Irreversible Damage: the trans threat to girls

Situating the narratives of her young subjects within a larger social and medical context, Shrier looks at why many girls, often from the point they start menstruating onwards, start to feel alienated from their own bodies, despite never having experienced any previous discomfort in their biological sex.

The first key factor for Shrier is the role of trans narratives propagated within schools. ‘Gender affirmation’ is rife within public schools across the US, she writes. She goes on to show how classrooms are being colonised by therapists eager to push children towards a pathway of lifelong medicalisation.

Part of the problem, suggests Shrier, is cultural. We can no longer stomach the thought of our children being unhappy. Instead, this unhappiness must be treated. ‘Between the battalions of therapists’, she writes, ‘the upper middle class has made a habit of extirpating anxiety, depression, and even the occasional disappointment wherever they find them’. She adds: ‘Perhaps we’ve trained adolescents to regard happiness as a natural and constantly accessible state.’ And if that means affirming young people’s chosen gender identity, and endorsing transitioning, so be it.

The second key factor is the rise of online trans-influencer culture. In some ways, this has been the engine driving the transgender narrative over the past decade. It hooks into contemporary youngsters’ need to establish a social identity and have it affirmed. Indeed, such is the power of online trans influencers that it is surely no coincidence that, as Shrier puts it, ‘over 65 per cent of teens had increased their social-media use and time spent online immediately prior to their announcement of transgender identity’.

Shrier looks, for example, at online trans guru, Ty Turner. He suggests that if you merely think you are trans, then you are. This shows how quickly typical teenage self-questioning has been transformed into the expectation of immediate affirmation. This cycle of endless self-identification and affirmation leads at points to incoherence. ‘Chase Ross told me he currently identifies as “60 per cent male” and the rest, “squiggle”‘, writes Shrier. ‘Confused? That may be the point.’

Shrier also criticises the common and coercive trans-culture tropes that appear online, including: ‘If your parents loved you, they would support your trans identity’, and, ‘If you’re not supported in your trans identity, you’ll probably kill yourself’. She even uncovers online trans influencers showing kids how to convince doctors they’re trans in order to receive prescriptions for hormone-blockers or hormones. The damage all this does to young girls’ bodies is terrifying.

What’s more, the medical world offers no resistance. When Shrier asks Randi Kaufman, a gender therapist, about those parents who just can’t understand the discourse of gender identity, Kaufman responds: ‘I tell them that we can’t change the mind and so we have to change the body.’ Echoing the online trope, Kaufman says that if parents don’t support their trans kids, they may ‘try to commit suicide’.

Irreversible Damage is a must-read book. It portrays a generation of girls being exploited by a cultural contagion that too few adults are willing to question. It is an exhaustive and balanced investigation into what amounts, for girls, to rebranded sexism. A sexism that tells girls today that if they don’t like being female, don’t speak out or work for change; instead, become life-long medical patients.

I thought about buying this just to support the author after the transtapo tried to ban it, but it is seriously overpriced.

r2 buy the ebook then

Here's an interview with the author -

GET A LIFE THAT DOESN'T DEPEND ON TRANNIES, TRANNY CYBERSTALKER OP.

What's that you say? You'd COLLAPSE without trannies to fill your day?

Good.

That book cover is great!

R6 I don’t get it, and I usually do, can you explain?

Oh now DL suddenly cares about girls? You're trans obsessed.

Remember when people said that children would get confused if gays and lesbians were allowed to marry, and those people were ridiculed and shouted down?

R9 you’re blaming this on gay marriage? On a gay forum?

R9 I think you might have gotten out on the wrong floor, honey. Go back down to the lobby and talk to the nice people at Reception.

[quote][R9] you’re blaming this on gay marriage? On a gay forum?

Like this is a gay forum anymore. Homophobic women rule here now. R9's comments are totally normal here now.

R7

It has a hole in the cover in the pubic area where you can stick your finger, like old children’s books.

There but for grace of the Gods go I. At the loneliest depths of my worst depressive stint in youth I spent some dark months considering going over to the T, and back then we had not reached Peak Trans and no-one considered the dangers. I bought one of those handbooks and everything. It was only a year at most of weird backward thinking, but it haunts me to remember it, now. Shudder to think.

Seriously, I was so fucked over my sexuality as a teen, and growing up in Bumfuck (lesbian population: 5, average age 50) with a homophobic father and a clueless Frau mother did not help matters. Thank goodness I went to a same-sex school and got a solid basic education, or my critical thinking would not have won out. As an emergent lesbian in my twenties I’m so pleased and relieved I dodged that bullet, staying a healthy woman and getting my degree.

Shame I’m still unemployed, unfucked, friendless, and prone to agoraphobia/anxiety that keeps me trapped in my house - but hey, it could really be worse. There’s a genuine security in the fact that no-one can make me feel ashamed about the basic inviolable fact of my identity and body, and no-one ever will again.

I just want all young dykes, whether out and aware of their sexuality or not, to feel secure and strong in themselves so they don’t cave to the pressure like I almost did. The girls and young women without a good support system and without connections to other lesbians are in particular need of help, and studies like this prove that. It’s amazing how these predators can catch you out in a single moment of vulnerability.