really duff trans books. That Zeitgeist has passed, there are far fewer vulnerable gay and autistic children groomed into believing they are trans and I hope school librarians are more sensible now. Here’s hoping the publishers never get their initial investment back.

Well, …er…yes! Depends on the fiction- not sure I’d want even a 13 or 15 year old reading 40 Shades, etc.

There is a reason some fiction is called "adult" fiction, after all.

("Adult" used to mean grown-up, it now means unfit for children.)

There's a reason for film-classification, too, and violent porn being available to young adolescents on the internet is definitely a cause for concern and is probably feeding both the increase in male violence against women and the female desire to conform physically with what young males are being groomed to think is "right" in a woman's body.

So yes, fiction is and always has been a safeguarding issue.