Kindle Edition Amazon Ryan Kennedy's blog Ford Street Ryan Kennedy Category:  Young Adult/Teen Publisher: Ford Street Publishing ISBN-10:  1876462906 Type: Fiction Pages: 330 Copyright: Feb 2010 ISBN-13: 9781876462901 What happens when who you are on the inside, clashes with what you are on the outside? Skye plays guitar for the all girl Chronic Cramps, and is part ofthe punk scene. Then a life changing decision turns her world upside down. Skye becomes Finn, transitioning from female to male. How will Finn's friends and family cope? F2m:the boy within Extract Tick the box. M or F. Male or Female are the only options 'ordinary' people know about. M for Male. F for Female. You're one or the other. But what if you're not? Like me. As I'm finding out... All adolescents face the quest for identity, but gender change complicates 'coming of age'. A seriously BIG decision and yet a fact that sometimes the person inside and outside do not match. School-leaver Skye plays guitar in her all-girl 'Chronic Cramps" band. Making her name in the punk scene is easier than FTM (female to male) transitioning: from Skye to Finn, from girl to man. Gran's loved sibling Al was also Alberta. Trans gender identity is more than injections and surgery, it's about acceptance. Tips from the ftm online support group & counselling help. Going public, Finn sings ftm lyrics on TV., But Finn also has to face the ex-school bullies at the reunion. With help from bemused mates and family who don't want to lose a daughter, but who love their teenager, Finn is transitioning 'Compassionate, candid and funny 'coming of age' via punk music and family history genetic clues'   International first: female to male gender transition YA fiction co-written by a trans author.. Excerpt Tick the box. M or F. Male or Female are the only options ‘ordinary’ people know about. M for Male. F for Female. You’re one or the other. But what if you’re not? Like me. As I’m finding out. I’ve been surfing the internet – I can’t actually go real surfing in the ocean because that would mean showing my body to someone, even if there was no one around. And I can’t do that because I’m so ashamed. It’s fat in all the wrong places. I’ve been looking at blogs, mainly. Most of my friends have them and I have one, too, not that there’s ever much in it. I write things like the ‘ten random things about yourself’ when someone tags me to do it, and I fill in my birthday and star sign and favourite foods to see what kind of friend, rock star or potential serial killer I would be. My star sign is Gemini, the twins. My favourite snack is cheese toasties. How ordinary is that? But there’s no real personal stuff there. If there were, it would be all emo stuff like, ‘Why can’t people treat me like I really am?’ Is that even a proper sentence? Makes sense to me. I’m called Skye. Eighteen years old. Female. I want to be treated like the person I am inside. That’s not quite the same as the outside Skye. Maybe I should give out a list of all the new words I’ve learned lately to avoid explaining everything all the time. Before last week, I didn’t even know there were words to describe the way I am. Then I found the blogs. Guys who’d started out female. Like me. Reading their stories, something clicked. Something big: I could do that. I learned a new language. FTM stands for female-to-male. It’s a subset of transgender, which is different to transsexual, but only to some people. I look at myself in the mirror and it’s me, but it’s not, and the reflection is a long way from where I want it to be. Right now I’m not even female. I’m no gender. Tick the box. M or F. I can’t do that!

F2M: The boy within. By Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy. Melbourne, Ford Street, 2010.
Eighteen-year-old Skye is a member of an all-girl punk rock band. Skye has never felt like a girl. Inside, (s) he is Finn, a boy. Making the decision to let Finn be outside as well as in involves a lot of work. How do you tell your family and friends and the members of your feminist rock band that you’re going to undergo female-to-male treatment and surgery? Fortunately, there’s a family precedent: great-uncle Albert … or is that great-aunt Alberta?

Skye/Finn could easily be a victim, but refuses. It isn’t going to be easy for anyone, but (s)he decides, finally, that family, friends and rock band will just have to live with it. And they do.

The book goes into enormous detail about the procedures involved in what is known as FTM. It’s a lot less common than the other way around – male to female – although it has been in the news in the last couple of years, when a man who had kept his female “equipment” had a baby because his wife couldn’t. I knew a female-to-male myself. Unlike Skye, "Jan" became “David” in her/his forties. Nobody, but nobody dared to call Jan a woman, even when she was! And David’s family and friends accepted it as Finn’s family do in the novel. At his funeral, the nephews and nieces referred to "Uncle David", even when he was no longer there to get upset.

The novel also explores the punk rock sub-culture, which is interesting in its own right.

Ford Street Publishing has become known for taking on controversial subjects. It probably needs an author as well-known and respected as Hazel Edwards to get away with this one. Ryan Kennedy, her co-author, is himself an FTM, so knows what he is talking about.

Perhaps an afterword with a URL or organization, if any, within Australia might have helped, so that those to whom the book applies don’t have to do all the web searches that Skye/Finn did in the course of the novel.

It’s well-written and answers a lot of questions. There are some likable characters in it and some nice touches of humour. There’s even the whimsical presentation of a couple who are a female-to-male and a male-to-female. Who are, incidentally, managing just fine. Finn doesn’t like the FTM, Rodney, but hey, he doesn’t have to.

It will certainly appeal to those teenagers who are asking themselves questions about their own gender identities.

Whether or not it will have appeal for ordinary teenagers I am not sure. I suspect they will be uncomfortable with it, though this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be out there. Will kids who say, “That is so gay!” about anything negative get enthused about characters who are not actually gay but have gender issues? I won’t know until I have put this in my library and seen how the students react. Watch this space.