
February 3, 2025
Jeff Bezos now says he wants “a relentless investigative spirit, backed by credible sources.” Lifting his company’s ban on Anderson will show he’s serious.
(Washington, DC): Four years ago this month, Amazon banned the sale of EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, an accurate and accessible presentation of the scientific, medical, philosophical, and legal debates surrounding the trans phenomenon.
The book had been on sale for three years and had hit No.1 on two Amazon book lists, but Amazon suddenly banned it shortly after Joe Biden took office. Amazon justified its decision by claiming the book presents “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” But the Washington Post—another Bezos company—had long before been forced to drop these claims about the book.
Despite challenges from several U.S. senators and the National Coalition Against Censorship, and coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Amazon refused to provide evidence for its ban. Senator Tom Cotton pointed out that “My office asked Amazon to send us the exact passages from When Harry Became Sally that it deemed so hateful that it couldn’t even sell the book on its website. Shocking surprise, I know, they never got back to us.”
“Since Amazon banned my book, there have been no developments in science or medicine that contradict my conclusions—on the contrary, all the developments have supported my central theses” says Ryan T. Anderson. “Jeff Bezos was happy to attend President Trump’s inauguration where the President rightly declared that there are only two sexes. I haven’t heard him object to that, or to the President’s executive orders on the issue. It’s time for Amazon to acknowledge its mistake and reinstate my book.”
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Media Inquiries:
Hunter Estes
Director of Communications
Ethics and Public Policy Center
[email protected]
References
- Ryan T. Anderson: “Amazon Won’t Let You Read My Book,” Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2021: “I contacted the Post asking them to quote a single sentence from the book supporting their contention that I had called transgender people mentally ill. They couldn’t, because it doesn’t exist. Within a day, the newspaper had entirely rewritten the story, removing the falsehoods and changing the headline.”
- Ryan T. Anderson: “When Amazon Erased My Book,” First Things, February 23, 2021
- Wall Street Journal: “Read the Letter Amazon Sent to Republican Senators Over Its Book Policy,” March 11, 2021: “As to your specific question about When Harry Became Sally, we have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
- Washington Post: “Ryan Anderson’s book on transgender people is creating an uproar,” February 2, 2018, which notes that the article “has been updated to reflect comments from Ryan Anderson.”
- Matt Franck: How WaPo dropped its claims against Ryan Anderson.
- Senator Tom Cotton: “Cotton Speaks on Amazon Book Ban,” March 9, 2021.
- National Coalition Against Censorship: “Statement on Amazon’s Removal of When Harry Became Sally,” March 4, 2021.
- Nathanael Blake: “The Woke Fever Broke, So Why Is Bezos Still Banning Ryan Anderson’s Book On Transgenderism?” The Federalist, January 31, 2025.
- New York Times: “The Washington Post’s New Mission: Reach ‘All of America,’” January 16, 2025: “A slide deck Ms. Watford presented to executives this week explained the origins of The Post’s new mission statement in greater detail. ‘Storytelling,’ the deck says, should ‘bring a relentless investigative spirit, backed by credible sources, to deliver impactful stories in formats the world wants.’”