The American Booksellers Association, the 120-year-old trade association and promoter of literature and independent bookstores, deeply regrets its mistake. It facilitated a “serious, violent incident” that goes against “everything” it believes in and supports. The ABA apologized for the pain it caused. And because “apologies are not enough,” the ABA has begun “addressing this” through a review process — read: crisis communications mission — that will be revealed over the next three weeks.
What on Earth happened? With this level of obsequiousness, you’d think the ABA had mailed out signed copies of Mein Kampf to everyone on its member list. But no, the offending title, included in the ABA’s July mailing list, was none other than the book that was removed, then un-removed, then removed again from Target’s shelves and controversially not removed from Amazon’s website: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.
The drama- and meltdown-inducing book by Abigail Shrier “offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters,” according to its description.
“Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and ‘gender-affirming’ educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls — including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility,” it says.
If some young girls are undergoing life-altering surgery that they may tremendously regret later in life, even if others appear happy with their choice to transition, this seems like an urgent subject worth considering, much like the disclaimer labels on medicine bottles that we all neglect to read, even though we all really should.
Even if you disagree with the book, or think the proliferation of transgender-identifying individuals in the United States is a good thing, you’d think we could all agree that we should be putting the health and safety of young girls first, no matter what’s politically correct or expedient for one political party’s platform.
Alas, we don’t seem to care much about the well-being of our girls. Or at least, the ABA and its members don’t.
It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad, to see the way progressives on Twitter responded to the ABA’s already groveling apology. “You’ve actively hurt people,” reads one comment, which, as far as I can tell, is not satire. No mention of the “hurt” that may be endured by thousands of young girls who permanently alter their biology to conform to an identity they might well wish to abandon when they grow up a bit.
The ABA incident is just the latest in literary community drama caused by people being exposed to ideas they don’t like. (In their view, this is just a long-winded way to say these people were exposed to actual “violence.”) A few people who were Mad Online recently made a couple of authors line-edit their own books to conform to these readers’ sensitivities. And the Poetry Foundation issued a groveling statement to rival the ABA’s after it was accused of saying too little to support the racial justice protests of last year. (That too, in case you were wondering, was “violence.”)
This trend isn’t going away anytime soon, but it is good to know that backlash works two ways. Amazon did, after all, decide to continue selling Irreversible Damage, while just two workers quit in protest. Ironically, it’s the “evil” corporation, not the independent booksellers, that is standing up for freedom of speech.
Despite small wins, it is sad that not many institutions are still committed to diversity of thought, especially the ones that should uphold it most.
