Target recently came under fire from all directions for claiming that it would remove the widely-criticized book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters from its shelves, only to walk back that decision almost immediately after countless screeds about “free speech.” All of this, naturally, is unfolding during Trans Awareness Week, ensuring that no trans person online can exist for even a second without being aware of the soul-crushing weight of transphobia.
The book in question is by Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier, and was published in hardcover on the last day of LGBTQ+ Pride month by the politically conservative publisher Regnery Publishing. The book’s description claims that the so-called “trans epidemic” is putting “a generation of girls… at risk,” writing that they are “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.”
First of all, the only “trans epidemic” that exists is the non-stop violence against trans people, especially Black trans women, an epidemic that has been officially recognized as such by the American Medical Association. Also, nearly every claim mentioned above is a blatant lie. There’s little evidence that puberty blockers affect future fertility, and besides, fixating on a literal child’s capacity to bear children (which they may or may not even want in the future!) is straight-up weird.
And while some adolescents are indeed able to acquire top surgery, they have to jump through significantly more hoops to be approved than adults, who also face difficulties in access to surgery. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 55% of insured respondents reported being denied coverage for transition-related surgery.
Even if covered, trans youth often have to undergo seemingly never-ending screenings and acquire countless letters of consent from various authority figures — including their parents — before potentially being approved for surgery. (Just take a look at the requirements listed on the website of Dr. Scott Mosser, a plastic surgeon based in San Francisco.) But none of this actually matters to transphobes because their feelings don’t care about facts, to use a turn of phrase.
To bring things back around to Target, the corporation’s move might have come as a blow after it endorsed the right to same-sex marriage, removed gender-based signage from certain aisles, and took a seemingly pro-trans stance in the 2016 bathroom wars. As always, it bears repeating that The Brands Are Not Your Friends; Target is a corporation and the decision to restock Shrier’s book is strictly business, as Ana Valens previously argued for The Daily Dot.
