Brig, Soren and Reidar. You are men, embrace your manliness. I love you, and will do anything for you. Love Papa.

What separates us from our fellow apes is a question that, rightly or wrongly, distracts anthropologists periodically. Their discussions generally focus on language, tool use, creativity or our remarkable abilities to innovate, and it is certainly the case that two decades ago these answers would have been top of the ‘exclusively human’ list. But as our knowledge of the cognitive and behavioural abilities of our primate cousins increases, the dividing line between us and them becomes more blurred, being about the extent and complexity of – rather than the presence or absence of – a behaviour. Take tool production and use. Chimps are adept at selecting and modifying grass stalks to use as ‘fishing rods’ when dipping for termites, but their ability to innovate is limited, so there’s no rapid forward momentum in tool development as would be the case with humans.

However, there is one aspect of human behaviour that is unique to us but is rarely the focus of these discussions. So necessary is this trait to the survival of our species that it is underpinned by an extensive, interrelated web of biological, psychological and behavioural systems that evolved over the past half a million years. Yet, until 10 years ago, we had neglected to try to understand this trait, due to the misguided assumption that it was of no significance – indeed, that it was dispensable. This trait is human fatherhood, and the fact that it doesn’t immediately spring to mind is symptomatic of the overwhelming neglect of this key figure in our society.

When I began researching fathers 10 years ago, the belief was that they contributed little to the lives of their children and even less to our society, and that any parenting behaviour a man might display was the result of learning rather than any innate fathering skill. Stories of fathers in the media centred on their absence and the consequences of this for our society in terms of antisocial behaviour and drug addiction, particularly among sons. There was little recognition that the majority of men, co-resident or not, were invested in their children’s lives. It was a given that fathers did not develop the profound bonds with their children that mothers did, because their role was confined to that of a secondary parent who existed, as a consequence of work, at a slight distance from the family. The lack of breadth in the literature and its sweeping generalisations and stereotypes was truly shocking. As an anthropologist, I struggled to accept this portrayal for two reasons.

In the first instance, as someone who began her graduate career as a primatologist, I knew that fathers who stick around, rather than hot-footing it as soon as copulation is complete, are vanishingly rare in the primate world, limited to a few South American monkey species and completely absent from the apes, with the exception of ourselves. Indeed, we are among the only 5 per cent of mammals who have investing fathers. I knew that, given the parsimonious nature of evolution, human fatherhood – with its complex anatomical, neural, physiological and behavioural changes – would not have emerged unless the investment that fathers make in their children is vital for the survival of our species.

Secondly, as an anthropologist whose training encompassed the societal structures and practices that are so fundamental to an understanding of our species, I was surprised to learn how little time we had spent placing this key figure under the microscope of our analysis. Ethnography after ethnography focused on the family and the role of the mother, and duly acknowledged the cooperative nature of childrearing, but very rarely was dad the particular subject of observation. How could we truly call ourselves human scientists when there was such a glaring gap in our knowledge of our own species? As a consequence, and driven partly by my own recent parenthood, I embarked on a research programme based around two very broad and open questions: who is the human father, and what is he for?

To understand the role of the father, we must first understand why it evolved in our species of ape and no other. The answer inevitably lies in our unique anatomy and life history. As any parent knows, human babies are startlingly dependent when they are born. This is due to the combination of a narrowed birth canal – the consequence of our bipedality – and our unusually large brains, which are six times larger than they should be for a mammal of our body size.

This has meant that, to ensure the survival of mother and baby and the continued existence of our species, we have evolved to exhibit a shortened gestation period, enabling the head to pass safely through the birth canal. The consequence of this is that our babies are born long before their brains are fully developed. But this reduced investment in the womb has not led to an increased, compensatory period of maternal investment after birth. Rather, the minimum period of lactation necessary for a child to survive is likewise drastically reduced; the age at weaning of an infant child can be as young as three or four months. A stark contrast to the five years evident in the chimp. Why is this the case?

If we, as a species, were to follow the trajectory of the chimpanzee, then our interbirth interval (the time between the birth of one baby and the next) would have been so long; so complex and so energy-hungry is the human brain that it would have led to an inability to replace – let alone increase – our population. So, evolution selected for those members of our species who could wean their babies earlier and return to reproduction, ensuring the survival of their genes and our species. But because the brain had so much development ahead of it, these changes in gestation and lactation lengths led to a whole new life-history stage – childhood – and the evolution of a uniquely human character: the toddler.

Life-history describes the ways in which a species invests its lifetime allotment of energy: the currency of life. How this is distributed – between reproduction, growth and maintenance – will affect aspects of the life course such as gestation and lactation length, age at sexual maturity, litter size and lifespan. In most species, including all primates apart from ourselves, this leads to three distinct life stages: infant, juvenile and adult. Infant is the time from birth to weaning; juvenile is from weaning to sexual maturity; and adult is from sexual maturity to death. But humans exhibit five life stages: infant, child, juvenile, adolescent and adult.

The child stage lasts from the point of weaning to the time of dietary independence. We humans wean our babies from milk comparatively early, before they are able to find and process food for themselves. As a consequence, once weaned, they still need an adult to feed them until they are capable of doing this themselves, at which point they become juveniles.

Dad was incentivised to commit to one female and one family while rejecting matings with other females

So mum births her babies early and gets to invest less time in breastfeeding them. Surely this means an energetic win for her? But since lactation is the defence against further conception, once over, mum would rapidly become pregnant again, investing more precious energy in the next hungry foetus. She would not have the time or energy to commit to finding, processing and feeding her rapidly developing toddler.

At this point, she would need help. When these survival-critical issues first appeared around 800,000 years ago, her female kin would have stepped in. She would have turned to her mother, sister, aunt, grandma and even older daughters to help her. But why not ask dad? Cooperation between individuals of the same sex generally evolves before that between individuals of different sex, even if that opposite-sex individual is dad. This is because keeping track of reciprocity with the other sex is more cognitively taxing than keeping track of it with someone of the same sex. Further, it has to be of sufficient benefit to dad’s genes for him to renounce a life of mating with multiple females, and instead focus exclusively on the offspring of one female. While this critical tipping point had not yet been reached, women fulfilled this crucial role for each other.

But 500,000 years ago, our ancestors’ brains made another massive leap in size, and suddenly relying on female help alone was not enough. This new brain was energetically hungrier than ever before. Babies were born more helpless still, and the food – meat – now required to fuel our brains was even more complicated to catch and process than before. Mum needed to look beyond her female kin for someone else. Someone who was as genetically invested in her child as she was. This was, of course, dad.

Without dad’s input, the threat to the survival of his child, and hence his genetic heritage, was such that, on balance, it made sense to stick around. Dad was incentivised to commit to one female and one family while rejecting those potential matings with other females, where his paternity was less well-assured.

As time ticked on and the complexity of human life increased, another stage of human life-history evolved: the adolescent. This was a period of learning and exploration before the distractions that accompany sexual maturity start to emerge. With this individual, fathers truly came into their own. For there was much to teach an adolescent about the rules of cooperation, the skills of the hunt, the production of tools, and the knowledge of the landscape and its inhabitants. Mothers, still focused on the production of the next child, would be restricted in the amount of hands-on life experience they could give their teenagers, so it was dad who became the teacher.

This still rings true for the fathers whom my colleagues and I research, across the globe, today. In all cultures, regardless of their economic model, fathers teach their children the vital skills to survive in their particular environment. Among the Kipsigis tribe in Kenya, fathers teach their sons about the practical and economic aspects of tea farming. From the age of nine or 10, boys are taken into the fields to learn the necessary practical skills of producing a viable crop, but in addition – and perhaps more vitally – they are allowed to join their fathers at the male-only social events where the deals are made, ensuring that they also have the negotiation skills and the necessary relationships that are vital to success in this tough, marginal habitat.

In contrast, children of the Aka tribe of both sexes join their fathers in the net hunts that take place daily in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Aka men are arguably the most hands-on fathers in the world, spending nearly half their waking time in actual physical contact with their children. This enables them to pass on the complex stalking and catching skills of the net hunt, but also teaches sons about their role as co-parent to any future children.

And even in the West, dads are vital sources of education. In my book The Life of Dad (2018), I argue that fathers approach their role in myriad different ways dependent upon their environment but, when we look closely, all are fulfilling this teaching role. So, while Western dads might not appear to be passing on overtly practical life-skills, they do convey many of the social skills that are necessary to succeed in our competitive, capitalist world. It is still very much the case that the wheels of success in this environment are oiled by the niceties of social interaction – and knowing the rules of these interactions and the best sort of person to have them with gives you a massive head start, even if it is just dad’s knowledge of a good work placement.

Fathers are so critical to the survival of our children and our species that evolution has not left their suitability for the role to chance. Like mothers, fathers have been shaped by evolution to be biologically, psychologically and behaviourally primed to parent. We can no longer say that mothering is instinctive yet fathering is learned.

The hormonal and brain changes seen in new mothers are mirrored in fathers. Irreversible reductions in testosterone and changes in oxytocin levels prepare a man to be a sensitive and responsive father, attuned to his child’s needs and primed to bond – and critically, less motivated by the search for a new mate. As a man’s testosterone drops, the reward of chemical dopamine increases; this means that he receives the most wonderful neurochemical reward of all whenever he interacts with his child. His brain structure alters in those regions critical to parenting. Within the ancient, limbic core of the brain, regions linked to affection, nurturing and threat-detection see increases in grey and white matter. Likewise enhanced by connectivity and the sheer number of neurons are the higher cognitive zones of the neocortex that promote empathy, problem solving and planning.

But crucially, dad has not evolved to be the mirror to mum, a male mother, so to speak. Evolution hates redundancy and will not select for roles that duplicate each other if one type of individual can fulfil the role alone. Rather, dad’s role has evolved to complement mum’s.

This is no more clear than in the neural structure of the brain itself. In her 2012 fMRI study, the Israeli psychologist Shir Atzil explored the similarities and differences in brain activity between mothers and fathers when they viewed videos of their children. She found that both parents appeared similarly wired to understand their child’s emotional and practical needs. For both parents, peaks of activity were seen in the areas of the brain linked to empathy. But beyond this, the differences between the parents were stark.

The mother’s peaks in activity were seen in the limbic area of her brain – the ancient core linked to affection and risk-detection. The father’s peaks were in the neocortex and particularly in areas linked to planning, problem solving and social cognition. This is not to say that there was no activity in the limbic area for dad and the neocortex for mum, but the brain areas where the most activity was recorded were distinctly different, mirroring the different developmental roles that each parent has evolved to adopt. Where a child was brought up by two fathers, rather than a father and a mother, the plasticity of the human brain had ensured that, in the primary caretaking dad, both areas – mum’s and dad’s – showed high levels of activity so that his child still benefited from a fully rounded developmental environment.

Fathers and their children have evolved to carry out a developmentally crucial behaviour with each other: rough-and-tumble play. This is a form of play that we all recognise. It is highly physical with lots of throwing up in the air, jumping about and tickling, accompanied by loud shouts and laughter. It is crucial to the father-child bond and the child’s development for two reasons: first, the exuberant and extreme nature of this behaviour allows dads to build a bond with their children quickly; it is a time-efficient way to get the hits of neurochemicals required for a robust bond, crucial in our time-deprived Western lives where it is still the case that fathers are generally not the primary carer for their children. Second, due to the reciprocal nature of the play and its inherent riskiness, it begins to teach the child about the give and take of relationships, and how to judge and handle risk appropriately; even from a very young age, fathers are teaching their children these crucial life lessons.

And how do we know that dads and kids prefer rough-and-tumble play with each other rather than, say, having a good cuddle? Because hormonal analysis has shown that, when it comes to interacting with each other, fathers and children get their peaks in oxytocin, indicating increased reward, from playing together. The corresponding peak for mothers and babies is when they are being affectionate. So, again, evolution has primed both fathers and children to carry out this developmentally important behaviour together.

We need to discuss the dads who coach football, read bedtime stories and scare away the night-time monsters

Likewise, a father’s attachment to his child has evolved to be crucially different than a mother’s. Attachment describes a psychological state that we enter when we are in an intense, bonded relationship with someone – think of lovers, parents and children, even some best friendships. In all cases, having a strong attachment relationship acts as a secure base from which we can strike out and explore the world, safe in the knowledge we can always return to the focus of our attachment for affection and help. Where parent-child attachment is concerned, the attachment between a mother and her child is best described as exclusive, an inward-looking dyad based on affection and care. In contrast, a father’s attachment to his child has elements of affection and care, but it is based on challenge.

This crucial difference leads a father to turn his children’s faces outward, encouraging them to meet fellow humans, build relationships, and succeed in the world. And it is because of this special type of attachment that studies repeatedly show fathers in particular encouraging their offspring to get the most out of their learning. It is fathers who aid the development of appropriate social behaviour, and build a child’s sense of worth.

Looking back at our pool of knowledge from 10 years ago and comparing it to what we know today, my conclusion is this: we need to change the conversations we have about fathers. Yes, some fathers are absent, as are some mothers, and some might be the inept characters of marketing ads or cartoons, struggling to work the washing machine or to look after the baby alone. But the majority of fathers are not these people. We need to broaden our spectrum of who we think dad is to include all the fathers who stick around, investing in their children’s emotional, physical and intellectual development, regardless of whether they live with their children or not. We need to discuss the dads who coach football, read bedtime stories, locate rogue school socks, and scare away the night-time monsters. Who encourage their children’s mental resilience, and scaffold their entry into our increasingly complex social world. Who are defined not by their genetic relatedness to their children but because they step up and do the job – the stepdads, social dads, grandfathers, friends, uncles and boyfriends.

And by broadening this conversation and sharing our newfound knowledge, we empower fathers to be more involved with their children, something that benefits us all. The sons of today who see dad as an equal to mum in the domestic setting will follow this role model when they themselves become parents. This leads to a change in culture; a move towards equality in domestic work, a sharing of the burden of the parenting tax on career development, something that is overwhelmingly borne by mothers today, and a narrowing of the gender pay gap. Further, a father’s special role in preparing his child to enter the wider world outside the family – shaping emotional and behavioural development, teaching the rules of social behaviour and language, helping to build mental resilience by dealing with risk, confronting challenge and overcoming failure – is arguably more important than ever before, when we are beset by a crisis in adolescent mental health, and live in a world that operates on new social rules, shaped by our digital, online lives.

Men have evolved to father and to be an equal but crucially different part of the parenting team. By not acknowledging who they are or supporting what they do, we are really missing a trick. Some 80 per cent of men aspire to become fathers. I believe it is time we made the effort to get to know who they really are.

Your friend Jorge goes to Eton- the famous school in the UK. Listen to Will Knowland’s lecture there. It is an education you have been deprived of, and was in the plans. I am so sorry you were denied a good education, …it was always in our plans, and was sabotaged.

Zero, (Nada) mammals in nature have males and females as equal in size, stature and role play. And very few mammals have females as the dominating partner. Why is that? is a question very much worth pondering. Perhaps there is a good and necessary reason? Or maybe not.

The angler fish is one rare species where females rule, along with spiders where the females eats the male after having sex.

Brig, Soren and Reidar, ask yourself… “Is this what happens in a Matriarchy? ” Beware the current political narrative. It is dangerous to your health. Love Papa.

Family is the most important institution of human culture. More than million years of evolution. Unfortunately, Feminists have destroyed yours and many others.

Read Ellie article in a woman’s magazine Evie.

Dismantling The Nuclear Family Isn’t The Solution. It’s The Problem

BY ELLIE HOLT·Oct 26th 2020· 9 min read

Feminism claims to fight for the rights and protection of women, and yet the track record of mainstream feminism proves that facts have not had as much of a role in the movement as ideology and demagogy have.

Feminism has fallen into two traps. The first is that it blatantly ignores real human rights issues in favor of entitled, privileged-brand feminism. The second is that feminism undermines the institutions of marriage and the family, institutions that arguably protect the best interests of women and children. 

Modern Feminism Is Anti-Man and Anti-Marriage 

Fourth-wave feminism, building upon earlier works of second and third-wave feminism, seeks to denigrate the nuclear family, the institution of marriage, and the nuclear family as oppressive hindrances to the natural freedom of women. Fourth-wave feminism is but a female-centric exploration of Rousseau’s idea that “man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains,” meaning that women are born free, but have been shackled by patriarchy and internalized misogyny. 

Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, likened the life of a housewife to that of a “comfortable concentration camp.” Kate Millet’s work, Sexual Politics, was one of the first works to describe marriage as explicitly oppressive to women, a continuation of the work done by Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir. Gloria Steinman popularized the quote, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Contemporary feminist writer, Andrea Dworkin famously declared that all [heterosexual] sex was rape due to existing power structures between men and women.

Betty Friedan likened the life of a housewife to that of a “comfortable concentration camp.”

Even in 2020, we see The New York Times regarding, “straight culture, which is the very heart of society’s most disgraceful failures…. [In] The pressure to partner with the opposite gender we find the extortions of capitalism, the misogynistic violence against women.” Many of the feminist critiques of traditional family structures seem to fall in line with Marxist rhetoric that calls to subvert the nuclear family in order to enhance the power and influence of the state.  

Marriage and family are in turn viewed with disdain, as tools of the patriarchy to keep women oppressed, enslaved, and undervalued. The dismantling of the institution of marriage is therefore seen as a route to progress and equality. The concept being that without the social constructs of traditional gender roles, women will finally be free, and therefore happier. The denigration of the family structure is seen as a progressive revolution of sorts. Yet, marriage and family are arguably the very institutions that protect women.

The Consequences of the Decline of Marriage and Family

If we were to dismantle marriage and family, what do we suppose all the single men would do? Dawn pussy hats and march arm in arm at the #MeToo marches? Doubtful. 

Instead, we see men resorting to the exact kinds of male behavior that feminism claims to be against. We see the objectification of women, increased porn addiction, increased violence against women, and less respect for women in general. One need only to peruse the DMs of a woman’s Tinder account to verify such. 

If sexual liberation is so good, why are women less happy today than they were 50 years ago? 

If marriage and family are so bad for women and sexual liberation is so good, why are women less happy today than they were 50 years ago? In effect, these are the results of feminism, not the reason we need more of it. 

Marriage Is Good for Women and Children

While there are numerous factors at play here, I want to specifically focus on attacks on marriage and family, as well as the ultimately harmful impacts they have on women and children. 

In the past 30 years, children born out of wedlock has increased by 28%, in which roughly 40% of all children in the U.S. are born to unmarried parents. Many feminists would tell us this is an evolutionary trend in which women no longer need men and proof that the nuclear, traditional family is increasingly obsolete. 

Contrary to everything feminism tells us, marriage and the family unit are the very social institutions that domesticate men, protect families, raise better men and women, keep families out of poverty, promote good values, and ensure success in future generations. 

Married women are more likely to live longer, to be more satisfied, and to be wealthier.

Women who are married are more likely to live longer, to be more satisfied, to be wealthier, and far less likely to be domestically abused than their single counterparts. Women who are married are the least likely to be victimized by an intimate partner. Women who have never been married are four times more likely to be a victim of violent crime, including rape, assault, or robbery. Children who are abused are most likely to be abused not by parents, but by boyfriends of their mother. The risk of physical abuse increases when a child lives without their father. 

Marriage Is Good for Men and their Children

If marriage is so oppressive why would this be the case? This is because married men tend to be more attentive, more protective, more faithful, and more committed to their significant other than men who aren’t married. According to the Institute for Family Studies, married fathers are much less likely to commit violence than men who aren’t tied by marriage to a woman. Marriage often domesticates men and keeps male behavior in check, an inconvenient fact that feminists hell-bent on dismantling the patriarchy would rather ignore. 

Married fathers are much less likely to commit violence than single men.

This isn’t to say that the burden of domesticating men falls on women, but rather that marriage and family are transformative to men. When a man commits his life to a woman, he and his priorities are fundamentally changed for the better. The University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center tells us that an engaged father in the home provides unparalleled support, supervision, and protection to the home and family. This is because of the reality that when a man holds his child for the first time he’s fundamentally transformed; he sheds his old self and becomes a newer, better man for the sake of this new life in his arms. 

Fatherlessness Harms Children and Society

Children who grow up in one-parent households are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crimes, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to go to prison.  Fatherlessness is one of the most powerful predictors of crime and poverty. Women and children end up suffering the most from fatherlessness and the subsequent increase in violence, poverty, and crime, and as feminists, this should be our primary concern. 

75% of the 25 most cited school shootings were committed by young men from broken homes, which often translates to father absence. Policing isn’t the problem. Gun ownership isn’t the problem. The patriarchy isn’t the problem. Oppression isn’t the problem. Rape culture isn’t the problem. A lack of fathers is the real problem here. 

Feminist rhetoric often debases such claims as disempowering to women, who shouldn’t have to tether themselves to a man for safety, and yet rhetoric is but only rhetoric in the face of real casualties and victims. If we want to protect women and children, our highest concern needs to be promoting marriage and family and two-parent households, not dismantling them. 

75% of the 25 most cited school shootings were committed by young men from broken homes.

This isn’t to demonize single mothers, in fact, most are honestly just trying to do the best they can. But this fatherlessness is an issue that persists when paired with relentless cultural attacks on men and the family unit. The rise of fatherlessness in recent decades results from two primary causes: one is a welfare system that de-incentivizes marriage and keeps the poor poor for decades by separating work and income, and the other is a culture that antagonizes masculinity, marriage, and family as destructive forces meant to keep women barefoot and pregnant. 

If we want to protect women, then we need to protect the family unit. If we want to increase prosperity and diminish urban poverty, then we need to protect the family unit and maintain two-parent households, not subvert them. In fact, James Freeman at The Wall Street Journal writes that if we were to design a system that best promotes the interests of women and children, it would be akin to the two-parent household. Funny how that works. It’s almost as if the nuclear family is proven to be the most important social structure for a successful society. 

The Celebrities Promoting Feminism Aren’t Representative of Most Women’s Experiences

Modern feminism doesn’t equip women with the tools to be successful; moreover, it seeks to denigrate the very systems, institutions, and traditions that protect women. Such calls for the dismantling of the patriarchy and the social institutions that protect women are mere parlor games for privileged women. These are the musings of an idle class who have too much time on their hands. It’s easy for celebrities and wealthy women to have children out of wedlock when they have virtually every resource at their disposal, but not so much for impoverished communities who are kept poor and vulnerable without fathers. When celebrities showcase single motherhood as empowering and progressive, this is a disservice to the majority of women who need fathers the most. 

It’s easy for celebrities to have children out of wedlock when they have every resource at their disposal.

Cosmo-variety feminism doesn’t represent even a fraction of the needs of the majority of women worldwide, who are fighting for a right to vote, to learn to read, to drive a car, to obtain clean drinking water, to not fear being raped. To spend time debating the feminist merits of the song “W.A.P.” rather than bringing attention to the drive-by shootings of women and children in the ghetto is symptomatic of deep privilege, interested more in demagogy than true social justice. https://embed.actionbutton.co/widget/widget-iframe.html?widgetId=SPK-QkZERA==

Closing Thoughts

It, therefore, becomes harder and harder to call oneself a feminist when the logic and loyalties are apparently a sliding scale, looking to shift to whatever the political fad of the day is, rather than stand up for the needs of real women. Such feminist rhetoric is a disservice and an insult to the women and men who have fought bravely for the rights and safety of women, and for the women who still face great injustice outside the bubbles of privilege many feminist talking points inhabit.

Brig , Soren and Reidar-

Do you remember climbing the via Feratta in Dolomites, Bochette Alte? These guys mountain biked it. So cool. Love Papa.

brig, soren and reidar, I wish i could hold you and explain how the world has changed so much in last years. Including your mother- banning ideas, burning me. ideas are not allowed anymore!! it is opposite of any truth seeking.

people are so weak and fragile that that ban ideas that are obviously true.

Be Brave- my young boys.

Read Abigail’s article…

Target stopped selling it in response to two Twitter complaints. A professor even wants to burn it.

By Abigail ShrierNov. 15, 2020 4:31 pm ET

I never thought book banning would be respectable in America, much less that I’d be the target, but here we are. Last Thursday Target stopped selling my book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” in response to two Twitter complaints.

One read: “In 2016, @Target, you released a statement affirming your support for transgender customers. @AskTarget why you’re selling a book notorious for its harmful rhetoric against us. Historically, harmful products have been pulled from this shelf, and this should be, too.”

The other: “I think the transcommunity deserves a response from @AskTarget @Target as to why they’re selling this book about ‘the transgender epidemic sweeping the country.’ ”

That’s a caricature of my view. I think mature adults should have the freedom to undergo medical transition. But teenagers are another matter. Social contagions exist, and teen girls are particularly susceptible to them. The book takes a hard look at whether the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls is yet another social contagion to befall girls who, in another era, might have fallen prey to anorexia or bulimia.

---

Many transgender adults, including some I interviewed for the book, agree that teen girls are undergoing medical transition too fast with too little oversight. Others disagree and have written books. Amid a sea of material unskeptically promoting medical transition for teenage girls, there’s one book that investigates this phenomenon and urges caution. That is the book the activists seek to suppress.

“Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans,” Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted Friday. “I think of all the times & ways I was told my transness wasn’t real & the daily toll it takes. We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.” Then: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”

You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: “I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”

This is where leftist extremism, encouraged by cowardly corporations, leads. The market—that is, readers—should determine what booksellers carry. My book was consistently No. 1 in several categories on Amazon based on sales. But the online giant, under pressure from extremists, refused to allow my publisher to advertise “Irreversible Damage” on the site.

At a time when independent bookstores are nearly extinct, chain bookstores are endangered, and Americans’ movement outside their homes is constrained by a pandemic, a handful of online retailers have outsize influence over the ideas to which we have access. And those ideas are being winnowed in one direction.

Robin DiAngelo’s book, “White Fragility,” which falsely accuses millions of Americans of being inalterably racist, is for sale at Target.com, no matter how many Americans it might offend. It should be. The notion that civil society required a marketplace of ideas was something liberals once believed—especially those who worked at the ACLU, or taught at Berkeley.

In response to media attention and customer complaints, Target reversed itself; my book is again for sale. But other books will be quietly suppressed. In an America where the left has achieved dominance of cultural institutions and adopted a tyrannical opposition to other ideas, where social media extends its reach, and where books are distributed by a handful of retailers—a book burning doesn’t even require a populist uprising. It takes only one online extremist or two to make a book disappear. And when that happens, don’t look to the ACLU to defend you.

Ms. Shrier is author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”

Sailing technology is so cool, you can go over 100 km/h with a wind that is only 15 km/hr. Amazing.

This is the face of fraud, I show you the fraud data in other posts. 134 Felonies for Fraud. Brig, Soren and Reidar, you are surrounded by Fraud… it is all around you, right in your home. #liesdestroylives love Papa

You can watch a short documentary here.

Brig, Soren and Reidar- You would think this is a joke but it is no longer even funny. For most feminists and social justice warriors this statement, 2+2 does not equal 4. It is no longer true- it is subjective. I have mention James Lindsay before. You should follow his work. Love Papa.