maureenstantonwriter 's review for:

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

1.0

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There is a phenomenon at the center of this book worth exploring--a statistically aberrent number of teenage girls identifying as transgender (there is no comparable spike in adolescents boys seeking to transition) that should be explored and discussed with sensitivity, rationality, reason, and neutrality (as much as possible) to see what might be fueling the issue. But this book does not do that. The writer cannot get out of her own way; she rails against the "politicization" of the issue while politicizing it herself by commenting through her conservative-tinted lens (some of her ideas are laughably regressive ideas--like there isn't a glass ceiling in corporate America, it's just that women don't want the demands and time away from family of that job!). Worse than her obvious bias, which harms her crediblity, are her snarky comments about progressives. Example: re: a CA school policy being proposed to support transgender kids, she writes: "maybe you figure: only in California. Blotto with sunshine and too much Chablis, California teachers will do anything to avoid ding their actual jobs. I thought the same, believe me." Shrier might think this glib and witty, but she immediately exposes her bias and thus harms her entire argument in this book. (As if teachers anywhere make policy thoughtlessly.) She boasts that Joe Rogan invited her on this show, and her sources include Rogan and Fox News, known purveyors of lies and misinformation. I am not in agreement or disagreement with the issues she raises in this book; I read this book to learn, but this book did little to help me understand an important trend affecting adolescent girls.