Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up

Shrier wrote several op-eds for the Wall Street Journal from 2018 to 2020. One such editorial in 2019 focused on the reasons for the increase in young women who are transgender. Because that editorial garnered much attention and publicity, Shrier’s agent encouraged her to write a book about the topic. That book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was published in 2020 and ignited controversy. In the book, Shrier attributes the increase in girls identifying as transgender to psychological conditions and argues that girls are doing so mistakenly because social capital is built into such marginalized identities. She does not acknowledge the neurobiological evidence that gender identity resides in the brain, so those who are transgender have the body of one gender and the brain of another (Ferguson, Christopher J. “A Review of ‘Irreversible Damage’ by Abigail Shrier.” Psychology Today, 19 January 2021). As a result, there have been credible claims of transphobia made against Shrier, particularly in light of the fact that she interviewed hundreds of parents in preparing the manuscript but paid only superficial attention to science.

Shrier’s objective in writing both Irreversible Damage and Bad Therapy is to engage in advocacy, much like an editorialist for any newspaper does. She was not an investigative reporter for any newspaper, nor was she ever an academic. Citing studies and interviewing sympathetic experts, Shrier provides one perspective on these issues. She does not present a comprehensive view of the literature on either topic. Each work thus needs to be placed in the context of a wider debate that takes place beyond its pages. In both works and in her subsequent writings, Shrier is advocating conservative positions. At times, in Bad Therapy, she ridicules liberals and associates a permissive form of parenting with that ideology. In subsequent writings, she has claimed that the vast majority of Americans support Republican positions. She does not seek to identify the strongest arguments on the opposing side of the debate about therapy and engage them. Instead, she often entertains a sympathetic readership with caricatures of a negative liberal stereotype.