This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson

So, pretty much, don’t read this? I started out reading it and thought, wow, this has not aged well, and then I read the verso, which said the date of publication was… four years ago. Which was pretty much when my internal voice went, ‘Oh… no. This is going to get worse, isn’t it?’. Spolier: it did.

Did not finish. Really exclusionary of pretty much anyone but cis gay males, pretty much every quote on bisexuality is about not liking labels or actually identifying as something OTHER than bi, either because of being being mislabeled or discriminated against (page 27-28), gender essentialist ‘lesbians like vaginas’ ‘gay men like… big hairy men with big willies’ ‘penis? check! …gay men are.. male’(page 51), ‘lesbians like vaginas’ (page 67), transphobic (so many pages), ‘intersex is not so much an identity, as you can’t really choose it’ (page 37), conflates homophobia and transphobia as basically the same thing without mentioning the transphobia rampant in the broader queer community (pages 72-92). Noped out after genuine anti-semitism on page 111 ‘Not being funny, but these guys (Jewish people) kinda started it’ (about religious homophobia).

To eliminate any confusion bout the author’s name, the author came out as transgender after publication, so the first name on the cover is one that shares the initial J with the author’s preferred name, Juno. My reaction to discovering this development was thinking that I really hope Juno works through the utterly pervasive transphobia that is inescapable in this work. Carrying that is toxic. But the fact that the author has come out as transgender doesn’t make this work any less transphobic. In fact, it’s worse, because it makes it harder to argue the damage this book can do when it’s coming from a now-out transgender person, something I will be doing with my library system shortly.

In summary – this book would have been revolutionary ten or fifteen years ago, because nothing like this existed. It still would have been toxic. Time and correct terminology has moved on, but at its core, this would have always been a work that placed more emphasis on trying to be crude and cool to appeal to young people, which is a tragic mistake. Anything that tries this hard is never going to be cool in the eyes of a teenager. Add to that the spadefuls of misinformation, glossing over of history and hate crimes, erasure, exclusion, and casual super gross misogyny for the sake of jokes (‘Lesbians like vaginas. They don’t even want blokes watching. I KNOW, how INCONSIDERATE.’ – page 67), and this is a book that doesn’t even come close to matching the promise of its beautiful, bold, inclusive, balanced cover.

Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

It seems a bit extreme to say over a sweet, teen romance book, this ruined me but in all honesty, it did. Never have I read a book that fit this facet of my life so perfectly. There really isn’t anything out there for queer LDS and former LDS people like myself. I own Sue-Ann Post’s memoir, and borrowed Saving Alex from the library. I own Latter Days on dvd. I even owned the church-endorsed In Quiet Desperation, a book written by the parents of a gay kid who knew he was suicidal and chose not to intervene despite knowing this (because God told them not to), and the LDS posterboy for the new face of pray the gay away. That’s how thin on the ground representation is.

This book was the book I needed, not just as a teen, but as an adult. This book is going to save the lives of so many queer LDS kids. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s an absolute fact.

As someone born into Mormonism, all the terminology, attitudes, language and doctrine was spot-on. They got it right. So many kids are going to find this book and have something that was written just for them, a candle in the dark. The scene where the hypothetical is mentioned? I did that. It crashed and burned in a slightly different, but still heartbreakingly predictable way. Too many of us die, either at our own hand, actively or passively, or are murdered, actively or passively. Too many of us end up with nothing once the walls are removed and we’re standing in that field for the first time. But for the ones who find this book, be it through libraries, or friends, or illicit ebook… they won’t be standing alone.

On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis

Dear Corinne,

I got so excited when I found out that there was a book in the sci-fi/fantasy genre with an autistic character, written by an autistic person. You have no idea. The moment Otherbound hit my radar, it was on my wishlist, an eventually, I managed to snag a copy. It’s on my shelf, waiting, and I’ll get to it, too, but I haven’t quite yet. I wasn’t expecting that I would read On the Edge of Gone so soon. I have serious anxiety comorbid with my autism, and end-of-the-world/apocalyse scenarios are a trigger for me sometimes. It’s a hangover from being a child of the time before the Berlin Wall fell. There’s so many books from the Soviet era that are all about what happens to a kid after the bombs fall. It was so normal that when someone a few years back asked for recs for this subgenere, I came up with about thirty books. We were brought up in the shadow of our imminent extinction. Let me tell you, the current POTUS isn’t helping that.

But fate stepped in – my library had a copy that I found by accident on the shelf in Young Adult. Both Otherbound and On the Edge of Gone, just sitting there, waiting for me, and On the Edge of Gone was the one I didn’t own, so I grabbed it. And once I started reading it, I didn’t stop. My attention issues make it hard these days to hyperfocus enough to read a book in one sitting, but I did it. It wasn’t just the autistic character. It was the others – the queer secondary characters, that I saw a lot of myself in, too. The sister. The couple, helping out any way they could. I even saw myself in the mother, though her burden isn’t one of my own, I saw myself at my most dependant, my most weak, and I ached for her. You shone a light on the side of society that most people forget exists – the queer, the disabled, the addicted, the different, and you didn’t just make it a narrative of horrendous loss. You made it heart-breaking, yes, but you made it hopeful. You gave your characters choices that weren’t always right or wrong but were always HUMAN, and made me feel my inherent connection to a species I often feel has marginalised me for my neurotype, my gender, my sexuality. It took the common ‘they all die, obviously’ trope and turned it on its head and created something beautiful.

I still have Otherbound waiting for me, but reading it isn’t stepping into the unknown. I know now what you can do, and how you can make me feel, so I’m anticipating what it will be with excitement.

Thank you.

Review: Episodes by Blaze Ginsberg

I really wanted to like this book. I liked Raising Blaze, his mother’s parental account. It’s a personal account by an autist, which I always want more of. I even liked the idea of the format, which I know from reviews here put some readers off. But this book’s unique style and presentation soured for me very quickly for one reason – the continual misogyny and male entitlement.

Blaze’s attitude to girls his own or near his own age is disturbing. If they’re a friend, he flies into rages if he so much as sees them talking to another guy. If they’re a new acquaintance, he immediately scouts them as a potential girlfriend and demands their number or email address, then flies into a fury again if they never reply/answer. (Spoiler: None of them ever do.) This jealousy and rage even extends to girls he’s never met or seen – if he meets someone new and finds out they have a sister, then discovers the sister has a boyfriend, he immediately ‘hates’ them. That’s right – hates. And not just in a passing annoyed way – he hates them enough for it to ruin his entire day or a song he liked at the time.

For those who might say ‘he’s a teenager’ or ‘he’s autistic, he can’t do regular relationships’, stop right now. This has nothing to do with age or autism, and everything to do with toxic masculinity. Blaze is the result of a society that tells men, especially quirky men, that they’re ‘entitled’ to whatever girl they like. That if they push hard enough the woman they want will say yes and become a reflection of their desires. Blaze’s incessant girlfriend hunt isn’t born of a desire for romance, intimacy or companionship. The book seems to make it quite clear – he wants a girlfriend because it’s the next achievement marker in life. That’s why he demands the numbers of every girl he meets. The individual woman doesn’t matter, because she’s just an object to be gained; a proof of his masculinity.

The book was written some time ago, so I hope that in the intervening years, Blaze has learned more about what it means to be a receptive, not aggressive partner. Because if he hasn’t… well, women deserve better.