On Saturday, the day after Target announced that it would reverse its decision to remove the book “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier, which is critical of the transgender movement, from its online store, an English professor at UC Berkeley urged her followers to steal the book and burn it.
Grace Lavery tweeted, “Since some ppl have misunderstood my tone, and censorship is an important matter and as a public educator I have a duty to be precise, let me clarify: I do NOT advocate defacing library books. I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”
Since some ppl have misunderstood my tone, and censorship is an important matter and as a public educator I have a duty to be precise, let me clarify:
🚫 I do NOT advocate defacing library books.
✅ I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.
— Grace Lavery 🐬 (@graceelavery) November 14, 2020
“Plz make sure you use a safe pyre, and that you have an extinguisher to hand,” she continued. “Be safe, when you are burning books. Remember: all you’re doing is removing a commodity from circulation—much as one might destroy a contaminated crop, or take action if a distributor failed to do so.”
Plz make sure you use a safe pyre, and that you have an extinguisher to hand. Be safe, when you are burning books.
Remember: all you’re doing is removing a commodity from circulation—much as one might destroy a contaminated crop, or take action if a distributor failed to do so.
— Grace Lavery 🐬 (@graceelavery) November 14, 2020
Lavery quickly added that she was “joking,” writing, “well, I’m joking. BUT i do think the sort of moral panic that book burning elicits, despite never happening, is weird. i don’t think books are a special type of commodity … for example: the idea of burning a laptop doesn’t seem to elicit the same moral horror. but it’s the same principle—disposing of a copy, not the original. The horror seems to derive from the idea that a book represents unalienated labor—but of course, it doesn’t.”
for example: the idea of burning a laptop doesn’t seem to elicit the same moral horror. but it’s the same principle—disposing of a copy, not the original. The horror seems to derive from the idea that a book represents unalienated labor—but of course, it doesn’t.
— Grace Lavery 🐬 (@graceelavery) November 14, 2020
As The Daily Wire reported, Target initially removed the book after someone tweeted that it was transphobic. The Amazon description of the book includes the phrase “Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—”
The Daily Wire noted that the temporary censorship ironically led to a spike in the purchasing of the book on other platforms.
Shrier wrote at Quillette:
I wrote specifically about the sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls. 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.
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.”
People who haven’t read @AbigailShrier’s book are eager to have it banned, to ensure other people don’t read it either. Practices like that belong in a totalitarian state. There is not a syllable of hate in the book.#StopTheWitchHunt #ReadFahrenheit451 https://t.co/5x2gvNDXAe
— LGB Alliance (@ALLIANCELGB) November 15, 2020