By Abigail Shrier
Sometimes a thimble of common sense needs a truckload of research to get our attention. Such is the case with Abigail Shrier's stellar work on the transgender movement.
Shrier wrote Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters to address the sudden rise in gender dysphoria and the corresponding rise in transgenderism among adolescent females. She asks:
For the first time in medical history, natal girls are not only present among those so identifying--they constitute the majority. Why? What happened? How did an age group that had always been the minority of those afflicted (adolescents) come to form the majority? Perhaps more significantly--why did the sex ratio flip: from overwhelmingly boys, to majority girls? p. xxi
Irreversible Damage is her answer to those questions.
Shrier receives praise and condemnation for her work. So far she has not been cancelled by Amazon as was the case with Ryan T. Anderson's 2018 work, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement . Let's hope that is not the case, as her work is marked by clear writing, a compelling case, a journalist attention to detail, and the common-sense-wisdom of a mother, which she is.
5 Things Irreversible Damage Does:
1. Irreversible Damageprovides the reader with 250 pages of cogent argumentation that pushes back on the cultural phenom and gender dysphoria sweeping our nation. It is a life-altering I-R-R-E-V-E-R-S-I-B-L-E assault on adolescent girls.
2. Irreversible Damage raises common sense questions and answers them with solid research. As one of her interviewees (a desister) asks: "If somebody has anorexia, the first move is not to put a feeding tube down their throat. But why is it for trans, the first move when somebody has dysphoria is to be like, 'You need hormones'" (193). Shrier tackles this question and more. Early on she notes:
Between 2009 and 2017, the number of high schoolers who contemplated suicide increased 25 percent. The number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression grew 37 percent between 2005 and 2014. And worst hit--experiencing depression at a rate of three times that of boys--were teenage girls.
Irreversible Damage asks, "Why the change?" What is behind it? Why do parents try to act like BFFs instead of parents? Why do transgender YouTube prophets have such a strong pull on this demographic? What does the research say? It asks the questions and offers answers backed by research, personal testimony, and common sense wisdom.
3. Irreversible Damage provides startling facts that raise concerns about the national transgender narrative: Here are just a few eye-openers:
** In the last decade, adolescent gender dysphoria has increased by over 1,000 percent.
** In 2016, natal females accounted for 46% of all sex reassignment surgeries in the U.S. A year later it was70%.
** It is against the law in California to "opt out" state-wide SOGI instruction.
** I Am Jazz teaches kindergartners that they may have a "girl brain in a boy body."
** The policy of the National Education Association and many public schools (CA, JN, NJ) is that when a trans-identified student "comes out" at school, the parents not be informed (74).
** One leaked report in the UK showed that rates of self-harm and suicidality did not decrease even after puberty suppression for adolescent natal girls (118).
** In the entire history of gender dysphoria there is no record -- dating back to 1910 -- of transgenderism passing from one person to another (as it so often does from YouTube prophets).
4. Irreversible Damage covers a broad spectrum of of topics related to the growing gender dysphoria and transgenderism among adolescents: The girls, the shrinks, the schools, the influencers (think YouTube prophets), the regret, the way back, and more.
5. Irreversible Damageexhibits caring empathy: Shrier is not on an angry crusade. She is by words and tone in the book highly sensitive and kind to those in the trans community.
Four things that may shock you:
1. What minors can do without a therapist's consent: "In 2012, WPATH altered its standards to permit even minors to receive hormone treatment on the basis of "informed consent," meaning that neither diagnosis of gender dysphoria nor therapist's note would be required" (178).
2. The change in adolescents: In 1994, 74% of 17-year-olds had a "special romantic relationship in the previous 18 months. In 2014, when the Pew Research Center asked seventeen-year-olds whether they had 'ever dated, hooked up with or otherwise had a romantic relationship with another person'--seemingly a broader category than the earlier one--only 46 percent said yes. "And yet many of the teens, having never had a romantic relationship, are deciding they are transgender" (23).
3. Rise in gender surgeries: "Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for . . 70 percent of all gender surgeries. In 2018, the UK reported a 4,4000 percent rise over the previous decade in the teenage girls seeking treatments" (26).
4. Ease of access to testosterone and surgery: Gender treatments to help make the "transition" to the other sex such as receiving testosterone (a Schedule III substance), "top surgery" (mastectomy), and phalloplasty can all be obtained without therapist's note (180).
Conclusions:
1. Kids don't know who they are. Despite the sacred doctrine of transgenderism, kids are kids. Can a adolescent girl who has yet to have a period and lives among an influential and often soul-diminishing culture (think Mean Girls), be trusted to know what's best? Abigail Shrier is one of the few people who will say, "Of course they don't. They are girls!" She writes, "As I spoke to [those with regrets over their decision], I wondered how much easier things might have been if--instead of turning to their iPhones--they had gone to the mall together and pierced their ears or smoked a cigarette" (202-03).
I agree. Just google "girls, Beatles, concert" and look at the images. How many of you would tell them in a moment of hysteria that they know what is best? Yet our society is making it a crime in some places to disagree with their adolescent conclusions. Our society is allowing these young girls to get Testosterone treatments that after a few months permanently alter their bodies. Our society is enshrining in legal precedent that
2. "Our kids need us for a reality check.": As Shrier wraps up her work, she quotes the founder of 4thWaveNow. Our kids "need us for a reality check, which is also why I don't think parents should go all the way down the road to doing whatever the kid want, Like, 'Oh, yes, that's fine. The pronouns, the male name.' I think you have to find your own limits through" (211-12).
3. Shrier's "7 Conclusions" are gold: I wont' identify these because I want to encourage you to buy and read this book, and apart from reading the book, I don't think one has enough context to appropriately interpret what she says and why. But I do want to pull a portion of #6, "Stop Pathologizing Girlhood" because I believe it displays her level-headedness as well as her womanly and motherly insights that accompany her brilliance as a journalist.
A woman's emotional life is her strength. A key task of her adolescence must be to learn not to let it overwhelm her. A key task of maturity is to learn not to let it fade away (217).
It is that kind of thinking that contributes to a five-star review and another shout out to "BUY THIS BOOK!"
4. Try not to get riled by the transgender activist. Shrier's point is a good one, but often forgotten in the heat of a frustrating moment of warding off an incoming activist attack: "It's important to remember that activists are the most extreme members of any group" (220). Activists are the ideological flag wavers, ground takers, mind captors, social bullies, and political generals. Love them anyway!
5. When the craze subsides, it is going to be an attorney's field day. Shrier writes, "Each of the desisters and detransitioners I talked to reported being 100 percent certain that they were definitely trans--until, suddenly, they weren't(italics mine). Nearly all of them blame the adults in their lives, especially the medical professionals, for encouraging and facilitating their transition" (202).
Glossary: These terms are used in Irreversible Damage. Some are drawn from the book. Others from online sources.
Cisgender: Identifying as having a gender that corresponds to the sex one has been assigned at birth; not transgender.
Demisexual: Only experiencing sexual attraction after making a strong emotional connection with a specific person.
Desister: Those who determine they are not transgender after all.
Detransitioner: One who seeks to transition back to his/her biological birth gender.
GSA:> The Gay Straight Alliance, a pro-LGBTQ+ group with chapters on high school campuses across the nation.
Metoidioplasty: Metoidioplasty, metaoidioplasty, or metaidoioplasty (informally called a meto or meta) is a female-to-male sex reassignment surgery, a type of lower surgery that involves forming genital tissue, including the clitoris, into a penis.
Non-binary: Someone whose gender identity isn't exclusively male or female.
Orchiectomy: Testicle removal surgery so a man can better transition to a female.
Pansexual: Open to sexual activity of many kinds.
Phalloplasty: The construction of a penis.
Puberty blockers: Drugs that interrupt the body's natural growth and development.
Queer: Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.
Top surgery: A double mastectomy as gender surgery to help the trans individual cross over.
Two spirit: Two-spirit is a third gender found in some Native American cultures, often involving birth-assigned men or women taking on the identities and roles of the opposite sex.
Transgender: Identifying as or having undergone medical treatment to become a member of the opposite sex.
Toxic: The label applied to individuals, be they parents or friends, who refuse to acknowledge an individual as "trans."
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a clarifying resource for a confusing time. I highly recommend it.