Shapes of things (28)

In parts 18, 20, and 27 of this series we noted Amazon’s suppression of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement, by Ryan Anderson. Anderson is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the founding editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey.

Anderson’s book was published by Encounter Books under the leadership of publisher Roger Kimball. Roger took up the story in the Spectator column “Amazon’s book bullying is just the latest act of woke intolerance.” Roger observed: “Amazon’s behavior is worrisome for a couple of reasons. First, it is worrisome in itself as a public act of intolerance. Second, it is worrisome as the act of a gigantic, near-monopolistic enterprise. Amazon and its subsidiaries control upwards of 80 percent of book sales in this country. They are the elephant in the room, the behemoth on the block, the leviathan to which every intermediary pays obeisance.”

Ryan Anderson himself now speaks in the USA Today column “When Amazon pulled my book on transgender issues, it tried to shut down debate.” Anderson capably conveys the gist of the utterly reasonable and bona fide points he makes in the book. In his concluding paragraphs he addresses the larger point:

We must all recognize that both Big Government and Big Tech can be threats to our freedom and our flourishing. And if both insist on imposing a new orthodoxy, the future is bleak — not only in terms of the new civil “rights” for men identifying as women to spend the night in women’s shelters, disrobe in women’s locker rooms, and compete in women’s athletics, but also in terms of what medicine would be mandated and which therapies would be prohibited.

It doesn’t take much effort to see how the Biden administration will argue that any therapy to help someone feel comfortable with his or her own body should be prohibited as discrimination.

But rather than attempting to reassign bodies to line up with misguided thoughts and feelings, we should at least attempt what is possible: helping people to align their thoughts and feelings with the reality of the body. That’s what the research in my book reveals. I pray that more people will not be harmed because Amazon refuses to let its customers read it.

Whole thing here.

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