By Emiliann Lorenzen

Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage is a harrowing book about the influx of adolescent and teenage girls who identify as transgender, seemingly out of nowhere. The subtitle, The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, is purposefully inflammatory. The reader is meant to be riled up by the title and the image of an innocent, wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl with a hole in the middle of her body, one that can never be filled and one that can never be reversed. Though Shrier does point out that “‘Craze’ is a technical term in sociology, not a pejorative [term]” (27). Her main point throughout the book is that girls are facing a trans-identity “social contagion,” seductive in its false promise to rid girls of womanhood, its value as rebellious social currency, and the hollow yet exciting connections it creates in this cult-like movement.

Throughout the book, Shrier elegantly sews research, stories about trans-identified girls and their parents, doctors’ and professionals’ testimonies, and stories from transsexuals, desisters, and detransitioners together into a patchwork reminiscent of Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, hauntingly beautiful. She has honed her journalistic craft, as evidenced by this book, bewitching the reader with her clever use of language, metaphor, and imagery. This is truly a gruesome book with page-turning details and discoveries, like a horror story. Except the story Shrier tells is truth, fact, and our reality. The reader cannot tuck this book away as she would a horror novel, reassuring herself that the ghosts aren’t real. Shrier’s ghosts haunt the medical field, our children’s schools, college campuses, the internet, and our homes. The girls and parents in this book are real people living with real consequences and sleep-snatching fear. As a parent living in California, I was terrified by Shrier’s analysis of the school districts’ complicity in the indoctrination of children into gender identity ideology.

However, this book is not fearmongering, as its detractors claim. Shrier sheds light on the shadow side of gender identity politics, revealing what lies beneath the heavy cloak of claims that talking about rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) or questioning the transitioning of children is transphobic and bigoted. On the contrary, her discussion of ROGD and of steering children down the transition path is as compassionate as it is thorough. She has faced censorship and criticism for writing this book, and Amazon has refused to advertise it on their website, though they will gladly take your money if you choose to buy it from them. Two warring petitions can be found on change.org, one wishing to ban the book and one defending its right to exist. We are living in an age where banning books is somehow “progressive” and burning books is somehow “woke,” as evidenced by videos of people burning Harry Potter books to protest J.K. Rowling’s views on gender identity politics and women’s rights. Shrier finds herself in the midst of modern-day witch burning, with labels of TERF and transphobe spat at her, and the tinder of cancellation surrounding her feet.

This is not a radical feminist book. There are subtle antifeminist sentiments throughout it, illuminating a Western liberal feminist attitude of “Who wouldn’t want to be a girl?” which undermines the worldwide problem of sex-based oppression. However, there is very little in this book that radical feminists would quibble over. Shrier elevates these girls’ voices and highlights an issue that for far too long has been pushed into the shadows. Overall, Irreversible Damage is an excellent analysis of the alarming and dystopian trend in girls abandoning the daunting world of womanhood for the dangerous and experimental world of pseudo-manhood.

Emiliann Lorenzen is a lesbian radical feminist from Sacramento, California. She has a Master of Arts in English, and she is a writer and editor. She centers women in her life, and she hopes to see women from around the globe come together in celebration of their sex, to lift each other up, and to help each other, despite any differences.