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Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
@thrasherxy
Apr 14, 2023 • 18 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
Benjamin Ryan is a bad repoter, a bad writer and seems like a bad person and I encourage no one to cooperate with him on this, or any, story. Yesterday, there were horrific anti-trans stories in Wyoming, Nebraska and Missouri. Fuck the NYT & Ben Ryan for seeking “misgivings.”
I don’t like to bring up my day job bc it causes headaches but I’ll do so here bc it’s so important: as the holder of the 1st journalism professorship to focus on LGBTQ issues, much of Ben’s work—and this piece specifically—is dangerous to the wellness of LGBTQ people.
I have a big piece in edits now in Scientific American about this matter, which shows how bad this type of “journalism” is. The Times & Ryan have no business shaking the trees to elevate some doctor, somewhere who is opposed to scientific consensus abt the benefit of transcare.
It’s like the NYT looking for a physicist who doesn’t believe in gravity or a oceanographer who doesn’t believe in climate change. Such cranks or bigots ain’t news, and the Times should be ashamed of elevating lone voices out of step w medical and scientific consensus.
It is always mediocre, know nothing white dudes (Singal, Chait, Ryan) who NY mag and the NYT are like “Yes, YES, that’s the person! That’s the voice we NEED! No MD? No MPH? No PhD? Hated by and not a part of the community he’s writing about? But he’s white? Commission HIM!!!”
Same guy. And he even stole that from someone else, I believe. (He was noticed by several of us before that for his bad, dishonestly framed reporting prior to that…if I remember right he seemed to steal that joke to try to get attention, which is all he wants.)
A very Times-speak form or grotesque “reasoning.” I would say ignore this troll. But he’s too dangerous. He’s in the stable of big commissions and when the Times or NY mag or Guardian or whoever commission him, they put a LIBERAL stamp of approval on transphobia…
…much as the fucking Biden administration put a big liberal stamp of approval on transphobia amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/04/06…
Benjamin Ryan is a bad repoter of HIV/AIDS, Covid, queer history, and transcare. He is not the “enfant terrible” “only person who will speak to power” crusading journalist he wants anyone to think he is.
He’s just a bad reporter, but one who gets commissioned bc of editors who are homophobic, transphobic and ableist.
I’m so sorry to hear this, @lareinamalvada. It is amazing men this sexist work in profiles and settings most of us never could—and it tracks to his history (cc @sarahschulman3)
Also, for all its evil, like most things, there is something to be learned in Ryan's email. It's a good insight into what I forbid my students to do - trying to "reverse engineer" a story.
Don't go looking to find sources that will support the story you've already decided to tell. Or fish purposefully for a contrarian "character." LISTEN. STUDY. And as you see patterns, let the story find you. Don't just say "Can I find one physicist who will say gravity's bunk?"
I’ve been alerted Ben Ryan says I know nothing about him.

1. He interviewed me for a story! BADLY! And wrote a bad story w all kinds of dishonest moves along the way!

2. I read! He’s a bad writer!

3. I know more ppl than I can count who’ve had bad expeinces w his reporting!
4. I know many people who have been hurt by his reporting and framing!

5. He trolls trans ppl online!

6. Even if I knew more about him than this email, that would be enough to see what piss poor, reverse engineer style “journalism” he practices!
7. A reporter shoudn’t be the center of a news story! Trans ppl are under attack! The TWENTIETH (!!!!!!) state just banned trans kids from school sports! Ppl CANNOT GET medical care in Florida, TN, Texas, Missouri…and this hack is whining? About HIS fate??? GTFOH!
8. The lack of reporting by the Times on Missouri BANNING TRANSCARE FOR EVERYONE is OBSCENE! That Ben Ryan is out here looking for an MD, any MD, who is *happy* abt this bc they are uncomfortable w providing transcare which saves lives shows that Ryan has poor news judgment!
I am sorry this happened to you Prof. Galloway but I am not, unfortunately, surprised. These dudes just roll through anyone and everyone.

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More from @thrasherxy

Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Nov 29, 2024
For people who think I am close-minded and unbending: I have done a 180° on assisted suicide, and I changed my mind by reading and thinking with disabled scholars and activists
I actually do think people should be able to end their lives if they wish, with compassion and as little pain and stigma as possible. (My biological mother took her life in a gruesome, violent way.) And I think almost everything should be decriminalized. Unfortunately…
the PUSH for assisted suicide is not rooted in reducing stigma or compassion, nor is it rooted in getting folks what they need to address the root causes of their suicidal desire (housing, poverty, proper mental and physical healthcare)…
Read 14 tweets
Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Nov 12, 2024
This is *still*’ interesting. When Oprah was the host of the Oprah Winfrey Show and endorsed Obama, the candidate did not pay for the show—Oprah (Harpo Productions) did. When Oprah endorsed Harris, the candidate paid for the show. An important power shift in media.
Of course Oprah, a billionaire, could have paid her staff as her quite legal contribution to the cause. Instead she let, perhaps, Black women earning minimum wage who wanted to see Harris elected and gave their meagre earnings to the campaign pay for it instead.
What’s most interesting to me as a media scholar: @JonnyDiamond added a line to my @lithub column about the Winfrey endorsement that it was “basically a recreation of the Oprah Winfrey Show”—and now Oprah is literally admitting that! lithub.com/in-american-em…
Read 10 tweets
Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Nov 12, 2024
If you accept the truth that under Obama/Biden/Harris, more people

— were deported
— died of Covid
— were killed in genocide and wars w US weapons & $

then there is no need to panic about Trump/Miller/RFK. Hold onto your folks, your values & your work. Stay the course. Calm!
Panic, in general, helps no one. It keeps you from breathing right, it keeps you from seeing clearly. Lots of folx have been working hard to get vaccines (Covid/flu/mpox) out as Biden dismantled Covid vax infrastructure. Work & learn w us, we’ve been at it for yrs now
An asset we may have: millions who passively accepted Obama deportations, Biden vax delivery destruction & Biden/Harris genocide might now be angry abt Trump doing these things. WELCOME THEM GRACIOUSLY WITH OPEN ARMS! ALL HANDS ON DECK!
Read 6 tweets
Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Oct 14, 2024
1/4 I filed for tenure today, as has been planned for years. It has been too much pressure being investigated while also filing for tenure (a huge moment in any scholar's life in the best of circumstances), so imagonnatakeaminute to sit with what I have accomplished. I WROTE 47 journalism articles New York Times, New York, Guardian, Lit Hub, Scientific American, Atlantic, Slate, Rolling Stone 4 academic articles + 3 academic book chapters Contexts, Souls, Harvard Law Sympoisum, Imagining Queer Methodsm, Contemporary Literary Criticism 2 books The Viral Underclass (病毒 下层社会 疾病与不平等 在美国的碰撞) The Overseer Class AS I COVERED 3 PANDEMICS (SARS/MPX/HIV)
2/4 I TAUGHT In 5 years, I TAUGHT Eight different classes (six I designed from scratch) Sex and the American Empire Viruses and Viral Media Reading & Reporting L.G.B.T.Q. Health AIDS History Theater of Protest Listening to the Dead (Ungraduate Feature Writing) Graduate Feature Writing Introduction to Journalism AS I COVERED 3 PANDEMICS (SARS/MPX/HIV)
I SERVED by In 5 years, I SERVED by Helping start the new NU media PhD committee Helping hire ISGMH’s new associate director Advising Bernie Sanders on health/HIV policy Serving on ad hoc Covid committees Helping develop safer sex Covid & MPX guidelines Doing an MPX (monkeypox) campus teach in Setting up MPX vaccine clinics Setting up mutual aid for our migrant neighbors Becoming a phlebotomist & doing HIV outreach Reviewing about 20 book manuscripts Protecting students from the police Overseeing student summer research Writing visa letters for foreign LGBTQ journalists Organizing support for trans ...
Read 4 tweets
Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Sep 18, 2024
Class time: Let's use the Overton Window to discuss how pagers-as-booby-traps is really bad for humanity, and how journalists are already failing at this basic test of ethics and morality.
The Overton Window was developed to address what topics can be debated, or not, in news media. (It is named for political scientist Joseph Overton, who was not an egomaniac; his colleague Joseph Lehman named it for him after his death.) A graph shpowing how ideas pass through the overtown window
For instance, in my lifetime and career, gay rights have gone from being too taboo to write about in almost any mainstream media; now, being explicitly anti-gay isn't much allowed in mainstream media (though, notably, being explicitly anti-transgender IS still on the window).
Read 21 tweets
Dr. Thrasher Profile picture
Sep 16, 2024
BOOM! I am back in the saddle for the fall as a regular @lithub columnist with an exclusive essay on "False Profits: Why I Am Not Teaching in the Classroom This Fall" lithub.com/false-profits-…
(It’s not often I get to quote my divas @pocojump, Blanche Devereux and Zora Neale Hurston all in one piece) L LIT HUB have none. But, as my friend Kia says, a person like that cannot make a person like you feel shame. And while I still hold the Renberg Chair, I want to quote two gay icons in this matter: Zora Neale Hurston ("If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it") and Blanche Devereaux, when she bought condoms with Rose and Dorothy: "We're not embarrassed, we're not uncomfortable, we are not humiliated. We're gonna walk outta here today with our heads held high, secure in the knowledge that what we have done is morally and socially responsible.&...
I wrap up the essay mediating on 2 quotes from MLK's final speech: "Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right." I know Dean Whittaker has read the work of one of America’s great philosophers of love, Martin Luther King: he hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning King: A Life biographer (and Medill alum) Jonathan Eig just a few months ago. So as I apply for tenure this fall, as planned, while being kept out of the classroom, and as I am praying for the safety of student protesters on my campus and across the country, I am keeping in mind these powerful words MLK said in his final public speech, the night before he was killed in Memphis: Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the free...
Read 5 tweets

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