If you were a gay or transgender youth browsing Amazon, the world’s largest retailer of books, and decided to venture into the Gay and Lesbian nonfiction section–perhaps your school library doesn’t carry much in this department, maybe you don’t have a friend or family member knowledgeable enough to aim you towards a good read–you’d first be offered a title relating to the “transgender moment.”
Then you might see the endorsement of “best-seller”–it’s listed at #1–and be curious enough to find out more.
But diving into the listing page for Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, you would eventually start to pick up on something strange: The book, though it first presents itself as having “thoughtful answers” to questions and misconceptions around being transgender, has another, decidedly anti-trans worldview it’s peddling.
Per the book’s summary:
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Everyone has something at stake in today’s debates about gender identity. Analyzing education and employment policies, Obama-era bathroom and locker-room mandates, politically correct speech codes and religious-freedom violations, Anderson shows how the law is being used to coerce and penalize those who believe the truth about human nature. And he shows how Americans can begin to push back with principle and prudence, compassion and grace.
And if there’s any room at all to doubt the real point Anderson is getting at, he writes, “Despite activists’ best efforts to put up a unified front, Harry cannot become Sally. Activists’ desperate insistence to the contrary suggests that the transgender moment is fleeting.”
Anderson’s last book, Truth Overruled, takes on the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality. Religious liberty and “marriage culture” itself were gravely threatened, he argues, by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow two people, regardless of gender, to marry one another.
So the guy who has decided that same-sex marriage is ruining straight people’s lives has also decided that it is impossible for someone to be transgender. Got it.
It’s one thing for Anderson to engage with his close-mindedness in order to profit off of other people’s close-mindedness, but does Amazon have a duty to its customers to curate harmful pseudo-science out of its book offerings in this section?
There may be an appropriate place for this unfortunate book somewhere on Amazon’s marketplace, but the #1 slot in the Gay and Lesbian section is not that place.
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StacysMusings
Unfortunately, the Religious Right will do anything to get their message out…
WillParkinson
I contacted Amazon and asked how an anti-trans book can be listed in the trans section. The guy I spoke with (Satish) said he sees what I’m talking about and is passing it on to the review team. Hopefully they’ll move it to a more appropriate place. Like Haters and Jerks.
Kangol
I’m glad that WillParkinson contacted them, I plan to, and I hope other Queerty readers will call Amazon’s attention to this. BTW, there are a number of commenters on this site who express similarly anti-trans views.
GC1985
That seems like a major algorithm issue that needs to be taken up with their programmers.
Btw I am still here and posting. I wasn’t banned. Just that this site is super slow.
Danny595
The book is anti-T. It has nothing to do with LGB people, who do not want to become or identify as the opposite sex. As for being anti-“LGBTQ,” that’s simply impossible because there is no such thing as “LGBTQ.” It’s a nonsensical grouping of letters invented by activists. Pay it no mind.
griffnyc
We as a community need to stand with our Trans sisters and brothers. They’ve had our backs throughout the majority of the equality movement & we need to have theirs.
Brian
The author doesn’t want same-sex couples to have the right to marry. That’s the L, the G, and the B parts.
I’m saddened by how stupid so many adults are. So many years, so little reasoning ability. It gives me very little hope for the future.
WillParkinson
Thanks, but I’d rather pay you no mind.
ChrisK
@Brian. Yeah, the author Ryan T Anderson is a well known homophobic hate grifter and Danny595 is a well know (to queerty anyways) idiot.
Tête Carrée
How is that group of letters any different than another group of letters? Who are you to decide what is nonsensical? You seem to have more in common with the author than with the LGB (and yes, TQ) communities. Are you talking about the “activists” that made this website (one of many) possible? What are you doing besides writing tiresome rants against “effeminate gays” and saying “the only good trans is a dead trans”?
griffnyc
I reported the miscategorization to Amazon & suggested it go in the religious section
ChrisK
Good because this is by and for religious only idiots.
mhoffman953
I’m not sure how this is considered to be in the wrong section. It’s discussing transgender people and is in the LGBT non-fiction section.
Just because someone doesn’t agree with a book’s information, doesn’t mean books should be banned or people should call Amazon to cry on the phone
little Alex
Using that logic, a book promoting racism against black people should be #1 in the African-American section?
mhoffman953
@littleAlex
That’s not using the same logic at all
And the book mentioned above is #1 because Amazon says it’s a #1 best seller
WillParkinson
Actually, Little Alex’s reasoning is sound.
And I didn’t ask them to take the book down. I asked them to shelve it properly.
ChrisK
The point is that this comes from the religious organization the Heritage Foundation. A anti LGBT hate group. They’re not some neutral party in this.
SiamSam
YOU WILL LOVE BIG TRANS-BROTHER.
Tête Carrée
That’s good because I hate you anti-LGBTQ troll.