ABA apologises for sending out book against 'transgender craze'

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has apologised after being criticised for including a paperback edition of Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Regnery Publishing/Swift Press) in its July "White Box" mailing, along with a promotional sales sheet.

Promotional boxes are a feature of ABA membership, and enable publishers to pay the organisation to include advance copies of books, sales sheets, bookmarks and other materials. The ABA then mails the boxes to booksellers along with marketing information for the organisation’s own Indie Next lists.

Following critcism from booksellers who called Shrier's book anti-trans, the ABA issued an apology statement on Twitter, saying: “An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.

“We apologize to our trans members and to the trans community for this terrible incident and the pain we caused them. We also apologize to the LGBTQIA+ community at large, and to our bookselling community.

“Apologies are not enough. We’ve begun addressing this today and are committed to engaging in the critical dialogue needed to inform concrete steps to address the harm we caused. Those steps will be shared in the next three weeks.”

The ABA has since locked its Twitter account. Its apology and characterisation of the incident as "an act of violence" was denounced by Irreversible Damage's American publisher Regnery. President and publisher Thomas Spence told Publisher's Weekly: "The only explanation I can think of for the ABA's statement that credits them with a rational (though dishonorable) motive is that they're trying to drum up publicity for their annual Banned Books Week promotion, coming in September (this year's slogan: 'Censorship Divides Us'). Perhaps finding books that have been 'banned', in any meaningful sense, is so difficult that they have been forced to do the dirty work themselves."

Spence also defended Shrier's book, saying: "In a sea of materials uncritically promoting medical 'transition' for teenage girls with little to no oversight, there is one book that responsibly investigates the question and urges caution."

The Wall Street Journal has also criticised the ABA decision in a piece written by the editorial board. It said: "The woke left doesn’t want anyone questioning its dogma on transgender identity. But there’s much that the scientific, psychological and medical communities do not know about gender, and novel fields of study in particular rely on free and open inquiry. The left’s impulse to silence skeptics and dissenters on this and so many other subjects should be unacceptable in a free society."

Summer Lopez, the senior director of free expression programmes at PEN America, a non-profit orgnaisation that works to defend writers’ free speech, said in a statement to NBC that "it is ever more essential that major booksellers maintain the right to offer a diversity of perspectives, so that the public can read, be informed, and assess the validity of the ideas presented by any book for themselves". She added: "The best way for critics to dispute or delegitimize the ideas in this book is to confront them publicly with facts and counterarguments, not censor them from circulation.”

In the US Amazon has been put under pressure to stop selling the book but so far it remains on offer; it is also available at Barnes & Noble, but not at Bookshop.org, which the ABA has invested in. In the UK, in addition to Amazon, the book is available to purchase on Waterstones.com and the UK branch of Bookshop.org, with a paperback edition published by Swift Press. A spokesperson for Swift Press did not comment on the ABA letter, but defended its publication of the book. A spokesperson told The Bookseller: "The issues raised by Abigail Shrier’s book need to be able to be discussed. As the Economist, which named Irreversible Damage as one of its books of the year, has written, the reception in the US is ‘a clear illustration of what the book claims: the dominance of an ideology that brooks no dissent or debate.’ Swift Press is proud to publish books that challenge ideologies and facilitate debate."

ABA c.e.o. Allison Hill sent a statement to members which also apologised for an incident on 7th July in which the ABA posted the cover of a book by conservative Candace Owens' book instead of the intended cover of Blackout (Quill Tree Books/Electric Monkey) by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon.

She said: “These were egregious, harmful acts that caused violence and pain. One negligent, irresponsible, and racist; the other negligent, irresponsible, and transphobic. (The latter was not a free speech decision.) I am working with our team to determine the root cause as well as the steps the ABA needs to take to be held accountable and to make changes. It is the next actions I take and that the ABA team takes that are critical now."

She added: “The process to inform those steps will include listening to impacted members; conferring with members of ABA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee; institutionalizing more of our diversity, equity, and inclusion work; revising our internal procedures and checks and balances; discussing with our team the impact of this violence on our members and our colleagues; changing the submission, vetting, and distribution process for the box mailing program; automating some of our online content to eliminate unconscious bias; reviewing all of our programs and communication; and more. Though we know the harm these actions caused is obvious to those impacted and many others, we will also share resources that speak to why these acts are violent.”

The ABA board of directors also sent a statement to members saying they are “angry and horrified by two equally harmful actions of the organization”. The email said: “These incidents harmed booksellers, ABA board members, and ABA staff who identify as LGBTQIA+ and/or BIPOC, as well as the wider community. They also added to a toxic culture overall.

“We are not the ABA of two years ago. These actions are antithetical to the values we are working to promote in our organization under the strong leadership of our c.e.o, Allison Hill, and chief opearting officer Joy Dallanegra-Sanger. This is not acceptable behavior and goes against the bylaw changes instituted last year.

“This is evidence of systemic problems, and we support the staff and will work to do what’s necessary to root out institutional failures and biases.”