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Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters Hardcover – 20 Aug. 2020
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But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.”
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.
Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to “detransitioners”—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves.
Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back. She offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters.
A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.
- Print length276 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRegnery Publishing
- Publication date20 Aug. 2020
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions15.24 x 2.54 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-101684510317
- ISBN-13978-1684510313
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Product description
Review
—Dennis Prager, nationally syndicated radio talk show host and bestselling author of The Rational Bible
“Writing honestly about a difficult and vital topic, Shrier compassionately analyzes the evidence regarding rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), a phenomenon declared off-limits by many in the media and the scientific establishment. Shrier simply isn’t willing to abandon the future of a child’s mental health to propagandistic political efforts. Shrier has actual courage.”
—Ben Shapiro, editor in chief of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show
“In Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier provides a thought-provoking examination of a new clinical phenomenon mainly affecting adolescent females—what some have termed rapid-onset gender dysphoria—that has, at lightning speed, swept across North America and parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia. In so doing, Shrier does not shy away from the politics that pervade the field of gender dysphoria. It is a book that will be of great interest to parents, the general public, and mental health clinicians.”
— Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., adolescent and child psychologist and chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders
“Thoroughly researched and beautifully written.”
—Ray Blanchard, Ph.D., head of Clinical Sexology Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health from 1995–2010
“Abigail Shrier dares to tell the truth about a monstrous ideological fad that has already ruined countless children’s lives. History will look kindly on her courage.”
—Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show
“Abigail Shrier has written a deeply compassionate and utterly sobering account of an unprecedented and reckless social experiment whose test subjects are the bodies and psyches of the most emotionally vulnerable among us.”
—John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine and columnist for the New York Post
“For no other topic have science and conventional wisdom changed—been thrown away—more rapidly than for gender dysphoria. For a small but rapidly growing number of adolescent girls and their families, consequences have been tragic. This urgently needed book is fascinating, wrenching, and wise. Unlike so many of the currently woke, Abigail Shrier sees clearly what is in front of our faces and is brave enough to name it. Irreversible Damage will be a rallying point to reversing the damage being done.”
—J. Michael Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen and professor of psychology at Northwestern University
“Abigail Shrier has shed light on the profound discontent of an entire generation of women and girls and exposed how transgender extremists have brainwashed not just these young women, but large portions of the country.”
—Bethany Mandel, editor at Ricochet.com, columnist at the Jewish Daily Forward, and homeschooling mother of four
“Every parent needs to read this gripping travelogue through Gender Land, a perilous place where large numbers of teenage girls come to grief despite their loving parents’ efforts to rescue them.”
—Helen Joyce, senior staff writer at The Economist
“Gender transition has become one of the most controversial issues of our time. So much so that most of us simply want to avoid the subject altogether. Such evasion can be just the thing that gives the majority an excuse to look away from the suffering of our fellow human beings. Abigail Shrier chooses to take the bull by the horns. She dives straight into this most sensitive of debates. The product is a work brimming with compassion for a vulnerable subset of our population: teenage girls. It is a work that makes you want to keep reading because it is accessible, lucid and compelling. You find yourself running out of reasons to look away. A must-read for all those who care about the lot of our girls and women.”
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and member of Dutch Parliament from 2003–2006
“Shrier’s timely and wise exploration is simultaneously deeply compassionate and hard-hitting. First carefully laying out many of the physical, psychological, and societal effects of the ‘transgender craze,’ she then points to the inconsistencies within the ideology itself. This book deftly arms the reader with tools for both recognizing and resisting, and will prove important for parents, health care professionals, and policy makers alike.”
—Heather Heying, evolutionary biologist and visiting professor at Princeton University
"If you want to understand why suddenly it seems that (mostly) young girls from (mostly) white middle- or upper-class backgrounds (many of whom are in the same friend groups) have decided to start dressing like boys, cutting their hair short, changing their name to a masculine one, and even taking hormones, using chest compressors, and getting themselves surgically altered, you must read Abigail K. Shrier’s urgent new book, Irreversible Damage."
--Commentary Magazine [review by Naomi Schaefer Riley]
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Regnery Publishing (20 Aug. 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 276 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1684510317
- ISBN-13 : 978-1684510313
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 2.54 x 22.86 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 457,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 39,371 in Business, Finance & Law
- 70,421 in Social Sciences (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Abigail Shrier is the New York Times bestselling author of BAD THERAPY: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up (2024), also an international bestseller. She received the Barbara Olson Award for Excellence and Independence in Journalism in 2021.
Her previous national bestseller, IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020), was named a ‘Best Book’ by The Economist and The Times (of London). Her books have been translated into seventeen languages.
Shrier holds an A.B. from Columbia College, where she received the Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship; a B.Phil. from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book well-researched, insightful, and truthful. They describe it as a brilliant, interesting, and key book to read. Readers praise the writing style as thoughtful, easy to read, and understandable. They also find the pacing frightening, shocking, and brave. Additionally, they mention the compassion is comforting for any parent experiencing this situation.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book well-researched, insightful, and truthful. They say it's full of scientific information interwoven with human stories. Readers also mention the book is educational and disturbing.
"...gender, particularly for adolescents, this is both timely and eye-opening...." Read more
"Well written and full of useful yet disturbing information." Read more
"A thorough, well researched body of work focusing on girls identifying as transgender (and often later detransitioning)...." Read more
"...and compassionate analysis is levelheaded, factchecked and entirely credible, providing succour in the current atmosphere of hysterical social media..." Read more
Customers find the book brilliant, interesting, and key to read. They say it's well-written and riveting. Readers also appreciate the honesty of the book.
"...are aware of many of the facts laid out here, it’s nonetheless an important read, especially hearing the stories of young people and understanding..." Read more
"...book after following Graham Linehan's postings on X, and it's a very well read book into the latest social craze - and it is a craze, an insidious,..." Read more
"Unputdownable! I absolutely loved this book for its honesty (never biased) of what so clearly and to be honest, frighteningly appears to be a ‘craze..." Read more
"...Simply incredible." Read more
Customers find the writing style compassionate, thoughtful, and easy to read. They say it's a heartfelt, investigative, informative, and sobering window into the gender phenomenon. Readers also mention the book is clear, precise, and factual.
"This is an incredibly compassionate and thorough book looking, mainly, at the vast increase in young girls identifying as transgender..." Read more
"Well written and full of useful yet disturbing information." Read more
"...She has real compassion, and sheds a lot of light for parents (especially male parents like me) on what their daughters might be going through...." Read more
"...The book is thorough. It is clear, precise and factual. It never descends into hatred, bigotry or judgement...." Read more
Customers find the pacing fascinating, shocking, and eye-opening.
"...In equal measure shocking and educating, terrifying and dumbfounding, I cannot recommend this book highly enough...." Read more
"An absolutely riveting, shocking and horribly prescient book, most timely in the current climate of thought police, thought crime and the erasure of..." Read more
"...A fascinating and frightening insight to what is happening to many easily influenced youngsters at a time when they, perhaps, are at their most..." Read more
"...At fault: on a different issue. The stories brought forward are very anecdotal, more should have been made of the comprehensive source materials..." Read more
Customers find the book compassionate and comforting for parents experiencing this situation.
"...It’s incredibly informative and comforting to any parent experiencing this situation with their teen...." Read more
"...Compassionate and reasoned book." Read more
"...It is equal parts scholarly and compassionate...." Read more
"A compassionate and well-written book that is both engaging and well-researched...." Read more
Customers find the book far from transphobic. They say it's a balanced assessment of transgender issues and a detailed analysis of the epidemic.
"The necessary warning: this book is not bigoted, hysterical, or needlessly scaremongering...." Read more
"...but I can tell already that’s it’s very well researched, not at all decisive or transphobic in any way...." Read more
"...What you will find is a detailed analysis of the transgender epidemic that is effecting primarily teenage girls, the societal pressures that have..." Read more
"...There is no transphobia or ‘trans stereotypes’ used in this book, ignore those 1 star reviews, they clearly haven’t read the book but are just part..." Read more
Customers find the book timely and important. They also say it's horrifying and prescient.
"...landscape around gender, particularly for adolescents, this is both timely and eye-opening...." Read more
"...naive to the current movement around gender, this is both timely and horrifying...." Read more
"An absolutely riveting, shocking and horribly prescient book, most timely in the current climate of thought police, thought crime and the erasure of..." Read more
"This is a timely and important book , thank goodness there was someone brave and honest enough to write it." Read more
Customers find the book to be balanced and level-headed.
"...It's not going to scold you or scare you, it's pretty level-headed...." Read more
"...It is a well researched, well written and balanced book on a very important modern day subject" Read more
"Very balanced view. Nicely laid out." Read more
"Important and balanced. Must read!" Read more
Reviews with images
Compassionate, well researched and articulate take on an urgent social crisis
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Top reviews
Top reviews from United Kingdom
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I felt compelled to read this after several women I know who have detransitioned said that it tackled what they had been through sympathetically and with honesty.
For anyone unaware of the current landscape around gender, particularly for adolescents, this is both timely and eye-opening.
For those of us who have been studying these issues for years and are aware of many of the facts laid out here, it’s nonetheless an important read, especially hearing the stories of young people and understanding what a little of what it is like to be an adolescent in the internet age (terrifying, it seems).
There are a lot of one star reviews for this. That isn’t, I believe, because this is a bad book or because it is mistaken. I think it’s getting a lot of negativity because the truth feels dangerous to people who would have you believe that hardly anyone detransitioners and that being trans is nothing to do with a medical condition and everything to do with identity.
Parents, particularly, will be doing themselves a disservice if they don’t read this book. It might help your child.
Most especially your daughter.
There's a little-discussed phenomenon that's been going around in the last few years known as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, which has mainly been affecting girls and young women. Essentially, it does just what the name implies: children who have never shown any sign of gender confusion become suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced that they were born in the wrong body. The teenage years have always been pretty hard on girls and they are more susceptible than boys to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, cutting and eating disorders. ROGD is just the latest manifestation of this.
The author is really at her best when describing the mental state of girls experiencing the pain of growing up in modern society, with its restrictions, its loneliness, its unrealistic expectations and its ubiquitous porn. She has real compassion, and sheds a lot of light for parents (especially male parents like me) on what their daughters might be going through. She does this without being judgemental and certainly without dismissing actual trans people: she has interviewed many for the book, and refers to them respectfully throughout. To that extent, it isn't really about being trans at all: she wants to distinguish between the different strands of the trans community and point out that in most cases, these girls aren't really a part of it at all. Having laid the groundwork to establish this, she describes the social contagion aspect of ROGD and related trends, and the online network of people who "support" girls by basically encouraging them to embrace the illness, and offering a ton of peer-pressure to stop them turning back. There are loads of first-hand testimonies to support this. She describes the well-meaning but wrong-headed professionals who are trained to only ever affirm the girls' self-diagnosis, never to suggest exploring other related mental health concerns. Parents, who know the children best and love them above all else, are often treated by professionals as if they are somehow holding their children back. In some cases they are even given the stark choice "would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter", which is a horrible way of posing the dilemma, since it is designed to hijack the parents' natural protective instincts and guilt them into colluding with their daughters taking Lupron then, later, losing their fertility, changing their voice and appearance permanently and even undergoing unnecessary surgery. In America, where big pharma has already made a fortune from over-diagnosing childhood ADHD, depression and anxiety, the possibility of a whole new market of lifelong patients to buy hormone blockers, testosterone and pain meds is a godsend. It's really agonising for me, as a parent, to think of children herded down this road to victimhood by adults who really ought to bloody know better. And my heart goes out to the parents in the book, even though they aren't always sympathetic. Some are very supportive, trying to do the right thing, but unsure what that is. Others are bitter and angry at seeing their children lured away by an online cult. And it's the parents, more than anyone, who can benefit from this book, because there isn't really anything else on the market right now. It's not going to scold you or scare you, it's pretty level-headed. It has its flaws or course, all books do, but it really opens your eyes to what's happening. It shows that there is hope, and that you can be an anchor for your daughter, to help her regain a sense of herself as she is, without feeling like you are hectoring her Of course, you'll be castigated by activists anyway and called a transphobes, because that's the world we live in now: read some of the one star reviews from people who obviously haven't read the book if you want to get an idea of what to expect. But someone has to stand up for the girls and if professionals won't, if the online community won't, well it'll just have to be the parents, won't it?
Top reviews from other countries
I'm 55, with a 19 and a 22 year old. Either one of my kids could easily have fallen prey to this seductive movement and entered into a lifetime of medicalization. At 12, my youngest "came out" to me as lesbian, and I simply told her she can form romantic attachments to whoever she likes, but I wasn't willing to label her at that point. She didn't like my firmness, but now she looks back on that phase with embarrassment, as a moment when she felt left out, wanted to be special, belong, and be celebrated... the queer kids were getting stuff she wasn't getting, so she joined the LGBTQ club at school. Now she is exclusively heterosexual, it seems. By the grace of whatever, she didn't get hooked into trans back in 2016. But I wouldn't consider any of these kids to be "out of the woods" until they're at least 28. and In my limited circle of friends and acquaintances I know:
• A dear friend of mine, 57-year-old progressive father of a 21-year-old daughter who he says was likely drawn into the trans idea when she developed breasts and attracted unwanted attention from males. He thinks she was likely lesbian. His wife immediately affirmed the girl coming out as trans, and the name and pronoun changes. She is now is on testosterone and has had a double mastectomy. My friend felt that he had to affirm this, or be estranged from the family. He talks about the intense loneliness of being skeptical. I wish he'd had this book four or five years ago.
• My 19-year-old daughter's best friend, born female. The two girls met at the start of the grade 12 year of high school, and the relationship has been rocky because of this girl's mental health issues. The girl obsessively pursued my daughter romantically as a 17-year-old, and at that time, was presenting as a female. She had a meltdown over my daughter's insistence that they be platonic friends, and they were estranged for over a year. Now this girl is back in my daughter's life, with a double mastectomy, lower voice, and a beard. She just happily told me about her surgery, and how grateful she was that her wait time had been shortened because of a cancellation in the schedule. I see nothing but carnage.
• A 22-year-old young woman who began "transitioning" to male in high school, she came from a very troubled family situation, and appeared at my dinner table as an additional guest when I invited my dear friend and her son. She had changed her name to a boy's name, her voice was artificially low, and my dear friend, who has followed the girl on instagram, recently showed me photos of her proudly displaying her mastectomy scars, and then subsequent photos showing she was back to wearing fancy dresses and letting her hair grow longer. My friend assumes she is detransitioning.
• A friend of mine whose 16-year-old daughter with autism wanted to have her breasts removed. This woman was distraught that the medical system would perform the surgery on a teenager, even without Mom's consent. This was several years ago, and I saw the girl last year, talking about her creative work, dressed to accentuate her female figure, and I thought she had disisted. I just found out that at age 24, a few months ago, the girl decided to have a double mastectomy after all.
• My dear friend's son, who I watched grow up, was always a very impulsive, physical, aggressive boy. In his teen years, his father left the country, and he descended into addiction. A talented musician, he was the lead in the high school band. He treated his mother very badly, was volatile and violent, and said awful misogynistic things to my daughter, who looked up to him as a brother figure. Then, suddenly, he came out as a trans woman. The counsellor my friend brought him to immediately affirmed him, and told her, in his presence, "What would you prefer, a dead son or a live daughter?" He was combative about his pronouns and chosen name, and an arrangement was made for him to move in with his father in a country where the health authorities have suddenly done a 180º on medicalizing people who claim a trans identity. When his estrogen ran out, he would have had to jump through many hoops to access more of it, and apparently, couldn't be bothered, so has ceased. My friend has no contact with her son, and when her brother died, the boy made no contact to offer condolences, and did not attend the funeral.
• A female friend has twin daughters, one of whom insisted she was a boy from about age 3 or 4. This would be over a decade ago. Mom decided to affirm the child with her chosen male name and pronouns, dad was reluctant but got on board. There was a complete social transition by kindergarten at school, etc. I don't know for certain, but I assume there was full medicalization that began at puberty. Certainly this child currently presents as male, and I can't imagine they didn't receive the "life-saving, gender-affirming" hormones and surgery treatment.
I don't think I know a single family in my peer group that isn't dealing with some kind of profound mental health issue with one or more of their kids, and the transgender dysphoria is more common now that the nut allergies that transformed school lunch policies 15 years ago. I'm the child of two PhD biologists, and I chafe at the notion that we should talk about "pregnant people" and define lesbians as "non-male." There is a biological reality that no superficial chemical or surgical treatments can change. My own daughter is caught up in this tangentially, as a friend to girls who insist they are boys, and also because her rights as a woman are being eroded by trans activists who have hijacked the federal protections in place and marginalized biological females who deserve remedies in cases of discrimination on the basis of sex.
This book highlights the capture of once-trustworthy medical institutions like the Endocrine Society, where ideology now trumps biology, and activism thwarts scientific research. It's quite a scandal, and the irreversible damage being done to young people is not rare. It's happening over and over again in my own social circle. I'm not willing to keep quiet about it.





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