I understand deeply what you are feeling to your core, perhaps a deflated core, when you say 5 years into this darkness and it’s getting…Hard.
I am only 3 years in exactly. And in my deep, dark despair, obsessive research and attempts to help friends see the light, I am repeatedly disappointed and flummoxed that NOTHING seems to break through to them. No lawsuit, no testimony by children harmed for life, no amount of men beating on women in the Olympics, no amount of corruption revealed among the self proclaimed experts on sex denying reality (WPATH), no heart wrenching abuse by government on parents, no hideous man posing as a woman exposed for corruption in scientific research within HHS under Biden, no amount or corruption among the Biden administration, no amount of drag queens in schools, no amount of queer theory in childrens books, no amount or corruption exposed in teachers union regarding social transition and secrets from parents, no amount of high school girls stepping off the podium when a boy takes their medal, not even incidents of violence by boys who identify as girls, against girls in the girl bathroom at school, not even requests for litter boxes for furies in the classroom, no amount of fantastic research and writing like your own….will wake people UP. NOTHING. They refuse to be curious and take it seriously. They ask me when Iwill stop. I share in your feelings. I fear this is unstoppable. At the very least, if thwarted by big T (and so many democrats in his administration working to stop the harm) the true believing billionaires and activists with just evolve. They will change the language and form new non profits to do their bidding.
Thank you, Lisa. What you do matters no matter what.
Yes to all this: "People I’d been taught to fear or look down on—they’ve shown me such grace. People I’d been taught to see as morally superior by way of their politics: not so much. Looking up from the darkness and then surrounding myself with people who deny the darkness exists—it’s a daily jolt of pain. Five years after descending into the rabbit hole full-time I’m finding it very, very hard."
It's so hard!! What happens when your tribe is taken over by a cult and you're one of the few to be unable or unwilling to play along? History must be full of this, but apart from The Stepford Wives I can't find many narratives from a woman's perspective. It's not as simple as switching sides, more like a maze. Hard to keep your bearings when so much feels nonsensical. Thankfully writers like you and others here help keep the light alive. Looking forward to more in the new year. Cheers to hope!🥂
I've been in the rabbit hole for two decades now, courtesy a transed middle age brother whose frank mental illness and history of trauma – not porn addiction, not fetishism, not internalized homophobia – made him an easy target for online chat groups where he was convinced he was a lesbian. (This was pre-social media.) His real mental illness (I have three clinical opinions from non-captured specialists) remains untreated. He became so destabilized and unpredictable I had to cease all contact over a decade ago. His grown children remain enmeshed.
I'm unsurprised at the seeming glacial pace of fellow liberals to come to cognitive reckoning with this disaster. When I entered the rabbit hole, no one in my area was speaking up, let alone pushing back. The issue was still invisible. Each dissenter, encountered online, was a revelation. After 2014 (the inaugural year of trans celebrities) and in concert with UK self-ID battles, the voices of dissent grew steadily into a community. We all know what happened afterwards, most of it trudging steadily towards the good. Protecting children has rightly become an urgent priority and high-profile issue. All of this is reason to hope, deservedly so.
I'm here to reiterate a warning from long-time travelers of the rabbit hole, though. It's this: there is no logical, practical, or ethical calculation for exempting minors from Trans Inc. while pretending that the same clinical fictions can apply at will to adults. There is no humanely defensible pathway for "aging into" a psychiatric or medical treatment model for gender transition – because it's a psychiatric and medical misadventure. From Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfeld through John Money, Harry Benjamin, Robert Stoller, and HBIGDA-WPATH, children and adults have been actively harmed in a breathtakingly non-evidentiary way. The closest historical comparison would be the transorbital lobotomy.
I understand. This doesn't make for great brunch convo. A natural human response to such a scope of abuse would be nausea. Or denial. Or rationalization. It's too much darkness to take in all at once. But this is where reason and ethics, all by themselves, lead us – no religious filters, no political gloss, no illiberal constraints on how adults should live their lives. The core of this darkness is the inability of medical and psychiatric transitioning to alleviate suffering or "fix" broken psyches or social systems. Instead, it deepens suffering and prolongs the brokenness of social systems (rigid sex-based roles and prohibitions, homophobia, denialism around mental illness).
This is where we are. I've long been a believer that sunlight really is the best disinfectant – thank you to my mentors over in the UK for that aphorism. But the darkness here isn't surface smog. It's deep, it's existential, and it has long precedent. My best advice: rest when you can and keep your lamps lit. We still have a ways to go.
Wow, this is a wild story. I get your point about adults. I just don't know what the difference is between that kind of cosmetic intervention and putting horns in your skull. Do we ban all body modification? Do you think it's any different?
This is going to be a very dry, very clinical answer.
If a procedure involves unnecessary trauma to otherwise healthy tissue with high risk of complication and need of aftercare, we’re already pushing the boundaries of medical ethics.
We’ve decided that a delineated list of cosmetic procedures have an acceptable risk profile and scope of application. But beyond a certain line, those procedures cease to be either cosmetic or medical in any rational sense. Obvious example: elective rib removal (not illegal in the U.S. but very controversial). By those measures, extreme body mods have no ethical place in the practice of medicine.
Trans pharmacology and surgical procedures traumatize otherwise healthy tissue and challenge organ function by definition, with even higher risks of complication and open-ended need of aftercare (including surgical revisions). We now know the evidence of necessity is very poor quality and rates of symptom remediation are low. So, no, it's not that different in ethics – only in scale of risk.
Thank you for your tenacity and great work over the years. Seems to me that you and Brandon have more in common in a core way than you have with the exercise ladies or that he has with some people on his "side." Like you, he continually pushes back on his own tribe. Like you do in this piece, he graciously gives credit where credit is due to people (feminists) he disagrees with in important ways. It isn't just that you are working together on exposing harm on this issue. You both show that there is hope for journalism that comes from a place of deep caring as well as light-shining, truth-seeking. Can't help thinking of the scene in Religulous in which Bill Maher has been hanging out in a trailer with conservative Christians. They truly connect. At the end of their time together, Maher, an avowed atheist tells them, "thank you for being Christ-like." May the light return.
Thank you, Elizabeth. My tribe, as it were, often makes me very angry. I notice it more and more as the days pass. For all they get right, when they bully people in God's name? I find it often depends on a few factors, but there is no wound like that one. I can't stand it. Sure, it's true that some secular press caricatures and stereotypes of conservative-leaning Christians are deeply unfair and untrue, if not flat-out cartoonish. And...it's also true that some religious people are simply dreadful. Fraught, huh? What to do about it? I legit don't know.
I know--I have followed your work over the years, as I have Lisa's. It is excruciatingly painful and crazy-making to be in a space of seeing that people with whom we are supposed to be on the same page are horrible and also incurious. It is truly almost intolerable--we are wired to be in community, linked in fellowship with others. Which is why you can't stand it! It takes a real toll on all who find themselves in this boat--which (sadly) isn't many people. It's very hard to make sense of. I don't know the answer either. Could be that there isn't an answer, or that part of the answer is the connection made between people like you and Lisa who have important and fundamentally different worldviews and beliefs, but who come from the same loving and truthful place in other ways. Just living with that contradiction and resonance and letting it be, trusting the process, or for you, trusting God. You both care deeply about people being hurt and strive to do the important work of good journalists, even speaking truth to power against your own people when you see it laid bare. I appreciate that you keep being true to yourself and your north star. ❤️
Your writing is a balm for this hurting soul. Thank you, and thanks too for suggesting (and discounting) some gift subscriptions to Broadview—great idea. I’m on it!
I tend to make mental notes, sometimes jotting in a journal, of all the slights I have encountered by my blue bubble friends, some now former friends. There seems no way to reach them. If other verifiably liberal friends are nodding along to their young adult daughters chopping off their breasts, calling their daughters, sons--then what's my problem?
Dear Lisa: Thank you, thank you, thank you for all you do to let in the light, and for your inspiration and encouragement to all of us, so beautifully expressed in this year-end essay.
Enjoy your well-earned family time. Here’s to a New Year filled with light.🙏❤️🙏
Thank you from another lefty and middle aged mom of a trans identified daughter. Here's to finding that that light, and all the humor and beauty and consciousness that accompanies it.
And for what is perhaps my favorite Christmas gift - a mug that reads "Nuanced AF". Wish I could get one for all of us.
Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate your point of view. I sure hope things continue to turn around. This morning thinking about the situation we Dems are in, “pride goeth before a fall” comes to mind. Of course this applies to many different situations but it’s a reminder that we all need to have the good sense and flexibility to back down off a position when we’re proven wrong.
I can’t help wondering if being in that community is bad for your wellbeing. Like you, I was raised in a hippie, left wing environment. Unlike you, I’m questioning *all* of it—even areas like environmentalism that also seem to be riven with fake statistics, hyperbole, and bad policies.
I have removed myself from daily interactions with most doctrinaire types, and I’m actively working to develop friendships on the other side of the aisle. I guess I’m trying to exit the blue bubble as much as possible. Impossible to do completely, given my family and longtime friends, of course.
As the mother of a trans-identified child who struggles every day, thank you for your courage, because it gives me hope. Love your work, pray for light for you in the coming year.
Girlfriend, just remember we're getting what we want. Some of these people will *never* be convinced they're wrong and it's pointless to even try. We just need to have enough support on our side to put an end to this mutilation madness. I don't like the Trump administration for an awful lot but so far his admin has been spot-on here, and he's doing what I hoped he'd do in January when I was like, "F--k, here we go!"
Kamala Harris wouldn't have done anything. She wouldn't have ruined the economy, either, but ya takes the good with the bad. Too bad Americans don't ask for any better than what they get.
I understand deeply what you are feeling to your core, perhaps a deflated core, when you say 5 years into this darkness and it’s getting…Hard.
I am only 3 years in exactly. And in my deep, dark despair, obsessive research and attempts to help friends see the light, I am repeatedly disappointed and flummoxed that NOTHING seems to break through to them. No lawsuit, no testimony by children harmed for life, no amount of men beating on women in the Olympics, no amount of corruption revealed among the self proclaimed experts on sex denying reality (WPATH), no heart wrenching abuse by government on parents, no hideous man posing as a woman exposed for corruption in scientific research within HHS under Biden, no amount or corruption among the Biden administration, no amount of drag queens in schools, no amount of queer theory in childrens books, no amount or corruption exposed in teachers union regarding social transition and secrets from parents, no amount of high school girls stepping off the podium when a boy takes their medal, not even incidents of violence by boys who identify as girls, against girls in the girl bathroom at school, not even requests for litter boxes for furies in the classroom, no amount of fantastic research and writing like your own….will wake people UP. NOTHING. They refuse to be curious and take it seriously. They ask me when Iwill stop. I share in your feelings. I fear this is unstoppable. At the very least, if thwarted by big T (and so many democrats in his administration working to stop the harm) the true believing billionaires and activists with just evolve. They will change the language and form new non profits to do their bidding.
Thank you, Lisa. What you do matters no matter what.
Yes to all this: "People I’d been taught to fear or look down on—they’ve shown me such grace. People I’d been taught to see as morally superior by way of their politics: not so much. Looking up from the darkness and then surrounding myself with people who deny the darkness exists—it’s a daily jolt of pain. Five years after descending into the rabbit hole full-time I’m finding it very, very hard."
It's so hard!! What happens when your tribe is taken over by a cult and you're one of the few to be unable or unwilling to play along? History must be full of this, but apart from The Stepford Wives I can't find many narratives from a woman's perspective. It's not as simple as switching sides, more like a maze. Hard to keep your bearings when so much feels nonsensical. Thankfully writers like you and others here help keep the light alive. Looking forward to more in the new year. Cheers to hope!🥂
So well-described. It's like a maze in the M.C. Escher sense, but three-dimensional.
This is a beautiful post, Lisa. Thank you. I’m so grateful to you for toiling away in the darkness. May 2026 bring more light to all.
Thanks Lisa. For everything.
Thank you for listening.
I've been in the rabbit hole for two decades now, courtesy a transed middle age brother whose frank mental illness and history of trauma – not porn addiction, not fetishism, not internalized homophobia – made him an easy target for online chat groups where he was convinced he was a lesbian. (This was pre-social media.) His real mental illness (I have three clinical opinions from non-captured specialists) remains untreated. He became so destabilized and unpredictable I had to cease all contact over a decade ago. His grown children remain enmeshed.
I'm unsurprised at the seeming glacial pace of fellow liberals to come to cognitive reckoning with this disaster. When I entered the rabbit hole, no one in my area was speaking up, let alone pushing back. The issue was still invisible. Each dissenter, encountered online, was a revelation. After 2014 (the inaugural year of trans celebrities) and in concert with UK self-ID battles, the voices of dissent grew steadily into a community. We all know what happened afterwards, most of it trudging steadily towards the good. Protecting children has rightly become an urgent priority and high-profile issue. All of this is reason to hope, deservedly so.
I'm here to reiterate a warning from long-time travelers of the rabbit hole, though. It's this: there is no logical, practical, or ethical calculation for exempting minors from Trans Inc. while pretending that the same clinical fictions can apply at will to adults. There is no humanely defensible pathway for "aging into" a psychiatric or medical treatment model for gender transition – because it's a psychiatric and medical misadventure. From Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfeld through John Money, Harry Benjamin, Robert Stoller, and HBIGDA-WPATH, children and adults have been actively harmed in a breathtakingly non-evidentiary way. The closest historical comparison would be the transorbital lobotomy.
I understand. This doesn't make for great brunch convo. A natural human response to such a scope of abuse would be nausea. Or denial. Or rationalization. It's too much darkness to take in all at once. But this is where reason and ethics, all by themselves, lead us – no religious filters, no political gloss, no illiberal constraints on how adults should live their lives. The core of this darkness is the inability of medical and psychiatric transitioning to alleviate suffering or "fix" broken psyches or social systems. Instead, it deepens suffering and prolongs the brokenness of social systems (rigid sex-based roles and prohibitions, homophobia, denialism around mental illness).
This is where we are. I've long been a believer that sunlight really is the best disinfectant – thank you to my mentors over in the UK for that aphorism. But the darkness here isn't surface smog. It's deep, it's existential, and it has long precedent. My best advice: rest when you can and keep your lamps lit. We still have a ways to go.
Wow, this is a wild story. I get your point about adults. I just don't know what the difference is between that kind of cosmetic intervention and putting horns in your skull. Do we ban all body modification? Do you think it's any different?
This is going to be a very dry, very clinical answer.
If a procedure involves unnecessary trauma to otherwise healthy tissue with high risk of complication and need of aftercare, we’re already pushing the boundaries of medical ethics.
We’ve decided that a delineated list of cosmetic procedures have an acceptable risk profile and scope of application. But beyond a certain line, those procedures cease to be either cosmetic or medical in any rational sense. Obvious example: elective rib removal (not illegal in the U.S. but very controversial). By those measures, extreme body mods have no ethical place in the practice of medicine.
Trans pharmacology and surgical procedures traumatize otherwise healthy tissue and challenge organ function by definition, with even higher risks of complication and open-ended need of aftercare (including surgical revisions). We now know the evidence of necessity is very poor quality and rates of symptom remediation are low. So, no, it's not that different in ethics – only in scale of risk.
Thank you for your tenacity and great work over the years. Seems to me that you and Brandon have more in common in a core way than you have with the exercise ladies or that he has with some people on his "side." Like you, he continually pushes back on his own tribe. Like you do in this piece, he graciously gives credit where credit is due to people (feminists) he disagrees with in important ways. It isn't just that you are working together on exposing harm on this issue. You both show that there is hope for journalism that comes from a place of deep caring as well as light-shining, truth-seeking. Can't help thinking of the scene in Religulous in which Bill Maher has been hanging out in a trailer with conservative Christians. They truly connect. At the end of their time together, Maher, an avowed atheist tells them, "thank you for being Christ-like." May the light return.
Thank you, Elizabeth. My tribe, as it were, often makes me very angry. I notice it more and more as the days pass. For all they get right, when they bully people in God's name? I find it often depends on a few factors, but there is no wound like that one. I can't stand it. Sure, it's true that some secular press caricatures and stereotypes of conservative-leaning Christians are deeply unfair and untrue, if not flat-out cartoonish. And...it's also true that some religious people are simply dreadful. Fraught, huh? What to do about it? I legit don't know.
I know--I have followed your work over the years, as I have Lisa's. It is excruciatingly painful and crazy-making to be in a space of seeing that people with whom we are supposed to be on the same page are horrible and also incurious. It is truly almost intolerable--we are wired to be in community, linked in fellowship with others. Which is why you can't stand it! It takes a real toll on all who find themselves in this boat--which (sadly) isn't many people. It's very hard to make sense of. I don't know the answer either. Could be that there isn't an answer, or that part of the answer is the connection made between people like you and Lisa who have important and fundamentally different worldviews and beliefs, but who come from the same loving and truthful place in other ways. Just living with that contradiction and resonance and letting it be, trusting the process, or for you, trusting God. You both care deeply about people being hurt and strive to do the important work of good journalists, even speaking truth to power against your own people when you see it laid bare. I appreciate that you keep being true to yourself and your north star. ❤️
"It takes a real toll on all who find themselves in this boat--which (sadly) isn't many people."
Ayup. The struggle is real and painful. I feel it almost daily.
Your writing is a balm for this hurting soul. Thank you, and thanks too for suggesting (and discounting) some gift subscriptions to Broadview—great idea. I’m on it!
Wishing you sweet time with family.
Thank you, Lisa for shining the light.
I tend to make mental notes, sometimes jotting in a journal, of all the slights I have encountered by my blue bubble friends, some now former friends. There seems no way to reach them. If other verifiably liberal friends are nodding along to their young adult daughters chopping off their breasts, calling their daughters, sons--then what's my problem?
(I must be from the wrong side.)
I am thankful for your work.
Make mine a double Middle-aged Lady!
Dear Lisa: Thank you, thank you, thank you for all you do to let in the light, and for your inspiration and encouragement to all of us, so beautifully expressed in this year-end essay.
Enjoy your well-earned family time. Here’s to a New Year filled with light.🙏❤️🙏
Thank you from another lefty and middle aged mom of a trans identified daughter. Here's to finding that that light, and all the humor and beauty and consciousness that accompanies it.
And for what is perhaps my favorite Christmas gift - a mug that reads "Nuanced AF". Wish I could get one for all of us.
Pretty sure you can find that motto on merch from Meghan Daum!
Indeed, you can! https://theunspeakeasy.com/nuance-store/p/nuanced-af-15-oz-mug
I want that mug!👏👏👏
https://theunspeakeasy.com/nuance-store/p/nuanced-af-15-oz-mug
Love, love, love this! Thank you.
Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate your point of view. I sure hope things continue to turn around. This morning thinking about the situation we Dems are in, “pride goeth before a fall” comes to mind. Of course this applies to many different situations but it’s a reminder that we all need to have the good sense and flexibility to back down off a position when we’re proven wrong.
Thank you for everything you do.
I can’t help wondering if being in that community is bad for your wellbeing. Like you, I was raised in a hippie, left wing environment. Unlike you, I’m questioning *all* of it—even areas like environmentalism that also seem to be riven with fake statistics, hyperbole, and bad policies.
I have removed myself from daily interactions with most doctrinaire types, and I’m actively working to develop friendships on the other side of the aisle. I guess I’m trying to exit the blue bubble as much as possible. Impossible to do completely, given my family and longtime friends, of course.
Here’s hoping you find your way through.
Thanks for heading into the darkness before me.
As the mother of a trans-identified child who struggles every day, thank you for your courage, because it gives me hope. Love your work, pray for light for you in the coming year.
Girlfriend, just remember we're getting what we want. Some of these people will *never* be convinced they're wrong and it's pointless to even try. We just need to have enough support on our side to put an end to this mutilation madness. I don't like the Trump administration for an awful lot but so far his admin has been spot-on here, and he's doing what I hoped he'd do in January when I was like, "F--k, here we go!"
Kamala Harris wouldn't have done anything. She wouldn't have ruined the economy, either, but ya takes the good with the bad. Too bad Americans don't ask for any better than what they get.
I like your screen name!
Dear Lisa - thank you for being a much needed light for me over the past 5 years. This essay is beautiful, and what I needed to read today.
Aw, thank you.