There is a petition to ban "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," by Abigail Shrier. The owner wants the retailers who stock this book to take it off sale because they don't want people to realise the harms being done by the gender identity ideology that is driving young people to transition their bodies as a way to escape from personal problems. e.g. a lack of belonging, sexual abuse, or homophobia rather than gender dysphoria. Since affirmation-only is the preferred treatment model, their reasons for transitioning aren't being explored, their mental health issues aren't being addressed, and the number of detransitioners is growing. This book lays out the ways that activists have stifled debate in healthcare and in public discourse as well as in schools and public institutions, using accusations of bigotry as cover for their censoriousness.

This is what it's about

"Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," by Abigail Shrier, is a book topping the Amazon and Google Play market that outlines the way gender identity ideologues are convincing medical professional bodies to ignore safeguarding and best practice in dealing with vulnerable patients and pursue an affirmation-only approach instead. 

The "ban the book" petition cites discrimination against trans people as a reason for banning the book, as if Shrier and her book are responsible for this. She's not. Indeed, some of the most influential sex researchers of the last couple decades — Ray Blanchard, Michael Bailey, Ken Zucker, James Cantor, Eric Vilain, Stephen Levine, Debra Soh and Lisa Littman all have problems with the affirmation-only transition narrative currently being promoted. That debate on this subject by such petitions and other deplatforming efforts is being stifled is not helping matters. Well-intentioned activism like Vanillian's do nothing to prevent the ever-growing number of teenage girls begging for money on fundraising platforms from increasing, which does more to undermine the trans cause than any number of books warning against rushing into transition. 

In Amazon's case, Shrier's book is the very first result when you search "transgender", despite Amazon's refusal to promote it, due to the quality information in it, which comes from parents, patients, detransitioners, and trans man Scott Newgent, who has happily transitioned and runs the Trans Educational Voices campaign. 

Shrier has meticulously researched her subject, speaking to a range of medical professionals about what is involved and about the risks of running headlong into the transitioning of young children without taking into account their reasons for wanting to transition. This has resulted in girls who have been rendered sterile and have had double mastectomies before their twenties, only to realise, too late, that transitioning didn't solve their social and emotional problems. 

Please don't ban this important book

I am calling for you to refuse to give in to pressure from ill-informed random people on the internet to remove the book from your listings when the best they can do to bolster their cause is attempt to tie Shrier and her book to the harassment and abuse of transgender people and to their emotional issues, when it is unlikely that anyone who carries out such abuses has even heard of the book. Vanillian has not provided any proof of the alleged misinformation or hate speech and no amount of signatures on a petition based on lies and appeals to emotion is going to change that. I would like to point out that puberty blockers stunt the growth of "growing transgender boys" and leave them with brittle bones and underdeveloped bodies. They don't actually grow. The claim that puberty resumes when the blockers are stopped is contradicted by the anecdotal evidence of young people who have been through the process. I've seen them complaining about it online.

The removal of the text will do nothing to protect anyone from anything but the kind of medical malpractice that leaves young girls sterile with double mastectomies begging for money for reconstructive surgery on crowdfunding platforms. Abusive parents don't need text, they will abuse anyway; it's what abusers do.

Please don't pay attention to people who use emotionally manipulative language and horrible scenarios to try to stop people from learning about the harm being done in the name of a worthy cause. Don't ban books, discuss them. And don't give in to pressure from astroturfed mobs. Abigail Shrier's book deserves scrutiny, not a blanket ban in case some people get upset. If you give in to this, sooner or later every book will have to be banned.