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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Just great. Parents of teenage girls ought to read this.
Very informative, everything is based around interviews she gave so there’s a bit of the author’s opinion but it’s all in the context of facts and discussions if that makes sense. I was taken aback by how many quotes and statistics and facts were in this book.
Very informative, everything is based around interviews she gave so there’s a bit of the author’s opinion but it’s all in the context of facts and discussions if that makes sense. I was taken aback by how many quotes and statistics and facts were in this book.
My mother asked me why I'm so obsessed with this topic; what does it have to do with me? The afterword of this book finally made me be able to voice it: all the mothers, so in love with their daughters, confused, worried, walking a tightrope of panic and self-censorship. how can any mother turn off the concern for their child's welfare that was born right alongside that baby? So, with Shrier's last chapter revisiting all those pair bonds, it made me realize that, for me, this is a sympathetic metaphor for the fracture I felt when my own daughter hit her teens and all former traces of her disappeared...
The best parts of the book were observations that could be pulled out and applied to a more general audience, like the 'therapy language game' that frames normal emotion as illness in search of a diagnosis, and that a symptom pool leads to inflated diagnoses. The reminder that assemblies that try to curb eating disorders and anorexia just as often read like seminars on how to join-in. It is telling that in hospitals, the anorexics that live together have much slower recovery rate than the ones who are kept separate.
The worse parts of the book was when she indulged in her inner eye-roll, especially when introducing the Youtube transmen influencers. With their candor, I doubt they realized their interviews were going to be used against them and I couldn't help help but feel sorry for them and their impending groveling session before the trans community.
The best parts of the book were observations that could be pulled out and applied to a more general audience, like the 'therapy language game' that frames normal emotion as illness in search of a diagnosis, and that a symptom pool leads to inflated diagnoses. The reminder that assemblies that try to curb eating disorders and anorexia just as often read like seminars on how to join-in. It is telling that in hospitals, the anorexics that live together have much slower recovery rate than the ones who are kept separate.
The worse parts of the book was when she indulged in her inner eye-roll, especially when introducing the Youtube transmen influencers. With their candor, I doubt they realized their interviews were going to be used against them and I couldn't help help but feel sorry for them and their impending groveling session before the trans community.
Do not read. This book is harmful and transphobic, written by a cis-woman allegedly worried about children being harmed - but not worried about the harm she is doing to trans children. There's no such thing as a 'transgender craze' and this book is potentially extremely dangerous.
I listened to the audiobook version of this book, and there were so many cringe moments. I “get” the argument that this author is trying to make, but much of the argument is based on ridiculous gender stereotypes that I just cannot get behind.
Very eye-opening about the huge surge in teenage girls seeking puberty-blockers, testosterone, and double mastectomies. Especially recommended for parents of girls.
dark
fast-paced
Absolute drivel that is intellectually and morally bankrupt to an almost absurd degree.
The author will say anything sentence to sentence if she thinks it will awaken fear regarding trans youth and, what she understands more generally, as the moral degradation of today's youth aka moral panic. It doesn't matter if what she wrote in the previous sentence, paragraph, or chapter counters the point she's making now. It's only about the present point, no room for deep thought or reflection in these pages.
Some brief examples of many:
She makes clear in the intro that she respects trans adults (with a history of childhood gender dysphoria) who decide to (medically) transition. As such, she will use the correct name and pronouns of trans adults throughout the book (while refusing to do the same for youth because they don't know what they're talking about.) She does not, in fact, do this. She immediately follows it up by talking about a trans adult's life while solely misgendering and misnaming the person. When discussing the life of a nonbinary person in their late twenties she, again, refused to appropriately gender. She quite literally says "she uses they/them pronouns." As you may imagine, these are just two examples of countless instances of this behavior throughout the book.
Early on she discusses how gender ideology cuts bodies into very specific parts and how limiting that perspective is. She claims that only hyper feminine women are seen as women and tomboys (and even lesbians) don't exist today. They just transition as trans men and nonbinary people. Despite these beliefs, she mocks trans men for "shrieking" out of joy and claims that this is a deeply feminine thing to do and connects this to what she sees as the farce of transition. She has an unhealthy obsession with phalloplasty and is concerned that trans men aren't seeking this operation in droves (though she of course reverses course later on to discuss potential dangers and complications of the surgery). Her obsession is purely driven by her understanding men as absolutely needing to have traditionally male genitalia. When stepping back from this one specific aspect of some people's transition, she often returns to the idea of how disturbing it is that many trans youth and adults aren't worried about "passing." And yet, it's (trans) gender ideology that is forcing kids and adults to tight, ill fitting boxes.
The book is so far removed from demonstrating critical thinking that the author makes claims that (trans) gender ideology is why people are aware of and talk about gender stereotypes. She bemoans a disappearance of high school bathroom blow jobs and muses on how kids may be better off if they smoked a cigarette instead of talking to a mental health professional.
This book is for two types of people. The first group is for people who are terrified of trans people and refuse to accept the idea of sexuality and gender as being fluid. This group will hear exactly what they hope to hear and already believe. The second group consists of people looking to better understand the thought process and logic of those in the first group. At least in my case, I was in the latter group because my parents are in the first group. This book, at least, collects a lot of different strands of anti-trans rhetoric in one convenient place. Of course, you could gather the exact same information after a cursory scroll of any social media platform with popular anti-trans hashtags and rhetoric. I could also talk to my parents to hear the same things repeated word for word, but I find it to be less painful with an additional degree of separation.
It's no mistake that a book capitalizing on and furthering a moral panic is the author's first book despite a long career of writing.
The author will say anything sentence to sentence if she thinks it will awaken fear regarding trans youth and, what she understands more generally, as the moral degradation of today's youth aka moral panic. It doesn't matter if what she wrote in the previous sentence, paragraph, or chapter counters the point she's making now. It's only about the present point, no room for deep thought or reflection in these pages.
Some brief examples of many:
She makes clear in the intro that she respects trans adults (with a history of childhood gender dysphoria) who decide to (medically) transition. As such, she will use the correct name and pronouns of trans adults throughout the book (while refusing to do the same for youth because they don't know what they're talking about.) She does not, in fact, do this. She immediately follows it up by talking about a trans adult's life while solely misgendering and misnaming the person. When discussing the life of a nonbinary person in their late twenties she, again, refused to appropriately gender. She quite literally says "she uses they/them pronouns." As you may imagine, these are just two examples of countless instances of this behavior throughout the book.
Early on she discusses how gender ideology cuts bodies into very specific parts and how limiting that perspective is. She claims that only hyper feminine women are seen as women and tomboys (and even lesbians) don't exist today. They just transition as trans men and nonbinary people. Despite these beliefs, she mocks trans men for "shrieking" out of joy and claims that this is a deeply feminine thing to do and connects this to what she sees as the farce of transition. She has an unhealthy obsession with phalloplasty and is concerned that trans men aren't seeking this operation in droves (though she of course reverses course later on to discuss potential dangers and complications of the surgery). Her obsession is purely driven by her understanding men as absolutely needing to have traditionally male genitalia. When stepping back from this one specific aspect of some people's transition, she often returns to the idea of how disturbing it is that many trans youth and adults aren't worried about "passing." And yet, it's (trans) gender ideology that is forcing kids and adults to tight, ill fitting boxes.
The book is so far removed from demonstrating critical thinking that the author makes claims that (trans) gender ideology is why people are aware of and talk about gender stereotypes. She bemoans a disappearance of high school bathroom blow jobs and muses on how kids may be better off if they smoked a cigarette instead of talking to a mental health professional.
This book is for two types of people. The first group is for people who are terrified of trans people and refuse to accept the idea of sexuality and gender as being fluid. This group will hear exactly what they hope to hear and already believe. The second group consists of people looking to better understand the thought process and logic of those in the first group. At least in my case, I was in the latter group because my parents are in the first group. This book, at least, collects a lot of different strands of anti-trans rhetoric in one convenient place. Of course, you could gather the exact same information after a cursory scroll of any social media platform with popular anti-trans hashtags and rhetoric. I could also talk to my parents to hear the same things repeated word for word, but I find it to be less painful with an additional degree of separation.
It's no mistake that a book capitalizing on and furthering a moral panic is the author's first book despite a long career of writing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia, Medical content
Moderate: Self harm
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Very informative. As a therapist, I felt like the author did not portray the therapist profession accurately; she very much tried to turn people way from therapy especially those who have a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
The newest mass movement/ hysteria/craze
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2020
5 stars plus
The Newest Mass Movement/ Hysteria/ Craze
*************
Intentional or not, this is a peculiar updating of Eric Hoffer's book "The True Believer."
He observed that: "The mass movement appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."
So, it happens here/now that the latest craze is being transgender.
The author is extremely pithy, quotable and talented writer--approaching the quality of a David Berlinski. (p. 31- "I wonder things I don't say aloud, too: Whether this transgender craze isn't partially the result of over-parented, coddled kids desperate to stake out territory for rebellion. Whether it is no coincidence that so many of these kids come from upper-middle-class white families, seeking cover in a minority identity? Or is it the fact that they overwhelmingly come from progressive families - - raised with few walls, they hunt for barriers to knock down?")
All of the elements to start this bonfire were put there over a long time by different elements.
-Social media makes it such the people have less face-to-face contact and human interaction.
-Academia and the chattering class have always been there to try to tell you that white is black and black is white, and everything is framed in moral superiority (p.70). There has also been a significant uptick in excessive / professional victimology.
-Mental health professionals find that they can make a perfectly good living if they generate the market of people with gender dysphoria.
*******
The author asks a very good question, which is: How can it be that we already know what is the rate of gender dysphoria that... And yet you will see that there is a 44 fold increase decade on decade of people seeking gender treatment, and in one high school of 500, 7 people will come out as transgender. (p.27-"rapid onset gender dysphoria").
Just by the math: the number of false positive appears to be 200x higher than the number of true positives. If a person diagnoses himself with gender dysphoria (or if his psychiatrist does the same), they are much more likely to be wrong than right.
True gender dysphoria is a 1 in 10,000 event. But, 2% of high schoolers help diagnose themselves as having gender dysphoria?
That is something like a 200-fold overdiagnosis. (And that's not hard to believe. Can we please remember that at first Asperger's didn't exist. Then it did exist, and everybody and their brother was diagnosing themselves with it. And then, from one DSM to the next, it stopped existing?)
The tragic case of Dr. Lisa littman is a great example. (To be honest, these woke mobs really are identical to the perpetrators of the Salem witch trials.)
*******
How to keep your own kids out of this mishegoss? (And let's remember that the state public schools are already being infected with this hysteria.)
We send our kids to Orthodox Jewish schools, and not only is there no evidence of this type of thing there but: girls wear dresses and boys wear slacks and shirts with collars. We had a severely mentally damaged person who did try to challenge that, and the school told him/her very plainly that that school was not for him/her.
I would guess that for the other 99.9% of the country that is not Orthodox Jewish.... Catholic/Muslim/other parochial schools would be a good start. (I don't think you have to be one of them to go to their schools.)
*******
I wonder "How big of an issue this is?" (If you believed the author, you'd almost think that every third person was on the cusp of transitioning.)
I did a quick search on Facebook, and one group for detransitioning had 594 people, and the gender identity disorder group had just a little bit under 700 people. (My Facebook page about Orthodox Jewish conversion has 300 followers, and another one I know of has over 1,000.)
*******
The only thing that is consistent in all of these stories is that all of the people profile had severe confounding mental disorders. (p.165--"70% of children will outgrow gender dysphoria on their own.")
There is also the question as to the ethics of using hormone blockers and disfiguring surgeries to treat something that is, in the majority of cases, a mental problem.
If you remove a woman's breasts, and then she decides that she wants them back.... That is the equivalent of a patient wanting blue eyes and the doctor removing both functioning eyes to put in 2 blue glass eyes.
They look like eyes, and they are blue but they have completely lost their function.
*******
This book is short, and that's good because ultimately I conclude that these are just prototypical examples of Bored Young White People Trying to Shed Their Acedia--a thing that annoys me more than words can describe.
And they are apt to do this in a thousand ways (joining Black Lives Matters movements, or trying to pass as black people --I have in mind Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King-- or burning things down in riots), so this author's detailing of that is just one more among an uncountable number.
A description of all of the mental architecture around these movements was laid out several decades ago (Eric Hoffer, again). The updating with these specific symbols is old wine in new bottles.
In the "Update" section (written as an afterword), these things mostly resolved themselves in the way that they usually do: people tire of them, and then they move on with their life. (In this case: It may fizzle out like Beanie Babies.)
The author quotes a doctor (p.142) that suggests that the transgender craze will end in the court system, by patients suing doctors that "diagnosed"/disfigured them. (In that case: It will fizzle out in the same way as multiple personality disorder.)
In one case, the parents stopped financing it. (That's a tried-and-true way to stop such frivolity.) But that wasn't the majority of cases.
My preoccupation with getting bills paid and children bathed makes it such that: I myself do not suffer from any sense of futility, and so it's aggravating to have to even know about people that are so bored that they do. (If you want a working definition of "white privilege," folks, there you have it.)
And to that end, though moderately interesting, the 227 pages of this book are quite enough. (223 pages of prose@ 12 chapters works out to <19pps/chapter.)
Verdict: Recommended at the second hand price.
New words:
Metoidoplasty
Perseverate
Oophorectomy
Orichiectomy
Homosexual Transsexualism
Autogynephilic Transsexualism
The newest mass movement/ hysteria/craze
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2020
5 stars plus
The Newest Mass Movement/ Hysteria/ Craze
*************
Intentional or not, this is a peculiar updating of Eric Hoffer's book "The True Believer."
He observed that: "The mass movement appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."
So, it happens here/now that the latest craze is being transgender.
The author is extremely pithy, quotable and talented writer--approaching the quality of a David Berlinski. (p. 31- "I wonder things I don't say aloud, too: Whether this transgender craze isn't partially the result of over-parented, coddled kids desperate to stake out territory for rebellion. Whether it is no coincidence that so many of these kids come from upper-middle-class white families, seeking cover in a minority identity? Or is it the fact that they overwhelmingly come from progressive families - - raised with few walls, they hunt for barriers to knock down?")
All of the elements to start this bonfire were put there over a long time by different elements.
-Social media makes it such the people have less face-to-face contact and human interaction.
-Academia and the chattering class have always been there to try to tell you that white is black and black is white, and everything is framed in moral superiority (p.70). There has also been a significant uptick in excessive / professional victimology.
-Mental health professionals find that they can make a perfectly good living if they generate the market of people with gender dysphoria.
*******
The author asks a very good question, which is: How can it be that we already know what is the rate of gender dysphoria that... And yet you will see that there is a 44 fold increase decade on decade of people seeking gender treatment, and in one high school of 500, 7 people will come out as transgender. (p.27-"rapid onset gender dysphoria").
Just by the math: the number of false positive appears to be 200x higher than the number of true positives. If a person diagnoses himself with gender dysphoria (or if his psychiatrist does the same), they are much more likely to be wrong than right.
True gender dysphoria is a 1 in 10,000 event. But, 2% of high schoolers help diagnose themselves as having gender dysphoria?
That is something like a 200-fold overdiagnosis. (And that's not hard to believe. Can we please remember that at first Asperger's didn't exist. Then it did exist, and everybody and their brother was diagnosing themselves with it. And then, from one DSM to the next, it stopped existing?)
The tragic case of Dr. Lisa littman is a great example. (To be honest, these woke mobs really are identical to the perpetrators of the Salem witch trials.)
*******
How to keep your own kids out of this mishegoss? (And let's remember that the state public schools are already being infected with this hysteria.)
We send our kids to Orthodox Jewish schools, and not only is there no evidence of this type of thing there but: girls wear dresses and boys wear slacks and shirts with collars. We had a severely mentally damaged person who did try to challenge that, and the school told him/her very plainly that that school was not for him/her.
I would guess that for the other 99.9% of the country that is not Orthodox Jewish.... Catholic/Muslim/other parochial schools would be a good start. (I don't think you have to be one of them to go to their schools.)
*******
I wonder "How big of an issue this is?" (If you believed the author, you'd almost think that every third person was on the cusp of transitioning.)
I did a quick search on Facebook, and one group for detransitioning had 594 people, and the gender identity disorder group had just a little bit under 700 people. (My Facebook page about Orthodox Jewish conversion has 300 followers, and another one I know of has over 1,000.)
*******
The only thing that is consistent in all of these stories is that all of the people profile had severe confounding mental disorders. (p.165--"70% of children will outgrow gender dysphoria on their own.")
There is also the question as to the ethics of using hormone blockers and disfiguring surgeries to treat something that is, in the majority of cases, a mental problem.
If you remove a woman's breasts, and then she decides that she wants them back.... That is the equivalent of a patient wanting blue eyes and the doctor removing both functioning eyes to put in 2 blue glass eyes.
They look like eyes, and they are blue but they have completely lost their function.
*******
This book is short, and that's good because ultimately I conclude that these are just prototypical examples of Bored Young White People Trying to Shed Their Acedia--a thing that annoys me more than words can describe.
And they are apt to do this in a thousand ways (joining Black Lives Matters movements, or trying to pass as black people --I have in mind Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King-- or burning things down in riots), so this author's detailing of that is just one more among an uncountable number.
A description of all of the mental architecture around these movements was laid out several decades ago (Eric Hoffer, again). The updating with these specific symbols is old wine in new bottles.
In the "Update" section (written as an afterword), these things mostly resolved themselves in the way that they usually do: people tire of them, and then they move on with their life. (In this case: It may fizzle out like Beanie Babies.)
The author quotes a doctor (p.142) that suggests that the transgender craze will end in the court system, by patients suing doctors that "diagnosed"/disfigured them. (In that case: It will fizzle out in the same way as multiple personality disorder.)
In one case, the parents stopped financing it. (That's a tried-and-true way to stop such frivolity.) But that wasn't the majority of cases.
My preoccupation with getting bills paid and children bathed makes it such that: I myself do not suffer from any sense of futility, and so it's aggravating to have to even know about people that are so bored that they do. (If you want a working definition of "white privilege," folks, there you have it.)
And to that end, though moderately interesting, the 227 pages of this book are quite enough. (223 pages of prose@ 12 chapters works out to <19pps/chapter.)
Verdict: Recommended at the second hand price.
New words:
Metoidoplasty
Perseverate
Oophorectomy
Orichiectomy
Homosexual Transsexualism
Autogynephilic Transsexualism
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Very informative
To start off with, this is not a Christian book, which is the genre I read 99% of the time. But it’s regarding a topic that is very culturally relevant, and I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of a secular/liberal author who does not generally support “transitioning” young people into the opposite gender (something that as a Christian myself, and basing my worldview upon the truth of the Bible, I view as impossible to do anyway).
This isn’t going to be a long review. As a Christian, the things that were described in this book and the fact that there is an epidemic of people wishing they can be the opposite gender speaks to me of massive spiritual warfare, and God turning people over to their sinful desires and allowing them to be deceived by the devil into joining the cult of transgenderism (as the author, as well as several de-transitioned people who were interviewed for the book also describe it).
I genuinely pray for these people that they would be released from their deception, and that they would turn to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and be saved.
These poor souls are trying to fill a void in their life that can only be filled by Jesus. But the god of this world (Satan) has blinded their eyes, and is deceiving them with lies that they will find fulfillment within this group of people. But Satan is the father of lies, and wants only to kill, steal and destroy, and that is precisely what he is doing to these peoples lives.
To those who hate the truth, my comments will feel like hate. But they are not. On the contrary, if I hated them, I would say nothing at all and let them continue on their path of destruction without a word. But as it is, because I love all people and want to see them saved from destruction, I will open myself up to criticism in the hope that potentially even one soul might be reached.
God bless
This isn’t going to be a long review. As a Christian, the things that were described in this book and the fact that there is an epidemic of people wishing they can be the opposite gender speaks to me of massive spiritual warfare, and God turning people over to their sinful desires and allowing them to be deceived by the devil into joining the cult of transgenderism (as the author, as well as several de-transitioned people who were interviewed for the book also describe it).
I genuinely pray for these people that they would be released from their deception, and that they would turn to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and be saved.
These poor souls are trying to fill a void in their life that can only be filled by Jesus. But the god of this world (Satan) has blinded their eyes, and is deceiving them with lies that they will find fulfillment within this group of people. But Satan is the father of lies, and wants only to kill, steal and destroy, and that is precisely what he is doing to these peoples lives.
To those who hate the truth, my comments will feel like hate. But they are not. On the contrary, if I hated them, I would say nothing at all and let them continue on their path of destruction without a word. But as it is, because I love all people and want to see them saved from destruction, I will open myself up to criticism in the hope that potentially even one soul might be reached.
God bless