My Brother's Name is Jessica

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Boyne is the author of 17 novels for adults and children with Striped Pyjamas, adapted in to a film, being his most famous. Another wrote “Boycott @john-boyne and his new ‘novel’‘My Brother’s Name is Jessica’ in which his transphobic main character PHYSICALLY ASSAULTS a trans woman and this action is never condemned. Disgusting for an LGBT author to throw us under the bus like this. SHAME.” 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.

John Boyne deletes Twitter account after trans article backlash

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. Unannounced, the soccer coach arrives to discuss rumours regarding Jason to his parents. Everyone is on edge to hear what the coach will say. Boyne said he found sentiments such as “stay in your lane” troubling. “It’s arrogant. A lot of the time it’s about people trying to tell you they are morally superior to you; they know how these things should be written.” In short, this book is not Jessica’s. It doesn’t belong to her. It’s about everyone else but her. And when you look at it like that, it’s not hard to see why the trans community has refused to embrace it as theirs. 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.As a cisgender person, while I do my best to be an ally to my trans siblings, I am aware that my experiences mean I have a bias, and like many cispeople (such as the publishers/editors of this book), I missed a lot of transphobia in the book. I mean, trans people in general have the highest suicide, murder, and rape statistics. It’s horrifying, and throughout the book I was worried for her. In Australia as of late, there has been an increase in articles against trans youth. I was both excited and a bit scared to see how this book would go. It’s so important to have great representation for minorities, and with the growing acceptance of transgender people, but also the vocal transphobia, it’s certainly important for young people to see positive representation.

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

The comments prompted a storm of criticism, and Murphy issued a statement in which she said: “I cannot apologise enough for being the reason for this eruption of damaging and potentially dangerous social media fire and brimstone. To witness the ramifications of my actions and the divisions it has caused is heartbreaking.” This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. 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.

The narrator of Jason’s story is his adoring, dyslexic, bullied, young-for-his-age but equally articulate 13-year-old brother, Sam. Their mother, in spite of being a cabinet minister, comes across for most of the story as an idiot who knows nothing. The same goes for the father, whose comparatively limited input into the story reminded me of how Margaret Thatcher’s husband would look like a spare part next to her in public and how I used to wonder what he was for. 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. 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. 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. Furthermore, there is no discussion of what medical “transitioning” involves and the long-term health risks. This is, in my opinion, highly irresponsible. The anecdotal evidence that many people – and not just very young people – are seeking and getting medical interventions without being fully aware of what it does to them is alarming.