Online retailer Amazon has joined in with many other Big Tech companies in the ‘censorship’ movement, which is looking to silence and censor any conservative voices and opinions that oppose the narratives they push. A few weeks ago, Amazon was under fire for removing bestselling “When Harry Became Sally,” a book that provides thoughtful answers to questions arising from the transgender movement, brings a balanced approach to gender identity, and an assessment of the costs of getting human nature wrong.
“When Harry Became Sally,” written by Ryan Anderson, has been on the site for three years and reached number 3 on the list of their top 100 digital books earlier in the week and sold out on Barnes and Noble’s website. The book received notable promotional copy. One review reads, in part, “As [Ryan T.] Anderson shows, the most beneficial therapies focus on helping people accept themselves and live in harmony with their bodies. This understanding is vital for parents with children in schools where counselors may steer a child toward transitioning behind their backs.”
It was removed by Amazon without providing publishers or Anderson a sufficient explanation but supposedly violated a “content guidelines” standard. Amazon updated its publishing guidelines and wrote that they “don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.”
You can read Anderson’s full explanation of the removal here.
However, Amazon’s Vice President for Public Policy Brian Huseman recently defended its decision after a group of Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Mike Braun, and Josh Hawley, wrote a letter and questioned why the company pulled Anderson’s book. Amazon claimed that they are working hard to ensure customers have a “great shopping experience” and have access to the “most diverse cross-section of writers and spoken word in retail today.” Amazon also claimed that they don’t sell books that frame the “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” but the author clarified that his book “does no such thing.”
“Nowhere have I ever said or framed LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness. The phrase “mental illness” does occur in the book twice — but not in my own voice: once quoting a “transwoman” writing in The New York Times, and once quoting the current University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins,” Anderson wrote in a statement following Huseman’s statement.
He goes on to note that gender dysphoria is listed in the most widely respected and consulted a book on psychiatric disorders because it is a serious condition that causes great suffering.”
The book also discusses the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of gender dysphoria, as well as it being a ‘childhood development disorder’ in reference to gender dysphoria in children. But the most recent edition of its “Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders” is still being sold on the Amazon marketplace. Anderson writes that the timing is “highly suspicious” since its removal was the weekend before Congress voted on the “Equality Act,” a so-called radical transgender bill.
Other Big Tech platforms, such as Youtube, also removed a panel discussion presented by the Heritage Foundation where Walt Heyer, an author who transitioned and lived eight years as a transgender woman, transitioned back and shared his experience.
Amazon is joining the list of ‘cancel culture’ companies working hard to silence conservative politics or any notions to question and challenge their narrative. The book was not a piece of hate speech or conspiracy theories, but rather a medical and psychiatric approach to the gender dysphoria crisis hurting children nationwide.
The surge of sex-reassignment procedures and girls losing championship races to boys who identify as girls is a movement to question, but Amazon has made it abundantly clear that puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormone therapies in 13-year-olds is not a “mental illness,” but a book questioning the process is “hate speech.”
