Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was motivated to read this book since I was skeptical upon hearing some of the trans stats Shrier throws out there. For example, she references a whole group of AFABs in one school class being trans. Fair enough, I agree something sounds amiss with that (overall improbable, but not impossible). Anyways, she got me reading as her premise seems believable at first glance. After finishing the book, however, I’m honestly appalled by the content. Shrier argues that there is only one right way to be a trans teenager: You have to have exhibited gender dysphoria from virtually the moment you’re born to be valid; if not, then it’s too late and you have to transition as an adult. On the contrary, there is no right or wrong way to be trans. Just because one didn’t exhibit a certain trait at a certain age doesn’t make one’s trans-ness less valid if announced or discovered later in life (at ANY age, even if a teenager). Shrier makes it sound as if the system is stacked against AFABs to turn them into trans-men. She warns about an affirmative care model propagated throughout schools, therapist offices, online communities, etc. that she leads us to believe are actively trying to convince people they are trans. Given the tremendous uphill battle for all trans folks (in every respect, from social to surgeries), an affirmative care model in these core support groups is critical and justified. If there wasn’t this affirmative care model, every single person (especially teenagers) identifying as trans would be dismissed as it just being a phase since it only affects less than 1% of the population. This book finally made me realize how people without the lived experience should not be writing on topics for which they lack that experience. I used to think this idea was rooted in some of the more extreme views out there, but I now stand corrected: unless carefully and meticulously researched and informed by those that have that lived experience, an outsider really has no part in commenting on how that experience is meant to be understood. Shrier missed that key detail of properly investigating that teenage trans-man experience. She does speak to a few adult trans-men, but I finished the book with a feeling that those experiences from teenage trans-men had only been captured by what their dissenting parents thought and Shrier’s spin about how virtually every person that comes into contact with a teenage AFAB tries to indoctrinate them as trans. I do remain concerned about those stats that Shrier mentioned in the beginning of the book about the large uptick in teenage trans-men. Shrier’s book, however, did nothing at all to convince me of this supposed impossibility. Just because the trans-men stats don’t line up with the same stats from prior years doesn’t automatically make it a social contagion. Trans acceptance has drastically improved over the past few years, but we regress with the publication of this book that even goes so far as to suggest that parents actively sabotage any mention of being trans from their children, such as sending their child to live on a horse farm with no internet (yes, Shrier actually condones this exact course of action if parents don’t agree with their children). Ultimately, I think Shrier’s book is the real contagion in that it is one more publication trying to invalidate the trans experience and make things harder for the already impossibly difficult life of being trans.