Member-only story
Books Like This Cause ‘Irreversible Damage’
Even if you see through it, it wastes your time.
Regnery, a publisher that describes itself as “a major force within the conservative movement,” last year published Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. (That was the U.S. publication; it was released last month in the UK.) With a title like that, I figure many people would be anxious to know what it says but would be less excited to read misinformation and smears about themselves, so I am volunteering for this disagreeable task.
The author is Abigail Shrier, who previously wrote “The Transgender Language War” for the Wall Street Journal in August 2018, the response to which she says kicked off her interest in writing more on the topic. She wrote a follow-up for the WSJ in January 2019, “When Your Daughter Defies Biology,” and has previously freelanced for The Federalist.
Irreversible Damage is as bad as the title and subtitle make it sound. It’s politicized misinformation about transgender identity, using kids as a punching bag. Books like this are harmful. Teenagers may not be able yet to unpack it, but I am old and I have learned how to do it, so here I go. I dedicate this effort to them.
The Book Starts By Not Defining Its Terms
For a book that scrutinizes rapidly evolving cultural phenomena, notably little energy is expended on defining relevant terms and exploring the history.
Gender dysphoria, as Shrier puts it, is “the medical condition associated with the social designation ‘transgender’.” Eventually, she says the term “transgender” comes from “the world of politics” and is an artifact of “political correctness.” While she’d be happy if people only spoke in pathologizing terms, she does use the word “transgender” in the book. She believes that when a person who wants to transition shows up in a therapist’s office, the therapist should avoid affirming that person’s gender and instead “maintain objective attachment” about the person’s gender, since the “ailment” of being transgender must be diagnosed by the…
