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Target Removes Book Critical Of Trans Agenda After Customer Complains Online; UPDATE: Target Reverses Course

   DailyWire.com
The logo of Target Corporation "TGT" is seen on one of its branch at middle Manhattan on May 21, 2018 in New York,
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images

UPDATE: Target reversed course on their book-ban Friday evening, announcing in a tweet that “Irreversible Damage” has been restored on their website for purchasing.

“Yesterday, we removed a book from Target.com based on feedback we received,” Target Online posted. “We want to offer a broad assortment for our guests and are adding this book back to Target.com. We apologize for any confusion.”

Original post:

Target said Thursday night that they have removed a book critical of the transgender agenda after a customer complained about the book being “transphobic,” an accusation strongly denounced by author Abigail Shrier.

The censorship, as is usually the case, ironically led to a spike in the purchasing of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” on other platforms.

“Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention,” Target’s online help desk responded to the complaint. “We have removed this book from our assortment.” The user who made the complaint has now set their account to private.

Shrier, who claimed to have been targeted with censorship before, quickly spotlighted the disappearance of her work.

“Target.com just made my book disappear,” the author posted. “Does it bother anyone that Woke activists and spineless corporations now determine what Americans are allowed to read?”

Shrier has been accused of “transphobia” by gender activists on the Left, though her work merely dissects the mass spike in young girls suddenly identifying as transgender.

“I wrote specifically about the sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls,” Shrier explained at Quillette, last weekend. “I fully support medical transition for mature adults. And I have no desire to be a provocateur. … Nor do I have any prurient interest in others’ social lives.”

“What I aim to do, as a journalist, is to investigate cultural phenomena, and here was one worth investigating: Between 2016 and 2017, the number of females seeking gender surgery quadrupled in the United States,” she outlined. “Thousands of teen girls across the Western world are not only self-diagnosing with a real dysphoric condition they likely do not have; in many cases, they are obtaining hormones and surgeries following the most cursory diagnostic processes. Schoolteachers, therapists, doctors, surgeons, and medical-accreditation organizations are all rubber-stamping these transitions, often out of fear that doing otherwise will be reported as a sign of ‘transphobia’ —despite growing evidence that most young people who present as trans will eventually desist, and so these interventions will do more harm than good.”

“The notion that this sudden wave of transitioning among teens is a worrying, ideologically driven phenomenon is hardly a fringe view,” the author emphasized.

Conservatives and classical liberals were quick to support Shrier after Target’s shocking move.

“This is outrageous,” journalist Helen Joyce remarked.

“Target is now banning books if rando nutjobs on Twitter whine about them,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis said.

Liz Wheeler reacted, “The woke left is afraid for you to read [Abigail Shrier]’s book. They removed it from Target shelves. So… you should read it.” 

“A random twitter user asked Target to stop carrying a book they found offensive, so, because everything is so normal and cool right now, Target went ahead and did so,” former New York Magazine writer Jesse Singal writer tweeted.

“They don’t want you to read it. Which is why you should,” columnist Bethany Mandel posted.

Columnist at The Daily Wire Spencer Klavan wrote, “What a terrible shame it would be if all my followers bought [Abigail Shrier]’s wrongthink book, Irreversible Damage, and learned all sorts of things [Target]’s [Ask Target] account has decided you shouldn’t know.”

“I am a transgender person and I was moved by [Abigail Shrier]’s book,” explained author and columnist Chad Felix Greene. “It shares real stories from LGBT people, lots of transgender people like me. Why would you remove her book, Irreversible Damage? Should I do all my shopping from Amazon now?”

“To my horror, I’ve learned that [Abigail Shrier]’s book has been removed from [Target],” posted human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “I’ve read it. Every grown-up who is in a position of looking after teenage girls (parents, teachers, therapists, religious leaders, coaches, etc) should read this book.”

Despite the efforts to suppress the reach of Shrier’s book, purchases of “Irreversible Damage” spiked on other platforms.

As Felix Greene highlighted, the book cracked the top 100 on Amazon.

“Yesterday [Abigail Shrier]’s book, Irreversible Damage was at around 3,200 in all books on Amazon. Impressive on its own,” he said. “But YOU made it a top 100 book in a few hours. We can influence these businesses. We have power together. The conservative movement can change culture.”

Last month, Shrier posted a Twitter thread outlining the hurdles she’s encountered over the book, such as Amazon censorship and legacy media refusing to review the work:

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