It is hard for me to read through all these impressive efforts and know how they couldn't pierce through this wall of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" moral cowardice that has allowed -- indeed continues to allow -- so much damage to be done to so many lives.
I am afraid I just feel demoralized as I read all these "receipts," despite the shift that the seemingly increased number of exposés and clips of desperate displays of lunatic arguments by GAC's boosters flooding my various social media accounts. . . So if reading this stuff makes me want to go escape with a glass of wine and a fantasy novel . . . what's it like for someone just trying to get along with her own busy and full life as yet untouched by this stuff?
So, I worry this medical scandal is just too icky and close to home for so many that it will be more quickly and thoroughly memory-holed -- with no lessons learned and no one held accountable -- than all of the other scandals of the recent past combined.
Sorry folks. Having a bad day -- one of those "trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries" frames of mind, I guess.
Thanks, Lisa and all the rest of you ordinary heroes out there who've lent your time and talents attempting to "trouble" the "deaf."
I hear you, Heather. Reading all these receipts also brings up mixed feelings for me. It reminds me of all the hours and hours I have spent of my life trying to get through to liberals, both friends and media outlets. Hours I'm not supporting myself financially or doing wonderful and fun things. I have had some success, but so much failure. It reminds me of my own unanswered letters I have labored over. But it also reminds me that I am not alone! I also read some that I hadn't read before from Lisa Simone, who worked at NPR herself. Her pieces made me feel a bit better because they are so good! These people have been schooled. They know we are here. Even if they have not published us or responded to us, I do believe these heroic efforts from everyday TERFs have made a difference! And will continue to do so.
I can understand your reaction, but mine was different: I think, “hooray, there are so many smart women and men screaming from the same hymnal now!”
They can’t ignore ALL of us, and the lawsuits, and the laws in 27+ states, and the transgender mass murders, and the men in women’s prisons, and the boys abusing girls in locker rooms and toilets, and the boys winning sports competitions, and the medically-enabled self-harm of young people, and and and.
Feels like September or October 1989 to me (before the Berlin Wall was torn down in November, for those too young to remember.
tell me any legitimate medical treatment that-- to address a psychological condition -- impairs healthy bodies, impedes sexual function, induces sterility, and raises risks of heart disease and cancer. There is none. Ever.
Castration cults feature historically as part of various ultra-religious movements.
Mythical Amazons cut off one breast to be better warriors.
No medical treatment EVER set out to maim children the way GAC does.
There is No Comparison whatsoever to gay or lesbian rights, which is all about accepting the natural development of the person.
Try it. You might find yourself better adjusted. Try to love yourself now, as you are, without medication or surgeries. Love your body.
well, we can add to this a history of medical madness & medical errors. Cliterodectomy, for example, was inflicted on women who were diagnosed with hysteria or also hyper-sexuality. This happened in 19th & through the mid 20th C.
Lobotomies are a well known medical error that for a time enjoined high prestige.
So, it's not that harming people in the name of healing them never happened, it's just that we recognize, over and over, that harming to heal is an error.
First do no harm.
a simple lesson we humans have to learn again and again.
You're hilariously misinformed. Almost all legitimate medical treatments for psychological conditions have your listed side effects. SSRIs cause sexual dysfunction. Lithium causes weight gain, kidney disease, and birth defects. Antipsychotics increase the risk of nearly every disease.
ECT causes memory loss and heart problems. Hysterectomy and oophorectomy, prescribed for PMDD, induce sterility.
All of these, except maybe the last, are done in children.
Accepting physical side effects to address psychological conditions isn't remotely controversial.
Some gender-affirming interventions improve your listed outcomes. Mastectomies eliminate risk of breast cancer and improve physical function. After I got mine, due to BRCA1, I was finally able run and jump in comfort. Others are mixed. Estrogen increases risk of breast cancer while decreasing risk of prostate cancer.
I'm a cisgender woman. Had I decided to just love myself, I would have a high risk of developing cancer in the next few years, so I got a preventative mastectomy. Not everyone in my position makes the same choice, and that's okay. All actions have adverse effects, including inaction. We all have to decide what risks are worth it for us, and none of us need input from ignorant strangers. Things are no different for trans people.
thanks for your comment. Maybe consider seriously the "risk - benefit" analyses performed already along with the systematic reviews of the scientific literature.
Sure, there are trade-offs in medical treatments. For example, cold medicine makes people sleepy. Chemo-therapy makes people nauseous. Or, your experience in which preventative mastectomies provided benefits that outweigh the risks.
Treatments in which the harms and risks outweigh the purported benefits are not bona fide medical interventions but are more like physician assisted self-harm.
This will be my last comment on this post because this is Lisa's Substack, not a course in the history of medicine or medical ethics.
Mastectomy, breast augmentation, and HRT are safe enough that the risk to benefit ratio is acceptable for anyone who wants them, in my opinion. I extend this to cisgender people too.
Let's stop pretending that GAC is valid for adults with neurodevelopmental and psychological vulnerabilities. As Dr. McHugh observed so many years ago at Johns Hopkins when shutting down these interventions, these patients were not getting better. Please stop
This is a great compendium. You've come up with a truly inspired series here, showing how many thoughtful, articulate people have tried their best to get the attention of journalists. It's a tremendous stain on the entire journalism establishment that these perspectives have been and continue to be ignored.
Perhaps, at a certain point, one must stop seeking evening wear made from a sow's ear and shop for a silk purse somewhere other than a pig sty filled with pigs?
The following data is presented as commentary on the NYT . . . but perhaps it's just another indicator that the market for straight reporting has shrunk and the market for "infotainment" is dominant. If I'm honest, I find it more and more difficult to stay focused long enough to finish reading a 1500 word articles these days. Perhaps we'll find that the cognitive damage from too much time consuming social-media crafted information may have affected just as many adults as it has children.
Anyway, this is how Grok explains the chart in the above X post:
The chart illustrates a 65% decline in New York Times news-only subscribers from mid-2022 to late 2025, dropping to 1.5 million, while bundle and multi-product subscribers surged 228% to 10.8 million, driving total digital growth to 1.4 million net adds in 2025 per company earnings.
Bundles, including games like Wordle and lifestyle content, now account for 91% of digital subscribers, with average revenue per user at $12.92 in Q4 2025—nearly matching news-only at $13.33—enabling NYT to maintain revenue despite shrinking pure news audiences.
This pivot reflects a broader media trend of escaping ad-dependent news models for diversified bundles, as seen in accelerating subscription growth from 6.5 percentage points between 2023 and 2025, prioritizing user retention over traditional journalism metrics.
Those of us old enough still remember the arguments about gay rights.
- "homosexuality is caused by trauma"
- "look at all the gay serial killers!"
- "vulnerable children are being brainwashed into homosexuality. they're coming for your kids!"
- "marriage is about reproduction, it's just biology"
- "lesbians are a threat to women in bathrooms and locker rooms"
- and all the prominent "ex-gays" on conservative media insisting they've been cured... only to recant years later, as we're already seeing "detrans" activists do
oh, I must have missed it, when did gay men insist on castration? penile inversion?
when did doctors induce menopause in teen-age lesbians? Was that part of accepting homosexuals?
The difference here is between those who love & accept themselves and those who hate their own bodies (for whatever reasons) and decide therefore to do all sorts of elaborate attacks on their bodies. Facilitating that is not loving.
Wow, what a compendium!
Thanks for linking to my receipts, Lisa. I forgot to do it at Cogitemus. Will do today and link to yours.
It is hard for me to read through all these impressive efforts and know how they couldn't pierce through this wall of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" moral cowardice that has allowed -- indeed continues to allow -- so much damage to be done to so many lives.
I am afraid I just feel demoralized as I read all these "receipts," despite the shift that the seemingly increased number of exposés and clips of desperate displays of lunatic arguments by GAC's boosters flooding my various social media accounts. . . So if reading this stuff makes me want to go escape with a glass of wine and a fantasy novel . . . what's it like for someone just trying to get along with her own busy and full life as yet untouched by this stuff?
So, I worry this medical scandal is just too icky and close to home for so many that it will be more quickly and thoroughly memory-holed -- with no lessons learned and no one held accountable -- than all of the other scandals of the recent past combined.
Sorry folks. Having a bad day -- one of those "trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries" frames of mind, I guess.
Thanks, Lisa and all the rest of you ordinary heroes out there who've lent your time and talents attempting to "trouble" the "deaf."
I hear you, Heather. Reading all these receipts also brings up mixed feelings for me. It reminds me of all the hours and hours I have spent of my life trying to get through to liberals, both friends and media outlets. Hours I'm not supporting myself financially or doing wonderful and fun things. I have had some success, but so much failure. It reminds me of my own unanswered letters I have labored over. But it also reminds me that I am not alone! I also read some that I hadn't read before from Lisa Simone, who worked at NPR herself. Her pieces made me feel a bit better because they are so good! These people have been schooled. They know we are here. Even if they have not published us or responded to us, I do believe these heroic efforts from everyday TERFs have made a difference! And will continue to do so.
It is hard to read them. And I often feel hopeless.
But it can be a reminder of our incredible progress too. Five years ago this - a group of us sharing receipts online - would have been unimaginable.
Ditto for the $2 million detrans lawsuit. And the statements by the plastic surgeons and the AMA.
We have pushed hard to get this far. Our numbers are growing. We must keep pushing.
I can understand your reaction, but mine was different: I think, “hooray, there are so many smart women and men screaming from the same hymnal now!”
They can’t ignore ALL of us, and the lawsuits, and the laws in 27+ states, and the transgender mass murders, and the men in women’s prisons, and the boys abusing girls in locker rooms and toilets, and the boys winning sports competitions, and the medically-enabled self-harm of young people, and and and.
Feels like September or October 1989 to me (before the Berlin Wall was torn down in November, for those too young to remember.
Homophobic activists in the 90s sounded much like you do now. But history moves on, with or without you.
tell me any legitimate medical treatment that-- to address a psychological condition -- impairs healthy bodies, impedes sexual function, induces sterility, and raises risks of heart disease and cancer. There is none. Ever.
Castration cults feature historically as part of various ultra-religious movements.
Mythical Amazons cut off one breast to be better warriors.
No medical treatment EVER set out to maim children the way GAC does.
There is No Comparison whatsoever to gay or lesbian rights, which is all about accepting the natural development of the person.
Try it. You might find yourself better adjusted. Try to love yourself now, as you are, without medication or surgeries. Love your body.
well, we can add to this a history of medical madness & medical errors. Cliterodectomy, for example, was inflicted on women who were diagnosed with hysteria or also hyper-sexuality. This happened in 19th & through the mid 20th C.
Lobotomies are a well known medical error that for a time enjoined high prestige.
So, it's not that harming people in the name of healing them never happened, it's just that we recognize, over and over, that harming to heal is an error.
First do no harm.
a simple lesson we humans have to learn again and again.
All medical procedures both heal and harm. Your position is incoherent.
You're hilariously misinformed. Almost all legitimate medical treatments for psychological conditions have your listed side effects. SSRIs cause sexual dysfunction. Lithium causes weight gain, kidney disease, and birth defects. Antipsychotics increase the risk of nearly every disease.
ECT causes memory loss and heart problems. Hysterectomy and oophorectomy, prescribed for PMDD, induce sterility.
All of these, except maybe the last, are done in children.
Accepting physical side effects to address psychological conditions isn't remotely controversial.
Some gender-affirming interventions improve your listed outcomes. Mastectomies eliminate risk of breast cancer and improve physical function. After I got mine, due to BRCA1, I was finally able run and jump in comfort. Others are mixed. Estrogen increases risk of breast cancer while decreasing risk of prostate cancer.
I'm a cisgender woman. Had I decided to just love myself, I would have a high risk of developing cancer in the next few years, so I got a preventative mastectomy. Not everyone in my position makes the same choice, and that's okay. All actions have adverse effects, including inaction. We all have to decide what risks are worth it for us, and none of us need input from ignorant strangers. Things are no different for trans people.
thanks for your comment. Maybe consider seriously the "risk - benefit" analyses performed already along with the systematic reviews of the scientific literature.
Sure, there are trade-offs in medical treatments. For example, cold medicine makes people sleepy. Chemo-therapy makes people nauseous. Or, your experience in which preventative mastectomies provided benefits that outweigh the risks.
Treatments in which the harms and risks outweigh the purported benefits are not bona fide medical interventions but are more like physician assisted self-harm.
This will be my last comment on this post because this is Lisa's Substack, not a course in the history of medicine or medical ethics.
Mastectomy, breast augmentation, and HRT are safe enough that the risk to benefit ratio is acceptable for anyone who wants them, in my opinion. I extend this to cisgender people too.
Amazons never cut off their breasts, that was made up by Greek writers.
as I wrote, "mythical" Amazons. Thanks.
Let's stop pretending that GAC is valid for adults with neurodevelopmental and psychological vulnerabilities. As Dr. McHugh observed so many years ago at Johns Hopkins when shutting down these interventions, these patients were not getting better. Please stop
This is a great compendium. You've come up with a truly inspired series here, showing how many thoughtful, articulate people have tried their best to get the attention of journalists. It's a tremendous stain on the entire journalism establishment that these perspectives have been and continue to be ignored.
It's good for perspectives based on ignorance, paternalism, and instinctual disgust towards weird people to be ignored.
Here's the article that got me banned from Medium:
https://growsomelabia.substack.com/p/is-it-even-possible-for-dave-chappelle
For those who care, here's what wrote about my Medium experience:
https://www.growsomelabia.com/post/bye-bye-medium-com
Perhaps, at a certain point, one must stop seeking evening wear made from a sow's ear and shop for a silk purse somewhere other than a pig sty filled with pigs?
The following data is presented as commentary on the NYT . . . but perhaps it's just another indicator that the market for straight reporting has shrunk and the market for "infotainment" is dominant. If I'm honest, I find it more and more difficult to stay focused long enough to finish reading a 1500 word articles these days. Perhaps we'll find that the cognitive damage from too much time consuming social-media crafted information may have affected just as many adults as it has children.
https://x.com/fiscal_ai/status/2025284427073691862
Anyway, this is how Grok explains the chart in the above X post:
The chart illustrates a 65% decline in New York Times news-only subscribers from mid-2022 to late 2025, dropping to 1.5 million, while bundle and multi-product subscribers surged 228% to 10.8 million, driving total digital growth to 1.4 million net adds in 2025 per company earnings.
Bundles, including games like Wordle and lifestyle content, now account for 91% of digital subscribers, with average revenue per user at $12.92 in Q4 2025—nearly matching news-only at $13.33—enabling NYT to maintain revenue despite shrinking pure news audiences.
This pivot reflects a broader media trend of escaping ad-dependent news models for diversified bundles, as seen in accelerating subscription growth from 6.5 percentage points between 2023 and 2025, prioritizing user retention over traditional journalism metrics.
Those of us old enough still remember the arguments about gay rights.
- "homosexuality is caused by trauma"
- "look at all the gay serial killers!"
- "vulnerable children are being brainwashed into homosexuality. they're coming for your kids!"
- "marriage is about reproduction, it's just biology"
- "lesbians are a threat to women in bathrooms and locker rooms"
- and all the prominent "ex-gays" on conservative media insisting they've been cured... only to recant years later, as we're already seeing "detrans" activists do
Funny to watch history repeat itself.
oh, I must have missed it, when did gay men insist on castration? penile inversion?
when did doctors induce menopause in teen-age lesbians? Was that part of accepting homosexuals?
The difference here is between those who love & accept themselves and those who hate their own bodies (for whatever reasons) and decide therefore to do all sorts of elaborate attacks on their bodies. Facilitating that is not loving.
Journalists do not write in the First person ?
Why is everything just opinions now & no straight unbiased news .
Just the facts, not the writers personal assumptions .
Every pundent on sub stack thinks they are an authority ?