Amazon yanks bestselling book about transgender issues from online store without explanation

Amazon has pulled from its online store a bestselling book making a conservative argument on transgender issues.

Ryan T. Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of "When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement," tweeted  Sunday that his book yanked without explanation from Amazon's bookstore. 

Big Tech censorship of conservative opinions and newsmakers has become a central focus of the past several months as companies including Facebook, Amazon and Twitter have deleted and removed a slew of accounts and services that cater to conservative voices. 

Anderson, whose book sat atop Amazon's list of natural law and LGBT issues books when it was released in 2018, said he has not received an explanation from the online giant about this book's removal. 

"It’s not about how you say it, it’s not about how rigorously you argue it, it’s not about how charitably you present it. It’s about whether you dissent from a new orthodoxy," Anderson told the Washington Free Beacon. 

According to expert estimates, Amazon controls somewhere between 50%-80% of all book sales, and something in the ball park of 75% of online book sales. Losing distribution on the platform is therefore a terrifying potential hindrance to both authors and publishing companies. 

This is not the first time Amazon has restricted the sales of a conservative author writing about transgender issues.

In June 2020, the platform refused to run a series of ads showcasing the cover of Abigail Shrier's latest book, "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters." 

Similarly, Target briefly removed copies of Shrier's book from its shelves in November. At the time, Amazon claimed that it refrains from promoting materials that "claims to diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation." Identifying as transgender is not a sexual orientation.