Abigail Shrier is a Paper Tiger

The conservative opinion writer can smoothly present misinformation on trans youth, but falls apart under questioning by informed audience members.

by Evan Urquhart

Protesters gather outside of Minor Hall prior to Shrier’s appearance, photo by Assigned Media

Is it vitally important to the education of young people to hear from former Wall Street Journal opinion columnists dubiously presenting themselves as reporters? The Jefferson Council, a University of Virginia alumni group focused on culture war issues, says yes, bringing Abigail Shrier to UVA’s Minor Hall last night, October 11, in the name of free speech (that they agree with). 

The bravery of conservatives under threat to their free speech featured heavily in the introductions of Shrier, who was protested outside the hall by a substantial but well-behaved group of students who at times chanted, in call-and-response fashion, “Abigail Shrier is–” “A LIAR!” Inside the hall, attendees were warned of consequences for any disruptive outbursts, and Shrier at one point claimed students might have registered under fake names to clog the registration and prevent people from attending. However the event was modestly well-attended and everyone behaved appropriately.

Shrier represented herself as a journalist whose goal was to inform, and those introducing her even called her an “investigative journalist.” This was the first time the truth was bent, as Shrier is a conservative opinion writer who has never worked as a reporter, much less engaged in any investigative journalism. This resume can help explain why Shrier seemed ill-informed about some of the basics on her topic, which came particularly well into focus during the audience Q&A portion.

Shrier started out by describing how she became interested in the subject of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, the fringe hypothesis that large numbers of girls are falsely identifying as trans boys and seeking unnecessary medical treatments. After being contacted by the mother of a young person who believed her child was identifying as trans due to a social contagion, Shrier claimed to have discovered that for over 100 years, “it was known that transgender identity overwhelmingly begins in early childhood, and overwhelmingly affects males. Now, it overwhelmingly affects females.”

This is not the case. The best estimate of how common trans identification is in U. S. youth comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (a public health survey given to every high school student in certain states, allowing for a large sample size in the neighborhood of 100,000 youth each year it’s given). That data shows that trans identification is more common for transfeminine (or male-assigned) youth than transmasculine (or female-assigned) young people. (The Youth Risk Behavior Survey data also contradicts another of Shrier’s claims, that trans identity is primarily a white middle class phenomenon.)

screenshot from Turban et al, 2022

Shrier’s misunderstanding likely comes from the fact that the much smaller group of youth who are evaluated formally by gender clinics seems to have a pronounced gender skew, with female-assigned youth being much more likely to have contact with a gender clinic. Because parents and doctors decide which youth are referred to gender clinics, social factors impacting parents and doctors are most likely more relevant to this gender skew than factors solely operating among young people.

Shrier’s misrepresentations did not stop there. She claimed that parents she spoke to who initially agreed to use a different name and pronoun for their trans sons in the hopes they would grow out of their trans identification inevitably wound up with a child who sought medical transition. “It would be a runaway train,” Shrier said, strongly warning parents of the dangers of affirming a trans child. 

While the non-affirming parents Shrier personally spoke to may have had such experiences, the data tell a very different story. According to a Reuters investigation that provides the best estimates thus far for how many young people in the U. S. have received treatment for gender dysphoria in recent years, about 14.5 percent of those listed as receiving a diagnosis of gender dysphoria were also treated with puberty blockers or cross sex hormones. Of course this small percentage doesn’t include any children whose parents may have supported them in trying out a new name, clothing, and/or pronouns but who never went on to receive a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

screenshot from Slate

Reports of runaway trains, therefore, seem greatly exaggerated. 

Shrier’s advice to parents, which she walked back significantly during the audience Q&A segment, was for parents to refuse to use a different name or pronouns for their children and specifically for parents to tell trans boys “You’ll always be my daughter.” She also complained that conversion therapy bans make it impossible for good therapists to treat youth in these circumstances. Shrier blamed “ideologues” in education, medicine, and psychotherapy for convincing girls that they were boys, and falsely claimed that there was no evidence to support the idea that affirming a child reduces suicidality. (Multiple studies have provided evidence supporting this.)

Shrier’s overall presentation gave her the appearance of a person who is moderate, tempered, empathetic, and an unbiased reporter. While she repeatedly misrepresented the evidence surrounding her subject, there was little about her presentation that could have clued in a naive audience member to the fact that she is a conservative opinion writer with no reporting background and a shallow base of knowledge for her subject.

However, in the audience Q&A segment, this smooth facade was substantially disrupted. A majority of questions came from well-informed supporters of the trans community, many of whom showed signs of having done research into the actual social science data. Under their questioning, Shrier admitted she had no direct knowledge of students attempting to flood the registration for her event, changed her answer on whether medical treatment for gender dysphoria was profit-motivated, was unable to respond adequately to scientific criticisms of the research methods of the ROGD research, and equivocated on the research around trans youth and suicide. Shrier also offered and then immediately retracted an offer to be interviewed by the Cavalier, the student newspaper, and walked back her earlier statements on whether parents ought to affirm a child’s identity, saying under questioning from the audience that it depended on the situation.

Shrier’s knowledge of her topic does not seem impressive, even by the standards for conservative opinion writers, and she is not particularly nimble under direct questioning by informed interlocutors. While she claimed in her remarks to want informed debate, discussion, and an honest exchange of ideas with people who disagreed with her, her ideas did not stand up well to half an hour of smart questions from skeptical UVA students.