Abigail Shrier - Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

Praise for

Abigail Shrier has written a deeply compassionate and utterly sobering account of an unprecedented and reckless social experiment whose test subjects are the bodies and psyches of the most emotionally vulnerable among us.

JOHN PODHORETZ, editor of Commentary magazine and columnist for the New York Post

Courage is a rare trait. Abigail Shrier has it in abundance. She defies the politically correct tide to write a moving and critically needed book about a terrible new plague that endangers our childrenrapid-onset gender dysphoria. This book explains what it is, how it has spread, and what we can do about it. And Irreversible Damage is as readable as it is important.

DENNIS PRAGER, nationally syndicated radio talk show host and bestselling author of The Rational Bible

Abigail Shrier dares to tell the truth about a monstrous ideological fad that has already ruined countless childrens lives. History will look kindly on her courage.

MICHAEL KNOWLES, host of The Michael Knowles Show

Gender transition has become one of the most controversial issues of our time. So much so that most of us simply want to avoid the subject altogether. Such evasion can be just the thing that gives the majority an excuse to look away from the suffering of our fellow human beings. Abigail Shrier chooses to take the bull by the horns. She dives straight into this most sensitive of debates. The product is a work brimming with compassion for a vulnerable subset of our population: teenage girls. It is a work that makes you want to keep reading because it is accessible, lucid and compelling. You find yourself running out of reasons to look away. A must-read for all those who care about the lot of our girls and women.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI, research fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and member of Dutch Parliament 200306

In Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier provides a thought-provoking examination of a new clinical phenomenon mainly affecting adolescent femaleswhat some have termed rapid-onset gender dysphoriathat has, at lightning speed, swept across North America and parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia. In so doing, Shrier does not shy away from the politics that pervade the field of gender dysphoria. It is a book that will be of great interest to parents, the general public, and mental health clinicians.

KENNETH J. ZUCKER, PH.D., adolescent and child psychologist and chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Thoroughly researched and beautifully written.

RAY BLANCHARD, PH.D., head of Clinical Sexology Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health from 19952010

For no other topic have science and conventional wisdom changedbeen thrown awaymore rapidly than for gender dysphoria. For a small but rapidly growing number of adolescent girls and their families, consequences have been tragic. This urgently needed book is fascinating, wrenching, and wise. Unlike so many of the currently woke, Abigail Shrier sees clearly what is in front of our faces and is brave enough to name it. Irreversible Damage will be a rallying point to reversing the damage being done.

J. MICHAEL BAILEY, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen and professor of psychology at Northwestern University

Abigail Shrier has shed light on the profound discontent of an entire generation of women and girls and exposed how transgender extremists have brainwashed not just these young women, but large portions of the country.

BETHANY MANDEL, editor at Ricochet.com

, columnist at the Jewish Daily Forward, and homeschooling mother of four

Every parent needs to read this gripping travelogue through Gender Land, a perilous place where large numbers of teenage girls come to grief despite their loving parents efforts to rescue them.

HELEN JOYCE, senior staff writer at the Economist

Shriers timely and wise exploration is simultaneously deeply compassionate and hard-hitting. First carefully laying out many of the physical, psychological, and societal effects of the transgender craze, she then points to the inconsistencies within the ideology itself. This book deftly arms the reader with tools for both recognizing and resisting, and will prove important for parents, health care professionals, and policy makers alike.

HEATHER HEYING, evolutionary biologist and visiting professor at Princeton University

Writing honestly about a difficult and vital topic, Shrier compassionately analyzes the evidence regarding rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), a phenomenon declared off-limits by many in the media and the scientific establishment. Shrier simply isnt willing to abandon the future of a childs mental health to propagandistic political efforts. Shrier has actual courage.

BEN SHAPIRO, editor in chief of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show

For Zach,

whose love is my secret weapon

She hides like a child

But shes always a woman to me.

Billy Joel

I take it for granted that teenagers are not quite adults. For the sake of clarity and honesty, I refer to biologically female teens caught up in this transgender craze as she and her.

Transgender adults are a different matter. I refer to them by the names and pronouns they prefer wherever I can do so without causing confusion.

Finally, I have changed the names and certain minor details of transgender-identifying adolescents (and their parents) to ensure that none is able to recognize herself and accuse her battle-worn parents of treachery. Because the stories of those vulnerable to this contagion are strikingly similar, some readers may believe they have recognized themselvesonly to be wrong.

INTRODUCTION

Lucy had always been a girly girl, her mother swore. As a child, she would climb into high heels and frilly dresses to do her chores, retiring to a bedroom packed with Beanie Babies and an expansive array of pets she tendedrabbits, gerbils, parakeets. Dress-up was a favorite game, and she had a trunk full of gowns and wigs she would dip into, inhabiting an assortment of charactersevery one of them female. She embraced the girlhood of the late 1990s, adoring the Disney princess movies, especially The Little Mermaid, and later, Twilight and its sequels.

Lucy was precocious. At five, she read at a fourth grade level and showed early artistic promise, for which she would later win a district-wide prize. But as she reached middle school, her anxiety spiked. The waters of depression rushed in. Her affluent parentsmom was a prominent Southern attorneytook her to psychiatrists and therapists for treatment and medication, but no amount of talk therapy or drugs leveled her social obstacles: the cliques that didnt want her, her nervous tendency to flub social tests casually administered by other girls.

Boys gave her less trouble, and she had male friends and boyfriends throughout high school. Home life wasnt easy; her older sister fell into a drug addiction that tore through the family like a hurricane, consuming both parents attention. Lucys ups and downs eventually resolved in a bipolar II diagnosis. But making and keeping female friends proved a trial that never concluded in her favor nor ever really let up.