Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo

New York Times ^ | June 6, 2015 | ALEXANDRA ALTER

[reaganaut1]

Sam Martin was browsing in a Boston record store 23 years ago when an unusual photography book caught his eye. Mr. Martin flipped through its pages, which featured portraits and interviews with women who had become men, and started to cry.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m not the only one,’ ” said Mr. Martin, 43, who started transitioning to male from female after he bought the book. “When I was growing up, I never saw people like me in movies or books.”

Mr. Martin is now on a mission to change that. He belongs to a small group of emerging authors who are writing children’s literature that centers on transgender characters, hoping to fill the void they felt as young readers. His debut work of fiction — a semi-autobiographical story about a transgender teenage boy who falls in love with an older boy on the beach in Cape Cod — will be published in a collection this month by Duet, a new young adult publisher that specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer fiction.

“My goal was to write stories that would have helped me feel less alone at that age,” said Mr. Martin, who works as a Starbucks barista in Washington and writes at night.

A few years ago, gender fluidity was rarely addressed in children’s and young adult fiction. It remained one of the last taboos in a publishing category that had already taken on difficult issues like suicide, drug abuse, rape and sex trafficking. But children’s literature is catching up to the broader culture, as stereotypes of transgender characters have given way to nuanced and sympathetic portrayals on TV shows like “Orange Is the New Black” and “Transparent.”

[reaganaut1]

The homofascists don't hesitate to call anyone who disagrees with them "bigots". Let there be plain talk on both sides. The perverts are trying to confuse and seduce America's children.

[Cowboy Bob]

Give him a lobotomy, put him in an orange jumpsuit, and have him sweep streets. At least then he will be a useful member of society. (Oh, and castrate him too).

[FlingWingFlyer]

LIES! It’s the communist way!

[niteowl77]

I suspect that the "void" - assuming one even existed - was not big enough to bother filling, but the NYT happened to have a backhoe handy.

Mr. niteowl77

[JimSp]

These guys are bigoted. They should seek to serve all 55 genders, not just transgenders. Maybe if they would educated themselves on what is known as being gender fluid they would become more inclusive. http://nonbinary.org/wiki/Genderfluid

It all makes me dizzy.

[cincinnati65]

Bugs Bunny used to dress up like a girl and put on lipstick and we all laughed when he kissed Elmer Fudd — like we should. There’s no transgender education gap.

[MuttTheHoople]

Heather Has Two Momm...Dadd...Uhhh, I Don’t Know.

[NewHampshireDuo]

Heather has Two Mommies was bad enough. Now we have Caitlyn has Two Balls.

[tcrlaf]

Gay propaganda for kids...
And yet, some still can’t figure out why the muzzies want us dead?

[Travis McGee]

Natural laws learned over thousands of years were mocked, ridiculed, overturned, and even outlawed. Toward the end, homosexual drill sergeants prowled the barracks grooming receptive teenage recruits. Hey, we were told, it’s their business, and who are you to judge them? Later, they could get married in the post-interfaith worship center by a military spiritual advisor (“chapels” and “chaplains” having been purged from the lexicon for favoring the Christian faiths) and then move on to adopting children.

And finally, the last old-guard bunker to fall: the Boy Scouts, completing the cycle of government-approved sodomite corruption. For a century the Scouts were morally straight? According to whose definition of straight? So why shouldn’t adult homosexual Scout leaders share tents with teenagers in our brave new world? Don’t be a homophobe, we were told. Each child can make his or her own free choice about their gender identity, but now with helpful adult mentors to guide them along the formerly forbidden paths.

If it feels good, do it. Or have it done to you. Or even do it unto the little children. Tommy wants to become Tomasina before heading to kindergarten? Her brave new mommy agrees? A government-provided surgeon will perform the “gender reassignment” operation. And if kindergarten isn’t soon enough to put the kids on the unrepressed road to gender identification, then start them on Heather Has Two Mommies and Prince and Prince cartoon books in the government-subsidized day care centers.

Smiling experts assured us that we were merely throwing off the shackles of our repressed sexualities. Dissent is hate, and hate is not tolerated around here, mister, so shut up and get with the program. Well, I couldn’t get with the program, so I quit my public high school job. As a world history teacher, moving from a public school to a Christian academy (at less pay and fewer benefits) gave me a couple more years of insulation from the social wreckage cascading down.

I kept looking up for the big asteroid, but we didn’t need God to smite us from outer space. In the end, we smote ourselves with our hubris, believing that we were replacing God’s wisdom with our own. The proud decadence and in-your-face cultural perversions didn’t cause the Rupture, but they were surely flashing red signs warning that the end was near.

Click the pic to the full-text Free Republic thread.

Alas, Brave New Babylon 60-second Youtube trailer

[sportutegrl]

I don’t think you can castrate a woman.

[Cowboy Bob]

I’m not sure what it is.

[exDemMom]

(Oh, and castrate him too)

Depending on how far he takes his mental illness, he will voluntarily do that, by his own choice.

[JayAr36]

Check his DNA, if it is male he is male, regardless of what is going on between his ears. How thinking one is something else makes it so is ridiculous. If I think I can fly can I jump off a roof????

[Salman]

It's not just about "tolerance" any more.

It's about indoctrinating children to become mentally ill castration fetishists.

And if you don't like it you'll be labelled a religious crazy or a Nazi.

[HarleyLady27]

And if you don't like it you'll be labelled a religious crazy or a Nazi
________________________________________________

Guess I'm a religious crazy or a Nazi because I think this whole situation is absolutely unnecessary....

[King Moonracer]

Mutilating genitals and deriving ones persona from clothing and hairstyle, how feeble minded are these people.

[a fool in paradise]

He belongs to a small group of emerging authors who are writing children’s literature that centers on transgender characters

What are we talking about here, a minority (those who believe themselves to be of the opposite sex) of a minority (primary aged school students) of 2% (homosexual) of the population?

Face it, this is about forcing abnormality on the other 99.999%. "YOU'LL SIT THERE AND LIKE IT, JOHNNY!"

[a fool in paradise]

Heather Is A Kardashian On A Reality TV Series With A Trans-Woman Step-father...

Once upon a time, that would be a Weekly World News headline, now it’s a children’s book

[desertsolitaire]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045826/ ‘Glen or Glenda?’ A psychiatrist tells two stories: one of a transvestite (Glen or Glenda), the other of a pseudohermaphrodite (Alan or Anne).