There is a good chance the average American has not heard of Ryan Anderson.
And Amazon apparently wants to keep it that way.
Anderson is a graduate of Princeton and holds a doctorate from Notre Dame. He was once a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he wrote about marriage, bioethics, and religious liberty.
He has made personal appearances on or written for numerous major media outlets. He is now president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a 45-year-old think tank that argues for applying Judeo-Christian principles to policy debates.
He is also the author of five books, including one that was a bestseller on Amazon.
Until Sunday.
On Sunday afternoon, Anderson tweeted, “I hope you’ve already bought your copy, cause Amazon just removed my book ‘When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment’ from their cyber shelves…. my other four books are still available (for now).”
“The book had been both an Amazon and Washington Post best-seller,” he added. “While you can’t buy the book on Amazon, you can still get it (for now?) at Barnes and Noble. Given the aggressive push on trans policies coming from the Biden admin, now is a great time to read it. Buy it before you no longer can.”
When one Twitter user asked if Amazon gave a reason, Anderson replied, “None. No notification to me. I found out when someone trying to buy it noted it was gone.”
And as of late Sunday night, besides not finding it on Amazon itself, someone who clicked on the link to the book at the website of either the EPPC, the Heritage Foundation, or The Washington Post, where it is shown to be the No. 3 best-selling nonfiction book for Aug. 11, 2019, would be taken to a webpage with a message that the page for Anderson’s book could not be found, but including an invitation to “meet the dogs of Amazon.”
Now, a cynic might look at Anderson’s thread and see a subtle – or perhaps not so subtle – pitch to sell books.
But the book at issue was first published in February 2018. It’s not like it’s hot off the press unless, in recent weeks, it’s gained renewed interest because of the current political climate.
On Heritage’s website, Anderson’s bio page notes that “When Harry Became Sally” tackles the “most pressing and contested questions within the transgender debate: ‘Can a boy be ‘trapped’ in a girl’s body? Can modern medicine ‘reassign’ sex? Is our sex ‘assigned’ to us in the first place? What is the most loving response to a person experiencing a conflicted sense of gender? What should our law say on matters of ‘gender identity’?’”
Don’t look to Amazon to find Anderson’s answers because, at least for now, he’s been canceled.
Check out the ‘Cancel Corner‘, a new section launched where we report on the latest Cancel Cases and stories from around the globe.