Detransition Baby

I want to start out by saying, I have no problem with this book being published, and nothing against Torrey Peters. She has got a great book deal, a tv series apparently, and thanks to the Women's Prize a whole lot of publicity. Good luck to her.

What, however I do have, is an issue with this book being on the Women's Prize longlist. Firstly for all the obvious reasons. We've all seen the worst aspects of misogyny quoted from the book, and for some of us it's hard to understand it's inclusion in a women's fiction prize. There is also the issue of whether a TW should be included in the definition of what makes a woman writer, but I want to park that, as for me that's not the specific issue here.

I first was aware of the controversy when the book was announced on the longlist. Then I saw the quoted bits and thought, ugh, really? How can scenes in which TWs find being beaten up by their male partners a turn on have a place in a book for women? And then as the controversy grew, I decided that I'd better read it myself to find out what all the fuss was about. Having spent my life around books, I know all too well how easy it is to take choice bits out of a story to frame the narrative about it that you want to tell. While I support & understand the distaste that people on my side of the argument feel about it, I am not so blind to how emotion can cloud anyone's judgement, especially my own.

It might be, I thought, the passages quoted are merely the characters' expressions of what is happening to them, and not necessarily something the author condones. And while there is something a bit off about a detransitioned man who gets a cis woman pregnant without telling her he used to live as a trans woman, and then wants to bring on board his ex trans-lover to be another mother to the baby (I mean, the baby already has a perfectly adequate one, but never mind) I was prepared to go with it. I thought maybe this is an interesting story of what it means to be trans, and how difficult it must be (as it must be for many gay/lesbian folk) to know you want to have a family but because of the inconvenience of biology you cannot produce a child of your own in the way you want to. I wondered if it would be a tender story of love and loss and wanting something you can't have, and maybe three damaged people finding a way to make it work. There is undoubtedly a powerful story to tell around these issues, and I have profound sympathy for anyone who is affected by them (just as I have profound sympathy for those who long for children and prove to be infertile, or for whatever reason don't meet the right person at the right time). Reader, I am here to tell you this particular book isn't it.

I'm not in the business of trashing other writers. Whether I like something or not, I know all too well the blood, sweat and tears that go into writing. And anyone who finishes a novel and gets it published is to be applauded. So, this isn't going to be a hatchet job, but it is going to be an honest response to what I have read. And y'know, YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME. That is perfectly fine. And if we hadn't all fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe where constructive criticism is seen as a hate crime, it should go without saying. But hey, we are where we are.

The first thing I'd like to say about this book, is that it is very readable. It's written in a light, frothy, sassy US style which will undoubtedly appeal to millenials and Gen Zers who've grown up with YA US fiction. The dialogue is sharp and occasionally funny, and to a generation that reveres Ru Paul's Drag Race (and no, I don't have a problem with that either), all that you go girl, and bitching will no doubt be very entertaining. The NY setting will also no doubt make readers feel at home: it's familiar to them from Friends and Sex in the City, it's a glamorous bubbly version of the place where all the transwomen spend their time discussing makeup, heels, and wondering what to wear. There are tensions and darkness underneath, but none of it is explored in any depth. And that is where initially as I read, I grew frustrated. This is so YA, I have been on an accredited creative writing course and can throw in lots of clever literary allusions, look at me kind of writing it's painful. I have read tons of this stuff over the years, and this feels like more of the same, with the added edge of being set in a community with whom the majority of us don't interact on a daily basis. It's hard reading, not to feel like a voyeur. And maybe that's the intention. Who knows.

My frustrations with the story grew as I read. Reese the transwoman desperate for a child, spends her time bitching and carping about all her friends, when she isn't having horrible sex with men who treat her badly. Ames, who was once Amy, before he was James, is almost the saddest character in the book. Uncomfortable in his male skin he transitions young, and yet when confronted with the pain of Reese cheating on him with ex-lover, he reacts in a male and aggressive way, leading him to detransition and re-present himself as Ames, thereby causing the break up. When Reese first meets him as Amy she reminds of a male lover she once had, and it's hard not to imagine that James/Amy/Ames might just be gay and not have worked it out. He certainly has no interest in being a parent, but wants to stay with Katrina because of what exactly? I never quite worked out, but it might have been the exciting sex. He is prepared to commit as a lover, but not as a dad, hence he brings Reese into the equation. But towards the end of the book reveals he can't promise he won't go back to living as Amy, which is why Katrina ends up considering an abortion. I mean, why wouldn't you? You get pregnant by a guy who lies to you, and is so freaked he pulls in his ex-lover to be the grown up, and then he says he can't promise to be the person she thought he was. Fair play in a way I suppose, because his reasons for transitioning was that living as a transwoman was too hard. I did feel sorry for him theoretically, and like I say felt he was the saddest character in the book, but the writer never successfully took me into his head, so that I really understood his motivations.

And this is true of all the characters in the book. Reese's desire for motherhood seems to come from her memories of the kind mom who took her ice skating with a bunch of girls and let her have the girl Mcdonalds Happy meal, and then she discovers she likes looking after children when she gets a job temporarily in a creche. She has a tendency to mother the "baby trans" as they start out on their trans journey and develops a "mom crush" on Katrina. But, again, we don't dive deep into any of this. We see glimpses of her reasoning and then move onto the next thing. As for Katrina, her reasons for going along with the whole thing seem to be that she was bored in the heteronormative nature of her marriage and wants to embrace queerness in her life. Which I'd have thought would be bloody irritating to the other two as it feels to me she's just discovered queerness and is going along for the ride and be a tourist in a world that seems transgressive. (Might it just be that she got bored with her husband?) Nowhere does she seem to stop and think that the baby is a person in its own right and deserves to be brought up in a loving environment. Indeed, none of them do, apart from a brief discussion about a gay friend, who together with his partner set up home with two lesbians and their two children. (Sounds like the ideal way to parent, four of you get to share the burden.) They are all too self obsessed to really be parents, so while the ending is left open, I rather hope Katrina makes the decision not to have the baby as god help it with those three as moms and dad.

So, yes, in its way it's a worthwhile book, reasonably well written, with some interesting ideas as to how to make parenthood work if you aren't able to be parents in a conventional sense (and I would also add here that I have no issue with this at all. Children need loving homes. Unconventiality doesn't bother me). However, this is a book on the longlist for the Women's Prize for fiction. A prize that celebrates the best of women's fiction. This light vapid story in my view isn't good enough to be there. Put it up for a commercial fiction prize if you want (there are plenty of them that are not the exclusive preserve of women) but this in no way is a stand out piece of women's fiction.

And then... there are all the other reasons...

I found this book absolutely fascinating for its honest and unflinching expose of the world of transwomen and the difficulties they face. Told with a surer hand that could handle the necessary emotional depth this could be a ground breaking book. The fact that it is not, means that what we are left with is the impression of a bunch of people who long to be something they can't be. They fetishize and idealise womanhood, whether it be by the clothes they wear (there are frequent instances of them getting that wrong), assumptions that as all TWs are bitchy to one another so are all natal woman (Reese is amazed at the way Katrina interacts with her female friends in a spirit of cooperation and support), and the great deal of the sex seems to feature the woman getting turned on/feeling feminine when men abuse them. The assumption is that ALL women feel like this - Reese concludes from seeing a cis woman being pushed into a bush by her boyfriend and not saying anything/continuing the relationship, that this is what women want from men. All the men they have sex with are vile. Yet all the cis women they meet are ciphers. At one point Katrina gets drunk and blurts out in a work situation (a professional cis woman at the top of her game, newly pregnant, really?) that Ames was formerly in a transexual relationship, and the cis men she tells automatically side with Ames' ex not her. She is left out in the cold as Other and inferior while the men bond around her. There are so many instances of this kind of thing, I could go on forever. (I can't even bear to touch upon all the vile AGP rape fantasies). But you probably get the picture. The main feeling I came away with was, that IF this is as honest a depiction of the world Transwomen inhabit as the author suggests, there is not only a great deal of misogyny and homophobia in it, but Torrey Peters has unwittingly revealed a truth, a lot of people uncomfortable with this book being on the WP shortlist already know. Transwomen are not the same as us. They have grown up socialised as men, in a world where they are dominant. They then come into our spaces and expect us to give away, and yet their idea of what womanhood is so far from the reality it would be comical if it weren't so serious. And for that reason I don't think this book has a place on the WP longlist. This is a grotesque depiction of what it means to be a woman. If someone shows you what they are, believe them.