Conspiracy to Silence Dissent?

Canceling valid research on the Trans Craze

I hate conspiracy theories. If they line up with your political bias, they are intriguing and seem to carry the ring of truth. If they don’t, we easily discount them. Our biases are our filter.

Does the Illuminati exist? I don’t know. Did Bill Gates insert fiendish tracking devices into the vaccines? I doubt it. What about Emmanuel Macron, current president of France. Is he the Anti-Christ? Oh, give me a break!

But there is one conspiracy that I am absolutely certain of, and that is of “the universal dictatorship of apparently humanistic ideologies” which Pope Benedict XVI himself warned us about years ago. To resist its pull is to risk “social excommunication”. Even behind the walls of the Vatican, he feared its force.

I’ve been reading and writing about Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The author’s name is not Chicken Little—it’s Abigail Shrier. She’s not a rightwing conservative Christian (raised Jewish, actually), not an angry mother on a crusade, and not a Midwest politician. In fact, she believes transitioning for mature adults who genuinely have gender dysphoria can be a healthy option. No crazed extremism in her blood by any means.

Living in LA, she’s a contributing columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Her interests are varied, but having published in the WSJ on the Transgender Craze, she’s been thrust into the middle of a culture war. That led to much research and the publishing of this very controversial book.

The book is not about conspiracies, actually. It is a heartfelt, incredibly well written appeal for common sense regarding the recent craze of teen girls identifying as trans and then altering their bodies. It is compelling and well documented. 

In last November 7th’s issue of Quillette, in an article titled “Gender Activists Are Trying to Cancel My Book. Why is Silicon Valley Helping Them?” she describes her efforts as follows:

What I aim to do, as a journalist, is to investigate cultural phenomena, and here was one worth investigating: Between 2016 and 2017, the number of females seeking gender surgery quadrupledin the United States. Thousands of teen girls across the Western world are not only self-diagnosing with a real dysphoric condition they likely do not have; in many cases, they are obtaining hormones and surgeries following the most cursory diagnostic processes. Schoolteachers, therapists, doctors, surgeons, and medical-accreditation organizations are all rubber-stamping these transitions, often out of fear that doing otherwise will be reported as a sign of “transphobia”—despite growing evidence that most young people who present as trans will eventually desist, and so these interventions will do more harm than good.  

If you Google her book, you will find articles which criticize her research. But one cannot but be impressed with the extent of her inquiry as she talks with parents, students, researchers, pro LGBTQ educators, internet trans gurus, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. each of which is laboriously footnoted.

Shrier even met personally with Dr. Lisa Littman, Assistant Professor at the Practice of the Brown University School of Public Health. Littman was the first to do extensive research on what she later called “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria”. Initially her findings were published in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed journal of science and medicine. At first the paper and her presentation at forums were warmly welcomed by the academic community. But when activists discovered her, they soon began to smear and discredit her methodology and conclusions. Pressure was put on PLOS One and Brown University, who both forced Littman to at least tweak the title and other superficial aspects. And eventually, it cost her a position at a women’s clinic—work which she dearly loved. (You can read that full story by clicking here.)

You may have heard of similar treatment doled out for Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Amazon, by far the world’s largest bookseller, refused to offer it, even though Anderson is a graduate of Princeton, received a doctorate from Notre Dame, and wrote with sensitivity and clear empirical data. His work was lauded by scholars and professors from Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Columbia, and the University of New York, all praising his input into this contentious cultural debate.

Certainly, Amazon has every right to refuse to sell any book they choose. They make billions selling everything from cookbooks to DIY witchcraft manuals. And I have every right to buy my books elsewhere, and I do.

This played out similarly, for Abigail Shrier, her first publisher balked when staff decried her work as hate speech. When Regnery agreed to put it in print, Amazon refused to sell ad space for it. Because she was documenting an interesting social phenomenon among youth, journalists wanted to review her book, but newspapers and magazines refused to print such articles.

Anxious parents found within Irreversible Damage a thorough description of their own daughters who were caught up in this craze and harming their bodies. They latched on to this book and became evangelistic. But when they tried to start a GoFundMe page to raise money to promote the book, GoFundMe soon shut them down. Yes, you can find literally thousands of GoFundMe pages raising funds for girls to have “top surgery”, but these parents were barred.

So what do you think? Was Pope Benedict XVI correct to describe this as part of a universal ideological dictatorship, seeking to force an agenda upon the world? Or is this simply another example of how polarized our culture has become—a phase that will soon pass once we have another presidential election?

Conspiracy or flukish phase? Paid subscribers can share their thoughts below.

Regardless, please consider having this book on your shelf should a dazed counselee or parishioner walk through your door, with deep anguish for their daughter.