The American Booksellers Association (ABA) issued a statement yesterday profusely apologizing for promoting Abigail Shrier’s book on the transgender craze sweeping the nation, calling it “a serious, violent incident.”
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A statement released by the organization went on to say that promotion of Shrier’s book “goes against ABA’s ends policies, values and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.”
Here is the full statement:
It is unclear what the ABA means by “violence” since the term refers to “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something,” according to the dictionary definition.
The book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, has caused transgender activists to try several times, sometimes successfully, to have it removed from shelves and online distribution.
It had been included by the ABA in a promotion of other featured books that was sent out to hundreds of bookstores. Publishers weekly also revealed the ABA Board sent a letter to its members apologizing for committing a “racist act” by “posting the cover of a right-wing extremist’s book instead of the cover for the bestselling book Blackout.”
The person believed to be the right-wing extremist featured on the incorrect image is Candace Owens, according to National Review.
The letter also referred to Shrier’s book, calling it a “dangerous anti-trans act” to include it in the mailing. “These incidents harmed booksellers” the statement reads, without providing specific evidence as to how, exactly, having books of a differing views on controversial subjects is dangerous, violent or harmful.
Faithwire has previously reported on these attempts to silence Shrier’s work. Our parent company, CBN, has also covered the controversy.
The book chronicles the transgender craze among adolescent girls and the professionals who pave the way for them to get puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries.
A graduate of Yale Law School and writer for the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, Shrier focused her book on social contagion and pediatric medical issues in transgenderism.
She told CBN News recently, “All I’m asking for is more medical oversight, caution, and awareness that this is being a social-driven fad, so nothing so outrageous at all.”
But transgender activists disagree and have called for an end to sales of her book. Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, calls the book “dangerous” and calls on activists to “fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life.”
He has also called for banning sales of the book. “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100 percent a hill I will die on,” he tweeted.
Grace Lavery, an associate professor in the University of California – Berkeley English department, called for the burning of the book at one point although she later retracted that statement and said she merely wants to mock it.