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More from @benryanwriter

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Oct 31

The Growing Divide in the Rainbow Coalition

More gay people are speaking out against the gender ideology of trans and queer activists, by Pamela Paul for @WSJ.

Gift link: wsj.com/us-news/the-gr…

As a “very, very effeminate boy” growing up in Baltimore, Ben Appel @benappel was teased mercilessly. At school, where he was regularly bullied, the other kids called him “Bengay.”

“It was awful,” Appel, now 42 and married to another man, recalled. “I realized I wasn’t going to survive, so I made it my full-time job to defeminize myself as a form of self-protection.” In his 20s, Appel lobbied for gay marriage, and in 2017 he interned at @Glaad, an LGBTQ advocacy group, determined to fight on behalf of kids like him.

But when Appel later enrolled at @Columbia University, eager to learn about the theories behind his activism, the rhetoric he encountered felt more like dogma than inquiry. “According to queer theory, if you’re a man who behaves in ‘unmasculine’ ways or wears eyeliner you must be a woman inside, which I thought was regressive,” Appel, who graduated in 2020, recalled. “Saying that those superficial attributes are what make women women, and that any variation on the rough he-man stereotype means you’re not a man, reinforces these rigid sex roles, and I thought we were supposed to be against those.”

In his book “Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic,” which comes out next week, Appel argues that gender ideology is “illiberal, regressive and anti-gay”—as much a cult as Lambs of God, the fundamentalist sect in which Appel was raised—and one that he and an increasingly vocal group of gay men, lesbians and bisexual people reject.

Read 11 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Oct 24

Update: The Texas doctor sued by Ken Paxton for allegedly prescribing gender-transition drugs to minors after the state’s ban went into effect has surrendered her medical license. She had written the prescriptions under the diagnosis “endocrine disorder not otherwise specified.”

From Oct 2024: open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

This is Ken Paxton’s press release about the case:

texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/…

Read 6 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Oct 20

NEWS: Trans and nonbinary identities are indeed in free-fall in college age Americans.

Prof. Jean Twenge @jean_twenge found new survey data that supports @epkaufm's much disputed claim from last week.

Twenge also found data indicating that trans identity increased exponentially by birth year until those born after about 2002. These identities have plummeted in those born more recently—who are now 20 to 23 years old.

The problem with Kaufman's data is it didn't distinguish between trans and nonbinary identities. The data that Twenge found does.

The decline in such identities in younger Americans raises important questions about the future of the field of pediatric gender medicine and the question of whether these identities are at least partially driven by social influences, as opposed to immutable, inborn traits.

@jean_twenge @epkaufm Check out @Jean_Twenge's blog: generationtechblog.com/p/trans-identi…

@jean_twenge @epkaufm This 2024 paper found an exponential increase in trans identity with younger Americans. But the data that @jean_twenge found indicates that this graph represented the peak at the youngest end. With successive years, the rate declined.
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Read 8 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Oct 8

Pressured by Transgender Activists, Star Academic Backs Out Of His Own Research

I report for @NewYorkSun: By imperiling a paper on gender-transition interventions for youths, evidence-based medicine expert Dr. Gordon Guyatt joins a wider suppressive trend seen in academic publishing in pediatric gender medicine.

LINK: Pressured by Transgender Activists, Star Academic Backs Out Of His Own Research

By imperilling a paper on gender-transition interventions for youths, evidence-based medicine expert Dr. Gordon Guyatt joins a wider suppressive trend seen in academic publishing in pediatric gender medicine.nysun.com/article/pressu…

A renowned Canadian researcher has bowed to a pressure campaign by transgender activists who have sought to blunt the impact of research they consider a threat to minors’ access to medical gender treatments. The scholar, evidence-based medicine expert Dr. Gordon Guyatt, led his junior academic colleagues in collectively jumping ship as coauthors, in a leading medical journal, of a pending paper on this controversial subject.

According to emails obtained by the Sun, this withdrawal left the much-anticipated paper in pre-publication limbo. Such suppression — or at least effective suppression — of research findings is in keeping with a broader trend seen in recent years within the controversial field of pediatric gender medicine. Prominent figures in the field have either delayed or blocked publication of papers that yielded inconvenient findings.
nysun.com/article/pressu…

Read 13 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Sep 17

NEWS: ABC Pulls ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ Indefinitely After Host’s Charlie Kirk Comments

Disney’s ABC said it would take Jimmy Kimmel‘s popular late-night show off its schedule “indefinitely” after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the U.S., Nexstar Media, said it would pre-empt airings of the program following remarks the host made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In his monologue Monday night , Kimmel said that the “MAGA gang” was trying to score political points off Kirk’s murder. Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, was shot and killed Sept. 10 at a debate at Utah Valley University. Three days later, authorities announced they had arrested the suspected shooter.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said.

Nexstar said Wednesday that its “owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show.” The company said it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”

variety.com/2025/tv/news/n…

nytimes.com/2025/09/17/bus…

Read 9 tweets

Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

Sep 13

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1966620670634381628

Update: Now The Guardian has cut from this article about Tyler Robinson the quote from the unnamed high school friend about his being “leftist”.

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1966620670634381628

I would very much like to know whether the unnamed source got cold feet and demanded a retraction of his quote (and if so, why), or if his words and his capacity to recall a time from about six or seven years ago were somehow misrepresented in the first place.

WaPo reports:

Xander Luke, another high school classmate, said he remembers Tyler Robinson being smart, funny and active online, trafficking in silly memes and jokes.

They would talk politics, Luke said, and discuss their “frustration with the system,” particularly feeling let down by the two major political parties. Robinson did not appear to like “hateful people” and “people who would talk down” to others, said Luke, 22.

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