Review: ‘Irreversible Damage’ by Abigail Shrier
“Dancing mania” hit the city of Strasbourg in 1518, and some people danced until they died of exhaustion. Numerous children in East Africa were afflicted with a “laughter epidemic” in 1962. Fourteen schools were closed. The 1980s saw an epidemic of teenage anorexia. Social contagions are a historical phenomenon,and crazes a sociological category.
An alarming craze in the West is the transgender phenomenon, especially among teens. The number being referred for “gender treatment” has increased by more than 1,000 percent in the United States and more than 3,000 percent in the United Kingdom. Clinics in other Western countries report similar increases.
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughtersis a journalist’s inquiry into the how and why of the surge in self-reported gender dysphoria among teen girls. Abigail Shrier, who writes for The Wall Street Journal, examines the cultural context in which girls navigate adolescence, and in so doing uncovers a deeply troubling ideology deceiving a generation.