My Brother's Name is Jessica

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The interaction is set up to be awkward, uncomfortable, a scary experience. Of all people to come forward with transphobia and deny Jason the opportunity to participate in sport, it would make sense that it be the coach. But he doesn’t care about letters from parents, he accepts Jason as he is. Which brings me to the most important point in all of this. The central conflict of the book isn’t centered around Jessica’s journey, or her character development. It’s not about her winning people over to accept who she is, or her coming out better or stronger. In fact, it’s Jessica herself, her being transgender, her acceptance of her own identity, that is set up as the antagonist, the conflict, the obstacle for Sam and his entire family to overcome. It’s only when Jessica offers to give up her identity and live her life as a lie for her family that the plot is resolved (even if that resolution does, eventually, involve her family supporting her transition). He also touched on the wider trans debate as it has played out on social media and wrote that he rejected the term “cis”, which refers to when a person’s gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

John Boyne deletes Twitter account after trans article backlash

One of several glaring omissions in this book, by the way, is any mention of social media pressure, which figures very strongly in every story of teenage “transition” I’ve heard over the past few years. 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. In an article published on April 13th in The Irish Times, titled “Why I support trans rights but reject the word ‘cis,'” Boyne wrote “it will probably make some unhappy to know that I reject the word ‘cis,’ the term given by transgender people to their nontransgender brethren. I don’t consider myself a cis man; I consider myself a man.” Even sillier is the notion that John Boyne shouldn’t be writing about a trans person when he’s not trans himself. I’ve no doubt that writing a story about being transgender oneself, if one doesn’t have that first-person experience, would be difficult to get right, though if you’re a talented and empathic writer who does sufficient research, it should be as possible as writing about being a man if you’re a woman, about being gay if you’re straight, poor if you’re rich, old if you’re young, etc, etc. Think of all the great literature we’d be deprived of if we made it a condition that writers only write about characters created in their own image. The narrator of the story isn’t even a trans person, he’s the younger brother of one, which doesn’t sound like such a massive feat of imagination to me. And while I obviously agree with the criticism made by many reviewers that none of the characters ring true, I don’t think the little brother’s reaction to his adored older brother’s “coming out as trans” is unrealistic.The 'just asking questions' brigade are just making difficult lives for an already marginalised minority that much more difficult Aoife Martin, a trans woman and director of TENI, has interpreted Boyne’s unwillingness to use the term as a dangerous means of ignoring his cis privilege. Author John Boyne has apologised to Graham Linehan for criticising his stance on trans issues, saying: “You were right, I was wrong.” I’m simply not going to put up with this kind of nonsense from cowards who hide behind keyboards and feel they can scream abuse at people and that it has no consequences. I’m a person with my own feelings, my own sensitivities and my own difficulties in life. In six novels for young people, and 11 for adults, I have always tried to write with consideration and empathy, and I will continue to do so. But removing myself from the toxic atmosphere of social media seems right to me now.”

My Take: “My Brother’s Name is Jessica” by John Boyne My Take: “My Brother’s Name is Jessica” by John Boyne

I don’t recall any mention of the fact that gender dysphoria is not necessarily permanent and many teenagers get through it and become reconciled to being their biological sex. Nor is there any mention that some people of all ages live to regret their transition and end up detransitioning, some having already gone through irreversible physical changes. There was a certain section, although now I can’t see it at all, but I thought, ‘ Oh, great, he actually talked to trans people and consulted people who are in the community about how to properly represent them.’Seeing as he Inclusive Minds haven’t heard much at all from him ever, it’s a bit difficult to take what he says seriously.

Many have taken offence at the novel’s title – which, although written from the perspective of a confused child attached to the idea of his “brother” as a boy, can be interpreted as misgendering its trans subject. I’m not saying, by the way, that Boyne should have written the story differently. As with the awful ITV drama, Butterflies, which aired last year, I’m saying the story shouldn’t have been written at all. 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? 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.”

John Boyne: ‘People were criticising my book when they hadn’t John Boyne: ‘People were criticising my book when they hadn’t

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. Boyne, the author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Heart’s Invisible Furies, among other books, says he was dismayed by the response to both the piece and his forthcoming young-adult novel, My Brother’s Name Is Jessica. Irish author John Boyne, whose new book My Brother’s Name Is Jessica follows a young boy whose brother comes out as a transgender girl, has come under fire from trans activists. The inaccuracies, stereotypes and underlying transphobia made me uncomfortable throughout. I can't imagine how it made the trans community feel 💔Note, Jason doesn’t merely wish he is a girl. He is “pretty sure” he is one. How, for crying out loud? The exploration of why this particular young man might believe he’s a young woman, if it takes place at all, does so during sessions with a therapist that readers aren’t privy to. 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.

back at critics of transgender novel John Boyne hits back at critics of transgender novel

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. The book follows the family’s journey from denial to acceptance, the heartache they all endure, and finally the positive’s that come from it all, bringing them closer together. Yesterday I bought and read My Brother’s Name is Jessica by John Boyne (2019), who wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006). During this global COVID pandemic, we like many other organisations have been impacted greatly in the way we can do business and produce. This means a temporary pause to our print publication and live events and so now more than ever we need your help to continue providing this community resource digitally.I don’t consider myself a cis man; I consider myself a man,” he wrote. “For while I will happily employ any term that a person feels best defines them, whether that be transgender, nonbinary or gender fluid, to name but a few, I reject the notion that someone can force an unwanted term on to another.” 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. The fact that transgender ideology is hurting and erasing women is completely disregarded. Is ‘Jessica’ going to someday crush some young woman’s dreams of sporting success by displacing her in a women’s football team? Children's publisher Puffin has said it is proud to be publishing John Boyne’s novel about a transgender teen, after the book was labelled "transphobic" by some campaigners, and an article the author wrote in the Irish Times about the subject received criticism on social media. The book My Brother's Name is Jessica, out tomorrow (18th April), is about a boy’s journey to understanding and accepting his transgender sister. 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.