Jeanne answers “I work at a library, and we had a member...”

tineke asked this question about Beyond Magenta: Transgender and Nonbinary Teens Speak Out:

I work at a library, and we had a member of the public asking about this book. She claimed it had p*dophilic aspects & described child abuse -didn't state whether the abuse was being promoted or being described by a victim. After looking through a large number of reviews here, I couldn't find any mentions of the things that she brought up. Can anyone validate her claims? Or was she pulling at straws to be transphobic?

Jeanne I just finished reading that section, and while I agree it's important to respect people's personal narratives, I think the author/interviewer could h…moreI just finished reading that section, and while I agree it's important to respect people's personal narratives, I think the author/interviewer could have done a better job at contextualizing it. I as an adult could understand that their actions were a result of the many ways our society fails our most vulnerable, but teens reading this might not have that context. The author editorialized at the start of the book quite a bit, explaining things the first interviewee said that a reader might not know. I though this section had very little of that, and I think it would have been helpful. The reality is that trans people are often at a higher risk for being targeted for sexual abuse, and I think giving some information/stats about that would have put the personal narrative in a larger context that highlighted an important issue.

I wouldn't say that abuse was being promoted (the narrator explicitly calls certain acts abuse or identifies pedophiles with whom she was afraid of). However, as a result of various circumstances, the narrator also describes certain behaviors they engaged in as a young child that I am pretty sure qualify as sexual assault, which they don't seem to be aware of. They also seem to think that very sexual exploration in very young pre-puberty children is normal (like 8ish years old), which makes sense given her own personal history but I don't think is universal (and it seemed to groom her for future more explicit abuse).

I think there was a way to frame this narrative in a truthful and respectful way that also provided the context to understand it, but the author did not do an effective job at this. Since this is a book geared towards teens who may have limited understanding of the topics represented, such contextualization is extremely important, and I've found it lacking as the book goes on. (less)

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