US bookseller group to censor trans critical views

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has pledged to filter out books that question transgender ideology.

After members complained about receiving promotional copies of Abigail Shrier’s ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters’, the ABA apologised and reviewed its approach to mailings.

‘Irreversible Damage’ argues that girls are being pressured into diagnosing themselves with gender dysphoria and warns against the risks of sex change surgery for children.

‘Hate speech’

Following the backlash, the Association labelled Shrier’s book “anti-trans” and said it would take “concrete steps” to address the “harm” caused to “trans members and to the trans community”.

In August, group CEO Alison Hill outlined a number of changes to ABA policy in a letter to member stores, including new ‘diversity roles’, training on LGBT issues, and the promotion of “marginalised” authors.

She also said that the September mailing of information and sample books to 750 stores would be “screened and flagged” by staff for “hate speech”.

Hill, adopting the United Nations’ criteria, defined hate speech as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are”.

Opposition

Last year, the online retailer Amazon was accused of “enforcing trans orthodoxy” after it refused to promote ‘Irreversible Damage’.

In 2018, an academic at a top US university found that heavy exposure to online content about gender transition is partially behind the phenomenon of ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ (ROGD).

ROGD is a term applied to teenagers who suddenly express feelings of being “born in the wrong body”, despite never having experienced such feelings in earlier life.

Brown University’s Dr Lisa Littman published her research in 2018. Despite efforts from the trans lobby to have the research pulled, it has withstood an extensive peer review process.