Abigail Shrier noticed a disturbing trend in the mid-2010s involving teenage girls:
A shocking number of them were declaring themselves transgender. They were then demanding to get hormones and breast-removal surgeries, without enough time, counseling, or questions if these permanent alterations were advisable.
These were not young adults -- they were adolescent girls, many of whom showed no sign of gender dysphoria in the past.
Upon studying the matter, Shrier noticed the following:
1) While a sizable number of boys have had gender dysphoria throughout modern human history, it had always been much less common for girls, even during times when transitioning was taboo for both genders. However, in the mid-2010s, right around the time it started being regarded as "cool" to be trans, a shocking number of teen girls declared themselves transgender.
2) The majority of teen girls in the past who felt some form of gender dysphoria grew out of it by their 20s, and no longer felt any desire to transition.
3) Medical professionals have been rubber-stamping ill-advised transitions of teens, for fear of being labeled "transphobic", even in cases where the girl abruptly identified as trans with no real indicators that the feelings were likely to be permanent.
4) Parents have been browbeaten into supporting these rash transitions, as teenagers have threatened suicide or other dire consequences if they're not allowed to do so. Spineless psychologists and psychiatrists have supported these abrupt transitions, making it even tougher for parents to say no.
5) Most of the teen girls expressing the desire to transition have been white and middle-to-upper class. This same demographic used to express angst through self-harm and eating disorders in previous decades. Now these harmful behaviors are on the decline, but female-to-male transitioning seems to have replaced it.
Simply put, Shrier does NOT believe that the recent increased acceptance of trans people allowed huge numbers of teen girls to finally express their gender dysphoria safely. Instead, she felt that the media's glamorizing of it has caused teen girls to grab onto the trans identity as a wrongheaded expression of individualism or angst.
Perhaps you don't agree with Shrier's conclusions. I think she has a lot of great points. I've even run into some questionable young "female to male trans" people on social media -- ones who were born female, present female, and act female, but somehow identify as male. When I've politely questioned how exactly they're trans if every aspect of them seems to match their birth gender, I've been told to shut up, and that a "boomer male" like me simply can't understand.
Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The main point is that Shrier has been censored.
Target took it off the shelves after SJWs hassled them about it:
https://twitter.com/AskTarget/status...88559421759488
It wasn't just Target. Amazon agreed to carry the book, but wouldn't allow Shrier to place ads for it. When she appeared on Rogan to promote the book, there were reportedly 10 different meetings among Spotify employees in an attempt to take that episode offline. Every large newspaper and magazine refused to publish any reviews of the book -- good or bad. Gofundme also cancelled a campaign (started by supportive third parties) to fund promotion of the book in its early days.
Thanks to her appearance on Rogan and Megyn Kelly's show, Shrier's book sold fairly well anyway. However, she decided to write a blog about the cancel culture which tried to suppress her book from being read, and how the left has tied itself so closely to the extreme trans movement that all common sense has been abandoned. Here's the blog:
https://quillette.com/2020/11/07/gen...-helping-them/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtftWcgXjdg
Can anyone defend this? This is not a right-wing book. The author is not Christian, to my knowledge. It does not rail against trans people or transitioning. It supports the right to transition by adults who feel gender dysphoria. It simply makes a respectful and well-reasoned case that white middle-class teen girls have always been on the angsty and irrational side, and that jumping the gun to a course of life-altering hormones and surgery isn't the right move when your 16-year-old suddenly says she feels like a boy.
Should Target take this book off the shelves? Should Amazon refuse to run ads for it? Should legacy media refuse to allow journalists to review it? Should Gofundme have stopped the fundraiser for the book's promotion?
