Irreversible Damage

Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria - severe discomfort in one's biological sex - was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively.

But today whole groups of female friends in colleges and secondary schools across the world 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 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 agonised parents, and the therapists 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.

A Times Best Book of 2021

‘Punchy, analytical and written with the zest and elegance of a journalist at the top of her game’ - Sunday Times

'Courageous. Vital. Brilliant. Humane' - Mail on Sunday

‘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

‘In Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier provides a thought-provoking examination of a new clinical phenomenon mainly affecting adolescent females that has, at lightning speed, swept across North America and parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia. It is a book that will be of great interest to parents, the general public and mental health clinicians’ - Dr Kenneth J. Zucker, adolescent and child psychologist and chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

‘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. A must-read for all those who care about the lot of our girls and women’ - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Abigail Shrier is a writer for the Wall Street Journal. She holds an A.B. from Columbia College, where she received the Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship; a BPhil. from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

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. Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria - severe discomfort in one's biological sex - was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively. But today whole groups of female friends in colleges and secondary schools across the world 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 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 agonised parents, and the therapists 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.

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