Title: Irreversible Damage
Author: Abigail Shrier
Major Themes: LGBTQIA+, Transgender, Cults
Synopsis: Why are whole groups of girls deciding that they are transgender all of a sudden?
A month or two ago, I was talking to some other mothers in our small, local homeschool group. Someone started talking about the transgender issue, and one of them mentioned that she had bought a book titled Irreversible Damage, about the damage that is being done to this generation of girls. She passed it on to one of the other ladies, who passed it on to me when she was finished. This isn’t my preferred choice of reading material—in fact, I would really rather avoid reading something like this if possible. However, it is a very important topic right now, so I read the whole book.
Publisher’s description:
Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively.
But today whole groups of female friends in colleges and schools across the world are coming out as ‘transgender’. These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans ‘influencers.’
Unsuspecting parents now find their daughters in thrall to YouTube stars and ‘gender-affirming’ educators and therapists, who push life-changing interventions on young girls—including medically unnecessary double mastectomies, and hormone treatments that can cause permanent infertility.
Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has talked to the girls, their agonised parents, and the therapists and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to ‘detransitioners’—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves. Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back.
My thoughts:
Abigail Shrier has done an immense amount of research for Irreversible Damage. She has interviewed many people for this book and heard their stories. She shows clearly that this is a fad—and I was fascinated by the chapter that compared it to a cult. Girls are recruited by teachers, therapists, and YouTubers who suggest that possibly the reason they are unhappy is because they are in the wrong body (rather than that they are going through normal teenage anxiety and insecurity). Once they have started down that path, they find it very difficult to turn back.
Interestingly, during the time I was reading this book, I went to a thrift shop in our local town. When I was paying for my purchases, a woman looked at my two little girls, who were wearing dresses and had their hair combed nicely, both of which she commented on. I just said that we like our girls to look like girls, and she immediately lowered her voice and went into a five-minute rant about how she hates this craze of girls trying to turn into boys! Apparently, it is even common in our isolated area? I had no idea.
I’m glad I read this book, even though it was painful. It helps me to understand better what is going on in our culture. I would not recommend it, though, to anyone younger than about 20.
WARNING: Besides the common mentions of sexual perversions, there is a fair amount of language used that I do not like.
Age levels:
Reading Independently—Adults
Links to buy this book:
Amazon: Paperback | Kindle | Hardcover | Audible Audiobook (unabridged) | Audio CD
AbeBooks: View Choices on AbeBooks.com
Leave a Reply