"Why wouldn’t I prostrate myself before the petulant mobs who insist that my standard journalistic investigation into a medical mystery..."

"... specifically, why so many teen girls were suddenly identifying as transgender and clamoring to alter their bodies—makes me a hater?... As an undergraduate studying philosophy, I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether my will was free.... Today, before any of us decides what it is we want, we open our phones and participate in our own manipulation at the hands of those who actively want us to think, and see, and vote differently than our own wills would have us do. If we were not entirely free before, in other words—we are far less so now..... When polled, nearly two out of three Americans (62%) say they are afraid to express an unpopular opinion. That doesn’t sound like a free people in a free country. We are, each day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity: 'Some men have periods and get pregnant.' 'Hard work and objectivity are hallmarks of whiteness.' 'Only a child knows her own true gender.' 'Transwomen don’t have an unfair advantage when playing girls’ sports.'... I didn’t write Irreversible Damage to be provocative. In a freer world, nothing in my book would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do...."

Writes Abigail Shrier in "What I told the students of Princeton/Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom" (Substack).