Me Thinks

This book was recommended to me and I am glad I read it. This is a book summary I wrote to myself after finishing the book:

Scary. Interesting. Important. Ms. Shrier opened my eyes to how insecure teenage girls are being drawn to change themselves with the promise of feeling better, and how counselors are doing nothing to stall them to think about it. I didn’t know the transgender world is promoting itself so strongly.  I didn’t realize the psychological and physical harm that teenage girls are subjecting themselves to in order to feel accepted and important.

And now, a few quotes from the book:

For these girls, trans identification offers freedom from anxiety’s relentless pursuit; it satisfies the deepest need for acceptance, the thrill of transgression, the seductive lilt of belonging (pg. xxiv).

Teens and tweens today are everywhere pressed to locate themselves on a gender spectrum and within a sexuality taxonomy—long before they have finished the sexual development that would otherwise guide discovery of who they are or what they desire.  Long before they may have had any romantic or sexual experience at all.  Young women judged insufficiently feminine by their peers are today asked outright, “Are you trans?” (pg. 13).

How imperfect our knowledge of our future desires is! Adolescents are often cavalier with risks they are in no position to assess, especially when faced with encouragement of friends (pgs. 110, 111).

The dangers are legion. The safeguards absent.  Perhaps the greatest risk of all for the adolescent girl who grasps at this identity out of the blue, like it is the inflatable ring she hopes will save her, is also in some ways the most devastating: that she’ll wake up one morning with no breasts and no uterus and think, “I was only sixteen at the time.  A kid.  Why didn’t anyone stop me?” (pg. 183)

So many of these girls who are drawn into the transgender world are already battling anorexia, anxiety, and depression. They are lonely.  They are fragile.  And more than anything, they want to belong. Adults in their lives should realize this. The psychological struggles that lead a young woman to transition are often acute.  More than likely, even after detransition, they remain.  At some point, we all have to face our struggles and sorrows (pgs. 202, 203).