Kadokawa, the Japanese publisher has canceled their planned publication of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Crazy Seducing Our Daughters after facing consumer backlash.
The book, originally published in 2020 has been featured on The Economist as one of its books of the year for 2020. However the book has been criticized for its reliance on anecdotes and its endorsement of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” which isn’t recognized as a medical diagnosis.
Transgender rights advocates had planned a protest in front of Kadokawa’s Tokyo HQ which has since been canceled amid the news Kadokawa was cancelling the book’s publication.
Some consumers considered it a strange decision in the first place, as the book appears to malign anime for being “tied into this whole trans culture” as it’s phrased in the book. Kadokawa is one of the world’s most prolific producers of anime and manga.
It's interesting, and also very embarrassing, how anime seems to function as this sort of foreign boogeyman for people who seek to pathologise and stigmatise transness, often without having the slightest clue as to what anime entails. https://t.co/GWNT8cYtfm pic.twitter.com/4xy6Vd2MuG
— Emily (エミリー・ボーン) 🎃 (@writerofscratch) December 6, 2023
Shrier also erroneously characterizes anime as “computer-animated images of anthropomorphized creatures”, which are included in some anime but hardly a medium-defining attribute.
Proponents of the book’s publication (including the book’s author) criticized Kadokawa’s decision as censorship.
While Kadokawa may not be publishing the book, it’s not as if it has been banned in Japan. Irreversible Damage is likely to be picked up by a more fringe publisher in the near future.
