“How Our Daughters Are Falling for Transgender Mania.” Albatros withdrew publication of Irreversible Damage

The Albatros book publishing house came with a startling news. It has decided not to publish the already announced book Irreversible Damage: How Our Daughters Fall into Transgender Mania. The book by the American columnist and writer Abigail Shrier will not reach the Czech market, as Albatros canceled its publication, saying that it could harm a certain group of people – specifically transgender people. “We support diversity, we value a close relationship with the reading community, and we want to assure you that we are not indifferent to your opinions and suggestions,” the publisher said in a statement.

The publisher said that after “careful consideration” it had decided not to publish the book Irreversible Damage, citing a number of readers and staff who had opposed the publication of the book. “In its editorial plan, Albatros Media reflects a wide range of topics that resonate in society and views on them. That is why we were going to publish a book dealing with gender dysphoria. However, a number of readers and our employees soon drew attention to the controversies that the text of this particular title accompany, and provided many arguments and sources for closer examination,” the statement reads.

For these reasons, Albatros decided to reassess the publication of the book in detail. “Due to the sensitivity of the topic, we approached the whole process as responsibly as possible. We thus involved a number of people in the discussion – in addition to experts, also members of the book community, young readers around the Humbook project, who are strongly affected by the book’s topic, and our employees. Their opinions were one of parts of our final decision,” concludes the publishing house.

The Echo24 newspaper has previously asked Albatros Media for a review copy of Abigail Shrier’s book. In the end, he received a negative response, saying that the book had provoked strong and contradictory reactions from readers and staff alike. “After all, similar reactions accompanied the release of the title in the world, but in order to be sure that we would not cause any harm to any of our readers, we decided to reassess the book and its treatment of the topic in detail,” Albatros spokeswoman Jana Fikotová told Echo24.

She added that the publishing house takes a responsible approach to assessing titles that deal with sensitive issues related to LGBTQ issues. “The principle of plurality of opinions and the potential of a text’s negative impact on the lives of our readers are always at odds. As the mentioned book targets parents of teenage girls in a potentially difficult life situation as a mentor, we perceived the risk of a negative impact with increased sensitivity, which is why we decided not to publish the title,” explained the general director of the publishing house Václav Kadlec.

Former Minister of Finance, economist and politician Ivan Pilip also reacted to the news about the withdrawal of copies from Czech bookstores. “Cancel culture, welcome to the Czech Republic. Since the book must already be ready for publication, I called an editorial meeting as the owner of the Bourdon Publishing House and we decided to offer to buy the rights and the translation,” wrote Pilip on the X social network, saying that if an agreement is reached, he will publish the book in the Czech Republic.

The decision not to publish the book should have been made a week ago. The title Irreversible Damage already caused controversy during its release in the US when it came out in 2020. Writer and columnist Abigail Shrier and her perspective on the transgender community have been dividing American society for several years. The book describes transgender as a fashion trend that irreversibly harms young people.

A similar controversy was caused by the publication of the book When Harry became Sally in the United States in 2018, which was brought to the shelves of Czech bookstores by the Echo Media publishing house. When Harry Became Sally is critical of modern transgender rights and some treatments for gender dysphoria. In it, political philosopher Ryan T. Anderson focuses on the cultural and political debates surrounding transgender identity. You can buy it here.

Anderson’s work also focuses on gender dysphoria in children and the experimental therapies that quickly became mainstream. At the same time, the author explicitly encourages the reader not to stigmatize people with gender dysphoria and thus not increase their suffering.

In the United States, the book was published for the first time in 2018 and still holds a high informational value for readers. “The state of scientific knowledge, captured in the book up to 2017, has not changed even after that. No therapy, medication or blocking hormones, no surgery has yet overcome the fact stated by Anderson and other non-conformists, namely that anyone born as a man or a woman remains biologically a man or a woman even after the most successful transition,” writes the commentator of Týdeník Echo in the preface of the Czech edition Daniel Kaiser.