Very simply, that post has been up for almost 3 years. I have never asked them to take it down in that time. I have not complained about it to them or previously threatened legal action. I have not made any move to try and make them take it down until now.

At this point, there is considerable bullshit that I'm having to deal with from this post. I am actively trying to do better in regards to some of the criticisms that she had a few years ago, and to publish research officially. I earlier published something this year, and I have two publications that are about to come out.

At this point I have reached out to multiple medical institutions, and often, when I do this, I receive a link to this post in return. These people tell me that they are unwilling to work with me because of this post. I'm called a quack, or other names, and people make assumptions about me as a researcher simply because of this post.

I am routinely harassed online about this post by random people.

I am trying actively to respond to some of their criticism here, but the post itself is literally acting as a hindrance to me doing better in my career and attempting to try and publish more legitimate and peer-reviewed research.

What is the benefit of it at this point? If I try and do better, and I am punished for doing so, why should I not just continue to behave as I did years ago?

I repeatedly went to them politely about this and explained the situation and how the post itself was causing more harm than good. What's not shown here are Facebook messages or other direct messages between me and them besides this formal email chain where I politely ask them to stop and work with me on this.

I was repeatedly told more or less to fuck off or ignored or blocked.

Now, as a result, here I am, attempting to do better, attempting to publish research, attempting me to work with major institutions, and this post acts as a complete impediment to my ability to do that. This post would be posted on things completely unrelated to my medical career. It showed up on comments for my world record cats on news articles and elsewhere. It is the fourth thing that comes up when you Google my name.

At this point, it is not beneficial in any way. I am well aware of the criticism of a PowerPoint presentation that I gave to a bunch of medical students that was never supposed to be posted online in the first place. I did not ask for this to be posted online, I did not ask for the criticism from them, it wasn't something that I even had control over.

So I kindly asked them to remove the post so that I could actually work on the things that I'm criticized in the post about, and do better about them because the post acted as a continual impediment to that process.

They refused to do so.

The post contained considerable information that was not actually factually true anymore or was never factually true in the first place. This makes it legally libel.

Subsequently, I used this as a means to have it removed. I asked politely, I tried to explain to them how the post was a considerable impediment to advancing my career and responding to the criticisms that I had received from them, and they basically just enjoyed it being up for their own entertainment value. I did not want to have to go about it like this. I first reached out to them about this months ago. I was extremely patient as they did not reply to me, or replied in such a way as to be extremely dismissive of my request.

So no, I'm not ashamed of the fact that I asked them formally to take it down, nor of the fact that I ended up employing legal methods to do it. I never had a problem with the post in the first place when it wasn't causing me absolute chaos in my personal life and my career and my desire to actually do better as a physician with research. I had a problem when it started to cause those issues, and they were unwilling to work with me on it.

To be clear, I really like this website, and previously about a year ago, I even offered to donate to helping their hosting costs. They produce a tremendous amount of really good quality information, and honestly, aggregate a lot of resources in terms of transgender research which I use myself as I try and develop techniques. I even told them about the fact that I like their website. I did not ask this to be removed because I wanted to scrub some criticism of myself online, I asked for it to be removed because it literally was preventing me from doing better.

So everyone is most welcome to do their barbara striesand effect thing and laugh about this, But this is not me petulantly demanding some criticism about me online being taken down. I let this post about me exist for years without doing anything about it. Clearly I've never really cared much about people talking shit about what I do online as that's been permitted here on this very subreddit for years.

What I care about is being able to continue my research, and do so officially, and with peer review, and actually respond to the criticism I've been given. And so to that, this story very simply acted as a complete impediment to me making progress in that way and thus it had to go.

If people cannot understand this concept, then they are more than welcome to laugh and mock as much as they wish, but what I am trying to do here is help this community. I am trying to help these people, I'm trying to improve the state of transgender medicine in this country and in the world. I am trying to do so in official means now with published research. Soon, a research article about transgender fertility restoration will come out with my name on it, and it will be the very first publication ever on the process of how to restore the fertility of transgender people who have already started hormones.

Many of the people here that are reading this Post are very different from the people they were a few years ago. Some of you have different names, some of you look differently, many of you have changed in many ways. People evolve and change over time, and sometimes, they do so with the intent of improving themselves. Holding their past mistakes against them, or treating them as if they are the same person they used to be seems rather unfair when they're making such a solid effort to be something else. I would think that people here would understand that.

I would like to continue to be able to do things to formally improve the care that transgender people get in this country. I do not want to blocked from playing with the other kids simply because previously, I didn't do things the way that people wanted me to do them.

So comment on this thread as you wish, do what you want, but I tried every means possible to do this peaceably with them so that I could improve this situation and rectify this problem, and they were utterly unwilling to do anything about it. they could not see the bigger picture here, and well if you can't either, I respect that, but I have bigger goals here than caring what somebody says on a subreddit about me. What I care about is whether or not institutions will work with me for research, and this was the primary reason why I did what I did.