Retail giant Target has removed a book from its assortment after a single tweet complaint, alleging the book contained transphobic content, leading to massive outrage on social media over the company’s compliance to PC culture.
In a now hidden Thursday tweet, an anonymous user complained about Target selling the book ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,’ by Abigail Shrier. The tweet demanded to know why the chain was selling the book and said the trans community “deserves a response” from the company.
“Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention,” Target’s customer service account responded, “We have removed this book from our assortment.”
Just like that, Shrier’s book – which delves into the potential dangers of teen girls undergoing irreversible procedures and treatments – was gone from the online store.
The retail giant’s quick and extreme response prompted a wave of backlash online, with even the author herself chiming in. “Does it bother anyone that Woke activists and spineless corporations now determine what Americans are allowed to read?” Shrier tweeted about the incident.
The response from the general public was similar, with commenters wondering how a “random Twitter user” could make a major company “bend to the mob” so easily.
Many others decried Target’s decision to delist the book as an anti-free-speech act of “censorship,” with quite a few even vowing to boycott Target.
Some argued, however, that despite the optics, it was merely a free-market decision made by a multi-billion-dollar company, free to decide which products to sell and which to drop.
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