Target is being blasted for removing a book — “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by noted Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier — after a complaint on Twitter that the book is spreading “transphobia.”

What’s the background?

Shrier’s book was released in June, and the likes of
Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager have interviewed her about it.

As indicated in the title, the book isn’t about transgenderism generally but specifically about the impact it’s having on 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,'” according to the book’s
description.

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“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,” the description also says.

Here’s Shrier talking about “Irreversible Damage” with Prager:

Abigail Shrier: Transgenderism’s “IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE”

youtu.be

What was the complaint about the book?

Twitter user @BlueIris04 complained to Target that “Irreversible Damage” is guilty of “transphobia” and said the “trans community deserves a response” from Target as to why it’s selling the book.

Incidentally, @BlueIris04 uses “ACAB” — which stands for “all cops are bastards” — as well as the word “Ten” with an image of a skull for a Twitter handle. At some point @BlueIris04 blocked access to his or her tweets — but a screenshot of the complaint was saved:

Later @AskTarget replied to @BlueIris04 that “Irreversible Damage” was
removed from its “assortment” of books:

Image source: Twitter/AskTarget

TheBlaze on Friday morning conducted a search on Target’s website for Shrier’s book, but it did not show up.

How are folks reacting to Target removing the book?

While some applauded Target’s removal of “Irreversible Damage,” other Twitter users weren’t so keen on the decision:

• “So @AskTarget, opposite opinions, right or wrong, are not welcome in your stores because of hurt feelings?” one user wrote. “Thanks for contributing to the mental and emotional failure of upcoming generations. They need to learn that not everything or everyone revolves around their feelings.”
• “Thanks for pandering to an a**hole who advocates for the murder of cops,” another user noted.
• “They need to be held accountable for censoring what we are allowed to read,” another commenter said. “This is a good book.”
• “I don’t feel safe at stores that allow a handful of activists to censor speech,” one user offered.
• “So the left advocates censorship, anti-Semitism, violence against political opponents, universal health care, marking and blacklisting people and socialism… ..then call everyone ELSE a Nazi,” another commenter noted. “Stopped going to Target when they betrayed us with bathrooms.”

What did the book’s publisher have to say?

Regnery Publishing on Friday morning offered TheBlaze the following statement:

The “Woke, Inc.” trend is, sadly, only getting worse. The mob has sufficiently trained big corporations like Target to live in fear — so much so that it only took *one* complaint from a Twitter user to convince Target to pull a bestselling book from its website. But as Target and other cowardly corporations cower in fear of leftist mobs, Regnery has always and will continue to stand proudly behind powerful voices like Abigail Shrier and the tremendously important work she has done in researching and writing “Irreversible Damage.”