Reading Irreversible Damage Is An Awful Experience

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is the worst allegedly non-fiction book I have ever read. Published in 2020 and written by the famous anti-transgender author and journalist Abigail Shrier, the book has become very popular in anti-transgender circles. Last year, a group of transphobes attempted to put an advertisement for the book on a billboard. The book has also become a best seller multiple times since its release over a year ago. Both The Times in London and The Economist also declared it the best and most important book of 2020.

I want it to be known that, although I am an ally of the transgender rights movement, I tried to not let my opinion on the issue the book is about be the reason for my opinion on this book. Considering this is the biggest transphobic book at the moment, I would honestly have loved it to be filled with reasonable points that I could respectfully respond to from a person with honest concerns.

Of course, going in I expected it to be nothing more than a manifesto of bigotry, but even calling the book that is not entirely accurate. Honestly, if this book had been more bigoted, it ironically might have been a better read. I have read the deranged screeds of the racist, the sexist, the homophobic, the transphobic, and just about every other bigotry known to man — and I have…