Abigail ShrierIrreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze

This is an incredibly compassionate and thorough book looking, mainly, at the vast increase in young girls identifying as transgender (and often later detransitioning).I felt compelled to read this after several women I know who have detransitioned said that it tackled what they had been through sympathetically and with honesty.For anyone unaware of the current landscape around gender, particularly for adolescents, this is both timely and eye-opening.For those of us who have been studying these issues for years and are aware of many of the facts laid out here, it’s nonetheless an important read, especially hearing the stories of young people and understanding what a little of what it is like to be an adolescent in the internet age (terrifying, it seems).There are a lot of one star reviews for this. That isn’t, I believe, because this is a bad book or because it is mistaken. I think it’s getting a lot of negativity because the truth feels dangerous to people who would have you believe that hardly anyone detransitioners and that being trans is nothing to do with a medical condition and everything to do with identity.Parents, particularly, will be doing themselves a disservice if they don’t read this book. It might help your child. Most especially your daughter.

I read this book after following Graham Linehan's postings on X, and it's a very well read book into the latest social craze - and it is a craze, an insidious, deliberate game of trapping young minds into thinking there's something wrong with them that requires surgery, drugs, and alienation from their families. I don't have children myself, but this book should be read by any parent with a daughter, to arm themselves with an understanding what's going on online, and in school. It couldn't have happened without the internet and social media, which is what it's happened so fast and without anyone seeming able to stop it. Essential reading.

Well written and full of useful yet disturbing information.

Unputdownable! I absolutely loved this book for its honesty (never biased) of what so clearly and to be honest, frighteningly appears to be a ‘craze’ taking over our teenage girls especially in the UK and US. It’s a must read for anybody with a trans teenage daughter, especially one who has only recently come out as trans or who’s friends have. A real eye opener to the world of becoming and living a trans life and Abigail Shrier tells it like it really is and not just the one sided way the trans activists want to portray it. I applaud Abigail’s bravery in writing this book despite all the hate she received as a result of it! It’s not a book that says ‘No, you shouldn’t become trans’ it’s a book that is totally honest to what can happen if you do and how it’s not always the solution to the problem and can in fact instead of alleviating the gender problem a teenage girl experiences cause much more heartache when some are able to finally admit whilst they thought it was the right thing to do at the time, especially when it comes to the life changing drugs and major and totally irreversible surgery, they subsequently realise too late that for them it was a terrible mistake to transition. For some it is the right thing to do, I completely understand that but it’s not for everyone despite what they think and it’s scary how many young girls are currently being influenced into believing it is. I only wish it was a book that young girls just embarking on this path could read as I’m sure a lot of them would turn around and run as fast as possible in the other direction.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book. The subtitle ("The Transgender Craze Seducing Out Daughters ") has a definite whiff of moral panic about it, and I was a bit worried it might be a bit cringey, but I heard an interview with the writer and she didn't come across that way, so I'm going to guess it was added by the publishers to try and whip up sales or something. It does at least show pretty clearly who the book is aimed at: parents of teenage girls. Not the girls themselves (but please can someone else write that book, because we need it)There's a little-discussed phenomenon that's been going around in the last few years known as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, which has mainly been affecting girls and young women. Essentially, it does just what the name implies: children who have never shown any sign of gender confusion become suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced that they were born in the wrong body. The teenage years have always been pretty hard on girls and they are more susceptible than boys to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, cutting and eating disorders. ROGD is just the latest manifestation of this.The author is really at her best when describing the mental state of girls experiencing the pain of growing up in modern society, with its restrictions, its loneliness, its unrealistic expectations and its ubiquitous porn. She has real compassion, and sheds a lot of light for parents (especially male parents like me) on what their daughters might be going through. She does this without being judgemental and certainly without dismissing actual trans people: she has interviewed many for the book, and refers to them respectfully throughout. To that extent, it isn't really about being trans at all: she wants to distinguish between the different strands of the trans community and point out that in most cases, these girls aren't really a part of it at all. Having laid the groundwork to establish this, she describes the social contagion aspect of ROGD and related trends, and the online network of people who "support" girls by basically encouraging them to embrace the illness, and offering a ton of peer-pressure to stop them turning back. There are loads of first-hand testimonies to support this. She describes the well-meaning but wrong-headed professionals who are trained to only ever affirm the girls' self-diagnosis, never to suggest exploring other related mental health concerns. Parents, who know the children best and love them above all else, are often treated by professionals as if they are somehow holding their children back. In some cases they are even given the stark choice "would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter", which is a horrible way of posing the dilemma, since it is designed to hijack the parents' natural protective instincts and guilt them into colluding with their daughters taking Lupron then, later, losing their fertility, changing their voice and appearance permanently and even undergoing unnecessary surgery. In America, where big pharma has already made a fortune from over-diagnosing childhood ADHD, depression and anxiety, the possibility of a whole new market of lifelong patients to buy hormone blockers, testosterone and pain meds is a godsend. It's really agonising for me, as a parent, to think of children herded down this road to victimhood by adults who really ought to bloody know better. And my heart goes out to the parents in the book, even though they aren't always sympathetic. Some are very supportive, trying to do the right thing, but unsure what that is. Others are bitter and angry at seeing their children lured away by an online cult. And it's the parents, more than anyone, who can benefit from this book, because there isn't really anything else on the market right now. It's not going to scold you or scare you, it's pretty level-headed. It has its flaws or course, all books do, but it really opens your eyes to what's happening. It shows that there is hope, and that you can be an anchor for your daughter, to help her regain a sense of herself as she is, without feeling like you are hectoring her Of course, you'll be castigated by activists anyway and called a transphobes, because that's the world we live in now: read some of the one star reviews from people who obviously haven't read the book if you want to get an idea of what to expect. But someone has to stand up for the girls and if professionals won't, if the online community won't, well it'll just have to be the parents, won't it?

Every parent of a child of any age should read this book. It sticks to the research and facts, while acknowledging the emotional trauma involved in this horrific, Kafka-esque nightmare we are all in.I'm 55, with a 19 and a 22 year old. Either one of my kids could easily have fallen prey to this seductive movement and entered into a lifetime of medicalization. At 12, my youngest "came out" to me as lesbian, and I simply told her she can form romantic attachments to whoever she likes, but I wasn't willing to label her at that point. She didn't like my firmness, but now she looks back on that phase with embarrassment, as a moment when she felt left out, wanted to be special, belong, and be celebrated... the queer kids were getting stuff she wasn't getting, so she joined the LGBTQ club at school. Now she is exclusively heterosexual, it seems. By the grace of whatever, she didn't get hooked into trans back in 2016. But I wouldn't consider any of these kids to be "out of the woods" until they're at least 28. and In my limited circle of friends and acquaintances I know:• A dear friend of mine, 57-year-old progressive father of a 21-year-old daughter who he says was likely drawn into the trans idea when she developed breasts and attracted unwanted attention from males. He thinks she was likely lesbian. His wife immediately affirmed the girl coming out as trans, and the name and pronoun changes. She is now is on testosterone and has had a double mastectomy. My friend felt that he had to affirm this, or be estranged from the family. He talks about the intense loneliness of being skeptical. I wish he'd had this book four or five years ago.• My 19-year-old daughter's best friend, born female. The two girls met at the start of the grade 12 year of high school, and the relationship has been rocky because of this girl's mental health issues. The girl obsessively pursued my daughter romantically as a 17-year-old, and at that time, was presenting as a female. She had a meltdown over my daughter's insistence that they be platonic friends, and they were estranged for over a year. Now this girl is back in my daughter's life, with a double mastectomy, lower voice, and a beard. She just happily told me about her surgery, and how grateful she was that her wait time had been shortened because of a cancellation in the schedule. I see nothing but carnage.• A 22-year-old young woman who began "transitioning" to male in high school, she came from a very troubled family situation, and appeared at my dinner table as an additional guest when I invited my dear friend and her son. She had changed her name to a boy's name, her voice was artificially low, and my dear friend, who has followed the girl on instagram, recently showed me photos of her proudly displaying her mastectomy scars, and then subsequent photos showing she was back to wearing fancy dresses and letting her hair grow longer. My friend assumes she is detransitioning.• A friend of mine whose 16-year-old daughter with autism wanted to have her breasts removed. This woman was distraught that the medical system would perform the surgery on a teenager, even without Mom's consent. This was several years ago, and I saw the girl last year, talking about her creative work, dressed to accentuate her female figure, and I thought she had disisted. I just found out that at age 24, a few months ago, the girl decided to have a double mastectomy after all.• My dear friend's son, who I watched grow up, was always a very impulsive, physical, aggressive boy. In his teen years, his father left the country, and he descended into addiction. A talented musician, he was the lead in the high school band. He treated his mother very badly, was volatile and violent, and said awful misogynistic things to my daughter, who looked up to him as a brother figure. Then, suddenly, he came out as a trans woman. The counsellor my friend brought him to immediately affirmed him, and told her, in his presence, "What would you prefer, a dead son or a live daughter?" He was combative about his pronouns and chosen name, and an arrangement was made for him to move in with his father in a country where the health authorities have suddenly done a 180º on medicalizing people who claim a trans identity. When his estrogen ran out, he would have had to jump through many hoops to access more of it, and apparently, couldn't be bothered, so has ceased. My friend has no contact with her son, and when her brother died, the boy made no contact to offer condolences, and did not attend the funeral.• A female friend has twin daughters, one of whom insisted she was a boy from about age 3 or 4. This would be over a decade ago. Mom decided to affirm the child with her chosen male name and pronouns, dad was reluctant but got on board. There was a complete social transition by kindergarten at school, etc. I don't know for certain, but I assume there was full medicalization that began at puberty. Certainly this child currently presents as male, and I can't imagine they didn't receive the "life-saving, gender-affirming" hormones and surgery treatment.I don't think I know a single family in my peer group that isn't dealing with some kind of profound mental health issue with one or more of their kids, and the transgender dysphoria is more common now that the nut allergies that transformed school lunch policies 15 years ago. I'm the child of two PhD biologists, and I chafe at the notion that we should talk about "pregnant people" and define lesbians as "non-male." There is a biological reality that no superficial chemical or surgical treatments can change. My own daughter is caught up in this tangentially, as a friend to girls who insist they are boys, and also because her rights as a woman are being eroded by trans activists who have hijacked the federal protections in place and marginalized biological females who deserve remedies in cases of discrimination on the basis of sex.This book highlights the capture of once-trustworthy medical institutions like the Endocrine Society, where ideology now trumps biology, and activism thwarts scientific research. It's quite a scandal, and the irreversible damage being done to young people is not rare. It's happening over and over again in my own social circle. I'm not willing to keep quiet about it.

This is a very important book. It was well-researched, sensitive to the situation, and included the many sides of the issue. The most impactful parts were the stories told by parents about the havoc caused in their lives when all of a sudden a daughter declared herself as of the opposite sex. Something similar happened in my niece's husband's family (their niece). I suggested the book to them and the girl's mother. It helped them understand what is going on and be able to deal with it better. It is a must read for anyone who has children.

Me sorprendió mucho encontrar este libro en Amazon y lo compré sin pensarlo dos veces. Una lectura muy interesante e informativa. Puede que en 2022 la gente aun crea que esto es "transfobia" y "discurso de odio"...yo creo que lo de verdad es transfobia y odio es tratar de silenciar todas las historias que se cuentan en este libro y silenciar las voces de las personas que tienen preocupaciones verdaderas y válidas sobre el movimiento transexual en la actualidad. Más lecturas como estas.

Well done to Abigail Shrier for writing this shrewd, brave book. Until about 10 years ago the whole western world would have thought her common sense position on the matter evident, but now apparently people no longer have the right, Orwellian-style, to speak outside of the official accepted narrative in some regions of the US, and increasingly, across Europe. All the while our precious young people are being facilitated (by doctors/surgeons and carers supposed to protect them) to butcher and maim their own bodies with unnecessary operations and, unbelievably, cross-sex hormones, in what can only be described as a Frankenstein-like experiment mass-scale, and which Shrier documents astutely. Hopefully books like hers will give people the vocabulary and courage they need to speak out about what is going on and thus protect our vulnerable young people, turning the tide on this terrible madness. Thank you Abigail, I really appreciate your great work.

In today's society we should all be informed of what is really going on, not only should parents read this to protect their children but also doctors who think they are doing good when instead they are doing more harm.