Adventist Today editor libels Abigail Shrier but likely has never read her

 By Ron Corson

Once again Adventist Today has published an article with an abundance of opinions and little facts. Loren Seibold the editor at Adventist Today wrote an article entitled: On Complete LGBTQ+ Acceptance in the Church. I am not going to respond to the full article I think it would be good for the Adventist denomination to examine these new issues in culture and religion. What I have a problem with is when ignorance pretends to be knowledge. Here is what Loren Seibold wrote:

“Recently the youth director of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists recommended on social media the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The author, Abigail Shrier, revives the old arguments that were once leveled at lesbian and gay people: that there is an “agenda,” a “movement,” in this case to induce young women into becoming male. This excreta is being pushed from the very top of our denomination. (Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.)”

 When a person reads that paragraph it somewhat sounds like the author of the article has some knowledge of the work of Abigail Shrier, unless, of course, anyone has read the book or listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier. Perhaps just as bad as someone who clearly has not read the book or even listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier, Loren Seibold seems to imply that the youth director of the General Conference has done something horrible by directing people to an important book on social media.

But how can it be an important book if the book is about reviving an old argument that transgenderism of young girls is an agenda or a movement.  Well, it is at this point that we know Loren Seibold knows nothing about the book. It is here that I have to come up to the plate and say Loren Seibold either does not know what he is writing about or is purposely lying to his readers. Whichever answer, it is not good for Adventist Today.  Unless of course the purpose of Loren Siebold is not honest journalism but leftist propaganda, in which case lying for the political cause is part of progressivism.

One thing all readers must learn is to identify fictional material that is attributed to someone else. This is most easily done by checking the sources. Is there a quote given, what is the source and can we read the quote. Is there any context to the quote? Here Loren Siebold gives single word quotes “agenda,” a “movement”. By just using the single out of context quotes the reader is forced to accept Loren Seibold’s explanation.  I am pretty sure he is just passing on what some other unscrupulous writer had written. That is a huge problem if someone cannot even take the time to get some first-hand information what good is their information. It is no better than gossip and in this case it is malicious gossip.

So what is the book about? The reason for the book is set forth in the beginning of Chapter 2 under the title the Puzzle:

“In 2016, Lisa Littman, ob-gyn turned public health researcher and mother of two, was scrolling through social media when she noticed a statistical peculiarity: several adolescents, most of them girls, from her small town in Rhode Island had come out as transgender—all from within the same friend group. “With the first two announcements, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ ” Dr. Littman said, a light New Jersey accent tweaking her vowels. Then came announcements three, four, five, and six.

 Dr. Littman knew almost nothing about gender dysphoria—her research interests had been confined to reproductive health: abortion stigma and contraception. But she knew enough to recognize that the numbers were much higher than extant prevalence data would have predicted. “I studied epidemiology… and when you see numbers that greatly exceed your expectations, it’s worth it to look at what might be causing it. Maybe it’s a difference of how you’re counting. It could be a lot of things. But you know, those were high numbers.”

 In fact, they turned out to be unprecedented. In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries.¹

 In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments.²

 In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls.³”

Jumping a head a couple of paragraphs:

“If this sudden spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls is a peer contagion, as Dr. Littman hypothesized, then the girls rushing toward “transition” are not getting the treatment they most need. Instead of immediately accommodating every adolescent’s demands for hormones and surgeries, doctors ought to be working to understand what else might be wrong. At best, doctors’ treatments are ineffective; at worst, doctors are administering needless hormonal treatments and irreversible surgeries on patients likely to regret them. Dr. Littman’s theory was more than enough to touch a nerve.

 Activists stormed the Twitter page of PLoS One, the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Public Library of Science that had published Dr. Littman’s paper, accusing her of anti-trans bigotry. They claimed that Dr. Littman had deliberately solicited parent reports from conservative, anti-trans parent groups. (In fact, over 85 percent of the parents self-identified as supporting LGBT rights.)” (page 21-22)

 

From there the book is a deep dive into researcher and psychologist data and observations.

Now I don’t expect people to take the time to read her book but this is an important topic. Take the time to listen or watch her Interview with Jorden Peterson. Peterson as a clinical Psychologist is very clearly a deep thinker even if he is not the best at interviews. Please take the time to listen or watch and then see just how much truth there is to Loren Siebold’s statement: “Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.”

Update. Here is the Joe Rogan podcast with Abigail Shrier. It is a more conversational program with a bit more on cultural and activists content. Pretty sure that after listening/watching this most people would say that Loren Seibold's paragraph in question above is really activist in nature. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4SIh4Pt39AtGQYzMJMNkv1

You can read articles by Abigail Shrier at: https://muckrack.com/abigailshrier/articles

Update 12-9-21

Read her speech at Princeton: What I told the Students at Princeton