As I’ve noted in this space before, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is one of the most important books of our time. It is one of the first in-depth, carefully researched pieces of journalism exposing a large-scale social experiment involving minors, which is why The Economist called it “one of our best books of the year” — and also why trans activists have been doing everything they can to get it banned.
Activists have been petitioning libraries to have it removed from shelves and are particularly incensed by the fact that there appears to be long waiting lists for it. Target was pressured into pulling it from their shelves, and then reversed the decision after a backlash. Amazon blocked ads for the book, but ultimately refused to remove it, infuriating woke employees. Two employees resigned in recent weeks to protest the decision, presumably hoping this move would ramp up the pressure.
But it is indicative of how threatening trans activists believe Shrier’s book to be to their cause, that the controversy surrounding it simply refuses to die. After the American Booksellers Association (ABA) included Irreversible Damage in promo material to their members this month, trans activists responded with fierce denunciations. In response they received a grovelling — and sinister — apology, which the ABA released to Twitter:
An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s ends policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.
We apologize to our trans members and to the trans community for this terrible incident and the pain we caused them. We also apologize to the LGBTQIA+ community at large, and to our bookselling community.
Apologies are not enough. We’ve begun addressing this today and are committed to engaging in the critical dialogue needed to inform concrete steps to address the harm we caused. Those steps will be shared in the next three weeks.
