Shelley Charlesworth – Transgender Trend
20 APRIL 2023 – TRANSGENDER TREND
What’s the harm in trans picture books for children? Many might argue they impart important values of acceptance and understanding to a young audience; values that fit into the popular narrative in children’s literature that they should ‘be kind’ and at the same time ‘be yourself.’
There’s been a huge increase in such books recently in response to one of the most successful political campaigns of our time; to persuade the public that the interests of trans people are inextricably linked to those of lesbians, gays and bisexuals. The publishing industry has been happy to endorse and amplify this unthinking connection across all genres, YA, middle grade, fiction and non-fiction and the picture book market.
But compare the way gay and lesbian stories are written for children with those about trans characters and the faulty logic of equating sexual orientation with gender identity is exposed.
Books for children about being gay or lesbian always feature recognisable adults, although sometimes in the form of kings, princesses or animals, as the main characters in the story. The gay parent storyline is popular with titles like My Daddies, Two Dads, Heather Has Two Mummies, The Girl With Two Dads. Usually written from the point of view of the child they are mostly plotless, didactic vehicles for acceptance and understanding of gay relationships. It’s notable there are no picture books for children about small children who themselves are gay or lesbian. Away from the wilder shores of academia where ‘queering children’s literature’ graduates might wish it so, pre-pubertal children don’t express or understand sexual orientation.
But trans picture books are entirely different; they are primers in how to be ‘trans.’ And children, either as the narrator or main character, are the means by which the child reader is taught what ‘trans’ is.
There are no trans adults in these story books for children (with the notable exceptions of two books by trans activist writer Sarah Savage, She’s My Dad and He’s My Mom. Both are told by the child of a transgender parent whose unrealistic acceptance their parent’s sex change is unconvincing).
All the fictional children in sixty picture books (50 are fiction, 10 non-fiction) surveyed for this piece are pre-pubertal, who speak to their pre-pubertal readers. It’s understandable that trans picture books would steer clear of the realities of transition post puberty. To do so would mean engaging with the messy world of puberty blockers, breast binders, double mastectomies, invasive surgeries, and the downsides of cross sex hormones, weight gain, acne, continuing gender dysphoria. It’s as if the authors know this wouldn’t play well with their infant audience who are still at the developmental stage of believing impossible things.
Trans for toddlers?
Trans picture books are a completely new phenomenon. This can’t be overemphasised. Fifteen years ago, there were hardly any books for children which told them they could change sex. They began to appear on publishers’ lists around the same time as there was an unprecedented increase in children being referred to the Tavistock and heart-warming stories of ‘trans kids’ appeared in the media. Only six of the fifty fiction books surveyed were published before 2014 which was the year I Am Jazz came out. The best known and most successful of these is Marcus Ewert’s 2008 picture book, 10,000 Dresses. Many children have now been introduced to the book’s central idea that sex is a matter of belief, expressed by what you wear. It was the first of many to use the mirror theme; the child looks in the mirror and sees not their biological sex but their desired sex reflected back.
2014, the year that I Am Jazz was published, marked the start of the big surge in trans picture books. I Am Jazz encapsulates many of the themes of all the subsequent books. It was co-written by a ‘trans’ child, Jazz Jennings, whose life and transition story, from boy to girl, were played out in a reality TV series. Jazz’s simplistic message which is repeated in subsequent picture books is: “I have a girl brain but a boy body. This is called transgender. I was born this way!”
‘Based on a true story’
12 of the fiction books in the survey are written by ‘trans’ children or their parents. These come with an ‘authenticity’ stamp; you can become the opposite sex, and the proof is the existence of this real child. It’s OK To Sparkle is the story of Avery Jackson who was socially transitioned at an early age and has been widely featured in print and visual media. The website for Maddox Lyons, the 12yr-old author of I Am Not A Girl states: “Maddox Lyons is a twelve-year-old transgender boy who lives in California with his parents, sister, two dogs, and two pet rats.” Those who doubt can be shown the documentary evidence, see: Maddox, with her short red hair and freckles really is a boy, Avery with his long pink hair really is a girl.
Parents who socially transition their children at an early age is another subgenre. Like the story told by the former head of Mermaids, Susie Green, these true-life accounts are revealing. Calvin, another true story, was transitioned by her parents at the age of 4. According to the blurb: “Calvin has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl. He knows who he is in his heart and in his mind but he hasn’t yet told his family. Finally, he can wait no longer: “I’m not a girl,” he tells his family. “I’m a boy–a boy in my heart and in my brain.” Here the parent authors invent the inner life of their 4-year-old daughter to justify their decision to lie to her, who like all 4-year-olds is developmentally unable to understand that her biological sex will never change.
The real ‘real life’ stories of some of these young people can be heart-breaking. Gavin Grimm, a teenage girl who wanted to be a boy, fought a protracted legal battle in the US to use the boys’ toilets in school, resulting in a legal win that has been lauded by activists. Gavin is the subject of the 2022 book If You Are A Kid Like Gavin in which Gavin is portrayed as a civil rights hero. But in December 2021 Gavin posted on Facebook “a few months ago I suffered several seizures and ended up in a coma for four days. I’m getting better but still experiencing health problems and haven’t been able to work for some time now.” The publishers and co-author Kyle Lukoff presumably felt confident in going ahead with the book despite Gavin’s medical and financial cry for help. This book is marketed as suitable for 4-8year-olds.
Activist authors
Many authors have strong opinions and write about them. But the problem with these children’s picture books is that the strong opinion is in fact a highly contested belief system, based on ideas about innate gender identity. Some of the authors in the survey are closely linked to LGBT+ activism.
Sarah Savage (Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl, He’s My Mom, She’s My Dad) runs the charity Trans Pride Brighton, Laura Kate Dale (Nisha’s Monster) is a co-founder of Trans Activism UK, Kyle Lukoff (Call Me Max, When Aiden Became A Brother) is active on social media opposing attempts to stop harmful hormone and surgery treatments for children in the US. Jay Hulme (Here Be Monsters) has helped raise money for the discredited charity Mermaids. Juno Dawson (You Need To Chill) is also a Mermaids supporter.
Savage, Dale, Hulme and Dawson have all spoken in favour of banning conversion therapy for gender identity, a campaign led by LGBT+ groups that would see open ended exploratory therapy for children cast as ‘conversion therapy.’
The close relationship between fiction and activism is illustrated most clearly in a new crop of books with non-binary characters and themes. Stonewall is currently campaigning to make non-binary a legal concept, by removing sex markers from official identity documents. The children’s picture book market has fallen into line and published My Shadow is Purple, Are You a Boy Or Are You a Girl? The Prince and The Frog, Neither, Bye Bye Binary, Payden’s Pronoun Party, Peanut Goes For Gold, Fantastic Frankie, Timid, A House For Everyone, From The Stars In The Sky To The Fish In The Sea. Of these titles, 5 were published in 2022 and are recommended for the under 5s.
Fantastic Frankie, the tale of a fox who is “fabulous in a rainbow coloured cape” is a good example. The teaching notes that accompany the book say: “Frankie isn’t referred to as a boy or a girl, just Frankie. Do you think it matters what you wear if you’re a girl or a boy?” The message for its target audience of 3-6yr-olds is that non-conformity with gendered clothing is on a par with not caring whether Frankie is male or female. Against all safeguarding principles, it demands that children see biological sex as either something to be kept secret or as something of no importance.
Age appropriate?
It is concerning that, in the survey, 40 of the 50 fiction and half of the non-fiction trans picture books are marketed for the under 5s. Because an undisputed fact about child development is that children do not reach the stage of ‘sex constancy’ until the ages of 6-7. This means that until that age children think that a person’s sex is changed when their external, visual clues are changed or swopped. So a man who puts on a long haired wig and a dress becomes a woman.
Among the books which promote the idea that changing appearance through opposite sex clothes and hair length changes natal sex are A Fox Called Herbert, My Shadow Is Pink, Phoenix Goes To School, Jamie, Introducing Teddy, 10,000 Dresses, Jack (not Jackie), Calvin, Sam Is My Sister, When Kathy Is Keith, Be Who You Are.
Vincent The Vixen according to Amazon is about “…a fox who is assigned male at birth, but who knows they are actually a girl.” How does Vincent know? Because when he plays dress up he always chooses girls’ clothes. In Calvin, the real 4-year-old girl transitioned by her parents, we’re told they take “Calvin shopping for the swim trunks he’s always wanted and back-to-school clothes and a new haircut that helps him look and feel like the boy he’s always known himself to be.”
Telling young children that hairstyles and clothes will change their sex and that other children will then believe it to be true is a cruel deception, playing as it does on a child’s developmentally limited understanding of biology. It’s a cynical trick to use on children who are at an age when fantasy play is at its most intense.
Destabilising language
It can take children up to the age of 8 to learn to be proficient in language but trans and non-binary books blunder right through this developmental process, upending all that is known about language acquisition. Titles such as She’s My Dad and He’s My Mom, books marketed as being suitable for 3-7year-olds, are disorienting, which is presumably the object. The first and most sex specific words a child learns, Mum and Dad, are shorn of their meaning. In a book for the under 5s, You Need To Chill!, the toddler sized protagonist shuts down all questions by shouting ‘Hun you need to chill…My brother is now my sister!’ In About Chris,another pre-school picture book, toddlers are told Chris is “a girl from the waist down and a boy from the waist up.”
Non-binary language is designed to confuse children. This enthusiastic review for Payden’s Pronoun Party, a new book for 5-8year-olds, is typical: “Much like trying on different outfits to find the best fit, Payden experiments with a range of pronouns before choosing the gender-neutral e/em/eir. To celebrate eir exciting selection, Payden’s supportive parents throw em a pronoun party.”
When meaning is destroyed like this, children are more vulnerable to harm as they are robbed of the words that keep them safe. The question that should be asked of authors and publishers who actively undermine shared words and definitions like Mum, Dad, he, she, is “Whose interests does this collapse of meaning serve?”
Sex stereotypes
In children’s picture books the foundational belief of gender identity theory is so simplified that its reliance on sex stereotypes is plain to see. Boys whose interests are seen as feminine or girls whose interests are more typically masculine become shorthand for being ‘trans.’
Stonewall recommend perhaps the most blatantly homophobic account of a male to female child transition, When Kayla Was Kyle. It’s the story of a little boy who is relentlessly bullied at school for not liking sport and being ‘different.’ When another boy discovers Kyle plays with Barbie dolls the bullying intensifies, he is called a girl and laughed at for liking dolls. His parents continue for some years to encourage him be like other boys. At his lowest and most friendless he tells his parents “I’m a mistake…I can’t live like this anymore… everyone hates me…I want to live in heaven.” Kyle’s parents then realise that Kyle can’t live as a boy but has to become Kayla. Suicide ideation is central to activist organisations like Mermaids, despite there being no evidence that children with gender distress are at a greater risk than children with other mental health conditions. At no point does the author or any of the characters suggest that Kyle could be happy as a boy who likes dolls, or could grow up to be gay.
For girls who believe they are boys, the haircut features prominently, as it does in online discussions of girl to boy transition. In Jamie, a retelling of the Cinderella story, Jamie cuts her hair short and puts on a suit. Maddox in I Am Not A Girl smiles when she sees her boy’s haircut in the barber’s mirror. The drama in Jack (not Jackie) centres on the haircut, in When Kathy Is Keith the mirror reflects back Kathy’s desired image of herself as Keith, with short hair.
Dresses are the main markers for a social transition from boy to girl, hair growth taking longer and lacking the impact of a haircut. The cover of Be Who You Are shows a boy looking in a mirror and seeing himself in a dress with long hair, in My Rainbow, Trinity wants long hair like his dolls, Sam in Sam Is My Sister wants long hair and to wear a dress. Jazz in I Am Jazz is upset when his parents don’t let him wear a dress outside of the house.
None of these books would make sense to their young readers unless they utilised the crudest metaphors for what makes a child male or female. They reinforce sex stereotypes, telling children that the only explanation for why some boys have feminine personalities and some girls have masculine ones is that they are ‘trans.’
Fact becomes fiction
In the world of trans publishing for children, fiction is written as fact, and factual content is, in reality, fiction. These non-fiction LGBT+ explainers are aimed, like the story books, at the primary school market. Because the language is counterfactual – she’s my dad – and arcane – cisgender, agender, gender neutral – readers and teachers are in need of these instruction manuals. The ABC of Gender Identity strays close to parody with its words for H and K. “Horogender- Someone whose identity changes over time. Kynigender— Someone who is unable to pinpoint their gender due to stress of the questioning process.” This book is for 5yr-olds.
Some of the non-fiction titles normalise surgical transition for young women. All Bodies Are Cool and Some Bodies for ages 2-8 and 5-8 respectively, each feature illustrations of double mastectomies, the latter with the text “Some people choose to have their bodies changed.”
The language too can be more explicit. Every Body Is A Rainbow published in 2022 for ages 4-8 says “Some rainbow bodies have a long spongy piece of skin called a penis…kids who have these body parts can also have a gender identity that is girl, boy, both, neither…”
In the 2022 book ABC Pride, co-authored by Elly Barnes, CEO of the LGBT charity Educate & Celebrate, the meanings of the LG and B parts of the acronym have been disappeared. According to this ABC book for 3-5year-olds L is for love, B is for belonging, G is for gender. T is of course for transgender.
Stonewall recommends 5-7year-olds read Who Are You? by Brook Pessin-Whedbee. Small children who have only just learned to read will be taught the contested language of adult political activism: cisgender, gender neutral, neutrois, agender. They’ll read “Is it a boy or a girl? Babies can’t talk so grown-ups make a guess by looking at their bodies. This is the sex assigned to you at birth.”
What Does LGBT+ Mean? by Olly Pike and Mel Lane came out in 2021. Chapter headings include Identity, Assigned sex and gender, Gender as a spectrum & pronouns, Transgender, Non-binary, Intersex, Romantic love, Sexual orientation, LGBT+ Flag Guide. The book ends with the Mermaids helpline number, advising children to call if they have any further questions that they can’t ask a parent or teacher.
Trans in the classroom
LGBT+ groups which offer school training schemes are the biggest users of trans picture books. These schemes get schools to sign up to policies to socially transition the ‘transgender child.’ Common to these policies is a belief that sex is on a spectrum whereas gender is innate, that the ‘transgender’ child’s right supersede all other rights, and that not to accede to them risks suicide. Parents who’ve already transitioned their child must be accommodated. They all distort equality law. Teachers are told they must validate new names and pronouns, behind parents’ backs if necessary.
This is why the picture books are important; they reinforce the same ideas for pupils. …