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Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Jan 9

I’ve been reporting a story for a major outlet about a group that’s desperate to draw attention to a particular cause in hopes that the Biden admin will attend to it by Jan 20. But all but one of the advocates refused to speak to me because of my trans reporting. They prioritized blacklisting me—and not being associated with me—over their cause. I question their priorities and who they think they’re helping vs hurting by giving me the silent treatment.

This is a very common phenomenon when I’m covering public health stories that overlap with activism and advocacy work. Not one of these people has ever confronted me directly to tell me why they have a problem with my reporting or what they want me to do differently. It’s all passive aggression. I wind up hearing confirmation of why they won’t speak to me through the grapevine.

For one story I did, I was providing very rare major national coverage of a group’s pet public health cause. Because they were all on the same listserv, they were able to coordinate to all refuse to talk to me—scores of them. Two of them broke ranks and talked to me off the record. One of them explained to me that even if any of them wanted to talk to me and didn’t have a problem with my trans reporting or didn’t think their qualms should override their desire to get press for their cause, if they went against the group, they’d be excommunicated from it. In other words, maintaining ideological purity in public takes priority in these dynamics. This is also known as groupthink.

Read 7 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Jan 9

In its response to Meta’s new polities GLAAD claims that the word “homosexuality” is an “outdated and a pathologizing way of referring to LGBTQ people.”

Several things:
1. No it is not.
2. How in the world did GLAAD come up with this ridiculous notion?
3. Homosexuality refers to the state of being gay, not to being transgender or queer, or even to being bisexual. Please stop conflating the letters of LGBTQ when it makes no sense to do so.
4. What exactly are we expected to say when we refer to the state of being gay, @GLAAD?

We need nouns to get through life, people. The world would fall apart without them.

Are they confusing “homosexuality” with “homosexual”? That would make more sense. Even so, is “homosexual” pejorative or just sort of dusty?

Read 8 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Jan 6

NEWS: 1 in 1,000 Privately Insured 17-Year-Olds Were Taking Cross-Sex Hormones Prior to State Bans
I report, link in 🧵👇: The authors of a new study analyzing 2018 to 2022 insurance claims data characterized such prescriptions as rare and said this rarity undermined arguments for bans of these interventions.

LINK: 1 in 1,000 Privately Insured 17-Year-Olds Were Taking Cross-Sex Hormones Prior to State Bans

The authors of a new study analyzing 2018 to 2022 insurance claims data characterized such prescriptions as rare and said this rarity undermined arguments for bans of these interventions.benryan.substack.com/p/1-in-1000-pr…

🧵By age 17, about 1 in 1,000 privately insured minors were receiving gender-transition hormones between 2018 and 2022. This broke down to about 140 per 100,000 natal girls taking testosterone and 82 per 100,000 natal boys taking estrogen by this final year before teens hit the age of majority.
benryan.substack.com/p/1-in-1000-pr…
Compared with cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers were prescribed to adolescents with a transgender-related diagnosis at a much lower overall rate during this five-year period.

The authors of a new study reaching these findings characterized the prescription of gender-transition medications to adolescents under age 18—at an overall rate below 0.1%—as rare. Seeking to leverage their findings to score an advocacy win for the besieged field of pediatric gender medicine, they have argued that this rarity undermines arguments supporting state bans of such interventions for minors.

Read 19 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Dec 29, 2024

ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine

🧵⬇️I report: The 4th highest paid staffer, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.

LINK: ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine
benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
The 4th highest paid staffer at over $500,000 per year, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.

The ACLU’s fourth highest paid staffer, who is at the center of a National Labor Relations Board case against the legal nonprofit that it lost in August, made a series of false or misleading claims about pediatric gender medicine in a recent interview.

@AJ_Hikes, who identifies as nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns and describes themselves in their ACLU bio as “a social justice advocate, community organizer, TED Talk Speaker, and unapologetically queer and Black,” holds a powerful position at the liberal legal juggernaut as the deputy executive director for strategy and culture.
benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…

Read 12 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Dec 28, 2024

More reporting from @JesseSingal on the case of the young detransitioner who is suing top pediatric gender medicine doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Singal zeroes in on the therapy (or lack thereof) provided by another defendant in the lawsuit.

What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like

When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behind.

LINK:

What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like

When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behindjessesingal.substack.com/p/what-the-det…

Detransitioner Sues Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a Top Pediatric Gender Medicine Doctor, For Medical Negligence

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the most prominent doctor yet to be sued by a detransitioner—for medical negligence after overseeing a mentally ill girl's gender-transition starting at 12 and mastectomy at 14.benryan.substack.com/p/detransition…

Read 5 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Dec 26, 2024

In response to a WaPo article in which an Italian child travels to Spain to obtain puberty blockers and does so on the first appointment following a single online consultation, journalist Evan Urquhart claims there “still hasn’t been a single reported example of a minor getting blockers or hormones without a lengthy assessment.”

Evan is ignoring Jesse Singal’s Economist article from earlier this month about Clementine Breen getting blockers after a single appointment with Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

And he is forgetting my reporting that since 2018, it has been Boston Children’s policy to provide only a single two-hour assessment appointment with a psychologist to determine whether a minor should get blockers or hormones.

economist.com/united-states/…

nysun.com/article/shocki…

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