My Brother's Name is Jessica

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And, given that he is emphatically not gay and at an age when young men tend to be rather keen on the idea of sex, what are his expectations of future relationships? Does he expect to be as attractive to girls after becoming an approximation of one himself? Martin also criticised Boyne for “misgendering” in his original article and rebuked his assertion that “there is no safe place for people to debate” trans topics “without being branded an enemy”. “I am tired of my life and the lives of my community being put up for the debate: which bathrooms should we use? Which prisons should we be placed in? Which hospital wards? Which changing rooms? Should we be allowed to play sport?” she wrote. Some have come to Boyne’s defence, protesting that all fiction writers attempt to tell stories from different perspectives and that he should be trusted to have done the necessary research.

Author John Boyne Faces Backlash From Trans - GCN Irish Author John Boyne Faces Backlash From Trans - GCN

John is not trans therefore this isn’t his story to write,” wrote one activist. “When it comes to transitioning, the trans person themselves should be centred. Not their siblings. This perspective has been done countless times already.” Before I knew what had been going on behind the scenes, I would say absolutely read this book. Now, I would say consider it, but be aware of the transphobia. Don’t use this as a source of what it’s like to be transgender, and take what you read with a grain of salt. I contend that for young people today, questioning one’s gender (whatever that means) is a fashion. It is a fact that the number of young people seeking to “transition” is higher than it’s ever been before. This should be sounding alarm bells but it seems that schools and youth groups, instead of trying to get to the truth of why this is happening are, on the advice of the transgender lobby, promoting the idea that positive affirmation is the only way to help them. Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, wrote a 2019 children’s story about a trans teenager, My Brother’s Name is Jessica.

Putting aside the book’s representation of trans issues for a moment (yes, we will get to it), even just in terms of Jessica as a story, there is very little that I found I could enjoy. Pretty much all of the characters are awful, and I even found it difficult to root for Jessica, for reasons that we’ll get to in a minute.

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He’s worried that Jason will quit the team. But what about the other rumours? He doesn’t care about his gender, because Jason is so good, that she – he – whatever, must keep playing. Genders dumb, football is where it’s at – it’s what’s important. He said he had written books about the Holocaust, first world war soldiers, the Russian revolution and the Bounty. “I’ve never been to any of those places, I’ve never done any of those things and nobody ever criticised me for it. If we say we can only write about our own experiences, the corollary of that, for example, is that a transgender writer can only write about transgender characters. John Boyne: “I came out when I was 22, but . . . it would have taken me a while of knowing someone before I could confide in them something that I would have seen as slightly shameful and embarrassing.” The only time I refer to people as being cis is when discussing trans issues,” Martin has written in The Irish Times. “This is to distinguish them from transgender and non-binary people.

As for the others, Sam, our narrator, is a thirteen-year-old boy who spends most of the novel either blaming Jessica for the way his classmates bully him, or worried that he might “catch” being transgender. Their parents are a conservative MP and her secretary, both of whom spend most of the novel being racist, bigoted, or cuthroatedly ambitious, all while openly claiming they’re none of those things. There are very few moments when they are shown to be at all sympathetic to their kids. Most of these are shoehorned in, either by Sam or Jessica proclaiming how “good” or “supportive” their parents are (without those traits ever being demonstrated), or by Mom and Dad Waver admitting, as if it were a great confession, that their jobs and feelings might not be the most important thing after all, given the bigger picture. Of course, they then return to ignoring Sam and lying about Jessica in the next scene. He wrote: “Graham Linehan – who is without question one of our best screenwriters – has sacrificed enormous amounts in his support of women, children, gay men, and lesbians. He’s experienced trauma in his personal life, been vilified for his views online, in newspapers, and on television. He is currently unable to work in the industry he loves.” This step has triggered a storm of criticism on social media. Some trans activists claim that, since Boyne is not trans, the story depicted in My Brother’s Name Is Jessica is not his to write. Others argue that to centre the novel on a cis brother’s struggle to accept his sister is to unfairly prioritise cis experiences over those of trans people themselves.