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. 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. Writers use their imagination. It’s what we do!” says fellow writer Eileen Wharton. “I write from many different perspectives and may not have experienced the things I’m writing about. I speak to people who have experienced those things. I do other research as I’m sure John has done.” The inaccuracies, stereotypes and underlying transphobia made me uncomfortable throughout. I can't imagine how it made the trans community feel 💔

You were right on trans issues, author tells Father Ted

Jason is a fine strapping lad and star of the school football team yet he would cross-dress and experiment with make-up. His transgender identity seems to be all about his appearance, which sounds like a fetish to me and nothing to do with wanting the reality of women’s lives. I work with Inclusive Minds, the group he claimed in his article to have consulted for his transphobic book. Having read this I immediately demanded to know what on was going on. 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? Graham, without equivocation, without excuses, and without evasion: you were right, I was wrong, and I apologise.” Speaking out against trans activistsOne day, Jason comes out to his family and tells them he’s a girl. This is a disaster and a half for them, as they haven’t dealt with this before. Their mum is hoping to become Prime Minister, and this is just not something she or their dad want to deal with right now. I found the book very well done. Not only was the writing excellent, as to be expected, but the choice of protagonist, point of view, and characters were well executed. The story felt strong, and the message, and effectiveness could have been defeated if not for these choices. He expects The Echo Chamber will provoke something of a reaction but is braced for it. “I just turned 50. And as much as I don’t like drama, and I don’t like trouble, I do think that it’s important that your work should be strong enough that it inspires some kind of debate. And antipathy towards it is not necessarily a negative. At the end of this book, I mention Kingsley Amis’s line that if you’re not annoying somebody with your writing, you’re not doing anything right. And it’s not that I set out to annoy people, but I do want my work to be more interesting in that way than perhaps it once was. I want to think about the world we live in and to challenge it. And if that means upsetting some people, well, that’s what literature is supposed to do.” In writing My Brother’s Name is Jessicamy hope is that children and young adults—particularly ones who are perhaps not already familiar with transgender issues—will come to this book and start to understand that anyone struggling with these issues needs support and compassion, not judgment.I have tried to write the best novel that I can. I might have succeeded or I might have failed, but I stand by it. I welcome debate and am interested in people’s views on this subject. I do not believe that the trans community bears any relationship to, or any responsibility for the abuse I have received online. I stand 100% behind all trans people, I respect them as brave pioneers, I applaud their determination to live authentic lives despite the abuse they also receive, and I will always do so.”

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

Boyne said his change of heart had been prompted by the row over comments made by Roisin Murphy, the pop singer.

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. 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. He said he people had accused him of misgendering the book’s title, that it should be My Sister’s Name is Jessica instead. But, he said, the whole point was that the story was through the eyes of the transitioning character’s younger brother Sam. “To be so politically correct, some people … it must be painful to be so woke all the time.” 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. It’s the concept of “failing” that feels so poignant. His experiences at school, combined with the fact that homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised until Boyne was in his third year of university and that, by that time, the Aids crisis was in full spate, feel like so much to contend with that self-reproach is simply too cruel. In other parts of his life, after all, Boyne seems like a measure of success: not only in career terms, but in his closeness to family and friends and in his enjoyment of his daily life. “I’m not spending all my day crying about it,” he reassures me. “I work hard. And I like my life a lot. And maybe you just can’t have everything.”

John Boyne deletes Twitter account after trans article backlash

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. But perhaps the most frustrating and damning aspect in all of this is the portrayal of Jessica herself — or Jason, as she is referred to as throughout the novel, up until the very last chapter of the book. In Sam’s eyes, Jessica is always “my brother Jason.” He’s “the best brother” and it’s clear that Sam idolizes him. But Sam is not sympathetic to Jessica’s struggles. The only glimpses we get of Jessica’s take on all of this are pithy, generic quotes that seem designed to encapsulate the “trans struggle” (“I’ve always felt this way.” “Just because I feel that I’m a girl doesn’t mean I have to like everything that girls like…” “Don’t you realize that my gender has absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on in my pants?”), and a lot of crying. We see none of her interior world, none of her struggle, and it’s not her strength or her perseverance that wins out by the end of the book. 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.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.