gender transition
Mad Honey
I’m a longstanding fan of Jodi Picoult who writes about the big issues in society in an engaging and challenging way, but it’s a while now since I read one of her novels. 
What’s more, this one, Mad Honey, is unusual in that it’s co-authored with Jennifer Finney Boylan, another established writer, who is new to me. Hmm, I wonder why.
It weaves an intricate tale told through the eyes of two narrators. Olivia McAfee is a professional beekeeper who escaped from an abusive marriage with her six year old son, Asher. Now he’s six feet tall and in his last year of high school. He’s kind and handsome and sporty and very much in love.
Lily Campanello is his girlfriend who has also escaped from trouble. Her mother, Ava, a Forest Ranger, fled with her to the old family home, and Lily tells anyone who asks that her father is dead. Lily is an extremely accomplished cellist with an extraordinary ability to soak up information on a wide range of subjects and use it to good effect.
Asher and Lily’s relationship is a rather volatile one characterised by great sweetness and tenderness, but also bouts of not speaking. Both find it hard to trust after what has happened in their past. Both are hiding deep secrets and fears. Both need time out to consider their options.
Then one day Olivia gets a phonecall telling her that Lily is dead. Asher is found cradling her in his arms, stained liberally with her blood. He says he found her at the foot of the stairs unresponsive, and that he moved her to the living room. His fingerprints are found in her bedroom though he swears he didn’t go upstairs that night. There are signs of a struggle in that room. His last text reads, THIS ENDS NOW, I’M COMING OVER. He is subsequently arrested on a charge of murder.
As the case against him builds, Olivia realises that Asher has kept a lot from her, and she begins to fear that, though she had physically removed him from the influence of his father, maybe he has inherited something of his violent and controlling traits. Asher is appalled to see her doubt and excludes her still further. But he does allow her to bring in her brother, Jordan McAfee, as his defence lawyer. There follows a nail-biting court case where Asher appears to be his own worst enemy.
In traditional Picoult style, the authors give us a wealth of information about bee keeping and music and animal and human behaviour, but it’s not until P204 that we learn what social issue they are really addressing, and why this particular second writer was co-opted.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS. So if you intend to read the book please stop at this point.
It’s the forensic pathologist who drops the bombshell whilst giving his evidence in court: Lily had no uterus or ovaries. Why? Because she had transitioned from being a boy, Liam, and had been through the full treatment with puberty blockers and surgical procedures to give her outward female sexual anatomy and characteristics. Very successfully too. As the surgeon who carried out the operation put it: The plumbing works and so does the electricity.
In typical Picoult fashion the challenges and truths emerge by way of succinct thoughts and statements from the characters who are pondering the arguments. Here are a few illustrations that stopped me in my tracks.
Lily: I don’t think it’s an invisible chromosome, or the inability to get pregnant, or anything else, that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is difference. What they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can’t understand.
Olivia: In college zoology classes I learned there are plenty of animal species that change sex. It’s called sequential hermaphroditism. Clown fish are all born male, but the most dominant one becomes a female. Wrasses work in reverse, with a female able to transform her ovaries into testes in about a week’s time. The slipper limpet, when touched by other male limpets, can become female. Male bearded dragons can change sex while still in their eggs, if exposed to warmer temperatures. Spotted hyena females have what look like penises and have to retract them into their bodies for mating. Coral can go from male to female or vice versa. Common red frogs spontaneously change sex in the wild.
In other words it’s perfectly normal.
Olivia: I haven’t really thought about what it means to be trans … because I have had the luxury of not having to think about it.
Olivia: (of a person she knows who looks ands ounds like a man but identifies as female): She seems – I hate how this sounds – like a work in progress? Like a subcategory of woman? But even saying that makes me feel like I’m judging, when I don’t mean to.
Olivia: If you want to understand something, you first need to accept the fact of your own ignorance. And then, you need to talk to people who know more than you do, people who have not just thought about the facts, but lived them.
It’s a complex and difficult topic especially when it involves young children and irreversible changes.
When I tackled the subject through fiction myself (in Inside of Me) I worked closely with people who had themselves changed sex, but there are still critics who say no one can or should embark on such an undertaking unless they have lived experience of transitioning. Jennifer Finney Boylan has. Here’s hoping this novel helps more people to understand.