American Booksellers Association and Abigail Shrier

[lionheart]

Sorry if there is already a thread--I couldn't find it.

If they sincerely believe they have committed harm to the extent they are saying they should all resign immediately.

How... how can that apology letter actually exist in the real world, and not as satire?

‘Horrific harm’…

Meanwhile, Irreversible Damage is #4 bestseller on Amazon.
I would say the harm is being done to the booksellers of America who are missing out on all those potential sales.
As for ‘it was not a free speech decision’, how can they not see???

Oh FFS this is just ridiculous, they are ridiculous. 🤡

On the US site, Irreversible Damage is at numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the bestsellers for the LGBTQ+ section. Followed by Helen Joyce's book 'Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality' at spots 4 & 5. Oh the horror.

@lionheart

Second apology.

Horrific harm?!?!

These people must have led the most sheltered lives imaginable.

When you use such hyperbole for such unnecessary offence, what languge do you use when something bad does happen?

Poor Alison. Horrific harm 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😎

The apology is so extreme that you'd think they'd published something by a Nazi. Well, Stonewall did say that transphobia is equivalent to anti-semitism.
I've read Shrier's book. It's not some hate-filled screed. It's a reasoned contribution to the debate. But that is too much for the TRAs because #nodebate. Any debate is inherently transphobic, in these people's minds.
The terms "violence" and "trauma" have been appallingly misused. The ABA has disgraced and discredited itself as an institution.
Obviously, there are those who think that Shrier's ideas (essentially watch-and-wait rather than positive affirmation) would cause suffering if implemented. In my view, they are wrong. But there are lots of ideas with the potential to cause suffering if implemented. I think both pro-Communist and anti-Communist, pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist, pro-feminist and anti-feminist literature should be published and made available.

So what if they published something by a Nazi? (Which I am not saying applies to any of these books.) Publish and throw it open to debate. You cannot defend or refute ideas if you pretend they don't exist, and you can't defend or refute ideas if you pretend that they are sacred.

I've ordered my copy and it will arrive tomorrow. Wish me luck opening it - just in case the book jumps out and immediately attacks me.

SnoopyLights

I've actually started a project of buying banned books or authors who are being targeted by cancel culture.

It didn't start out to be particularly focused on feminist or gender-critical books but it's taken quite a steep curve in that direction recently.

It's been very interesting through, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, quote a range of subjects and genres, and I try to print of a couple of articles about why the book or author has been targeted for banning or cancellation to go with the book, usually the article that brought the book to my attention is the first one to be printed with it.^

If it's more an author being cancelled than any one of their books (for example being dropped from an event or a panel, like Amanda Craig or Milli Hill) I will pick a couple of their books at random and add them to the ever growing collection with an explanation about why I've included them.

I've got a very similar project going, but I hadn't thought of making a historical record of why I bought them!

I feel a bit guilty saying this, but the cancellations have been fantastic for me as a reader. I (and my kids) have discovered so many talented authors. I'd been finding that many recent releases in our usual preferred genres were a bit formulaic. However, to a woman and man, every book we've tried from a cancelled author has had depth.

@Aspiringmatriarch

How... how can that apology letter actually exist in the real world, and not as satire?

It's almost like sabotage.

@StPaulsCathedral

On the US site, Irreversible Damage is at numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the bestsellers for the LGBTQ+ section. Followed by Helen Joyce's book 'Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality' at spots 4 & 5. Oh the horror.

The Streisand effect in action again. The more vividly and intensely the activists condemn and seek to suppress something, the more people seek it out. It's great publicity for Shrier and anyone else questioning orthodox thinking on trans issues.

I read her book partly out of that motivation too. It was so universally condemned and decried by even relatively sane left-wing / feminist writers that I had to see what the fuss was about.

It's not the best book in the world but it does bring to light some serious concerns about how gender-nonconforming young women are being pressured to identify as male and undertake serious medical steps that will have lifelong consequences for them on relatively flimsy grounds. That is something we need to be able to discuss freely as a society and silencing debate won't work.

It's on Scribd as an ebook. I shall read it after I finish Helen Joyce's book.

It's almost like sabotage.

The first couple of sentences read like some kind of kink thing. They've been very, very bad.

Holy moly. Saw it was at #51 in Amazon.com bestsellers. Not bad.

That is the hardback. Paperback is #4.

This is selling many thousands of copies.

@UtopiaPlanitia

The overblown wording of some of the public statements, released by organisations and individuals accused of insufficient wokeness, in recent years often put me in mind of confessions made during struggle sessions in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I don’t think this frenetic finger-pointing can be sustainable and may well provoke a backlash when society has had enough. There are better, more consensual ways to effect change in liberal democracies.

Yes they’re exactly like self-criticism during the cultural revolution. It’s a common template and it’s deeply disturbing.

So many organisations pass things on to one or two activists, who come out with this crap. Nobody else will genuinely see the book’s inclusion as “violence”, but only the handful of trans activists on staff are allowed to have an opinion about it.

Providing a sinecure for one of them may well serve as the hospital treatment needed to remedy this serious violence and ease the pain.

PurgatoryOfPotholes

I've got a very similar project going, but I hadn't thought of making a historical record of why I bought them!

I recommend keeping something with them, it's quite interesting to look at the print outs and clippings that go with the books. And I think as time passes, if DS or anyone else takes an interest in my shelves, it will be good for them to see the reasoning behind the project.

I have the JKR book Troubled Blood, which has a lot of false reviews claiming the book is 900+ pages of transphobia, so I printed off a couple of those, plus her statement on why she believes in single sex spaces etc, and of course the book itself which disproves the false reviews if only people bother to read it. I think it will add a lot of context to these very strange times we in as far as sex and gender is concerned, and I hope it will help to show who really was on the right side of history.

I feel a bit guilty saying this, but the cancellations have been fantastic for me as a reader. I (and my kids) have discovered so many talented authors. I'd been finding that many recent releases in our usual preferred genres were a bit formulaic. However, to a woman and man, every book we've tried from a cancelled author has had depth.

I have found this too, I've really enjoyed giving all these new books and authors a chance and it has brought me out of my comfort zones when it comes to reading. It has also bumped me up the scale of angry feminist as well, but I'm not finding that to be a bad thing

@ArabellaScott

Holy moly. Saw it was at #51 in Amazon.com bestsellers. Not bad.

That is the hardback. Paperback is #4.

This is selling many thousands of copies.

I had been waiting for the paperback version to come out, I would imagine that pb always sells better than Hb so "good" timing for all the negative press.

The booksellers of America are free to stock the book if they choose. No-one has banned it. The ABA are a trade association who support booksellers, they don't have any power over what shops stock.

Does anyone think that maybe the Booksellers of America are taking the proverbial?

harmharmharmityharmfulviolentviolentegregioustraumaticharmfullerviolentharm

The parallels with blasphemy laws and religion is striking

And in the US it's usually religious conservatives trying to ban books like "Heather Has Two Mommies" and "Tango Makes Three" which is about two penguin dads or "Naked Lunch" by William S Burroughs or Judy Blume's, "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret."

In 2020, they were still trying to ban Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye."